www.audacy.com/knxnews/news/local/proposed-measure-increasing-sales-tax-may-be-on-nov-ballot
Proposed measure increasing sales tax for homeless prevention could be on November ballot
Yeah no thank you.
I’ve voted year after year for more funding for homeless prevention. Nothing has changed. In fact, it’s felt like the homeless issue has gotten worse.
The seeming increase of the homeless population paired with a definite increase of crimes committed by the homeless makes me less than sympathetic these days.
Unless there’s something on the ballot that will actually make a difference in my day-to-day life, like stricter laws or mandated rehab or even reopening asylums, I’m not voting to spend more of my money on the homeless.
In fact, it’s felt like the homeless issue has gotten worse.
Believe it or not there were slightly more homeless people in 2005 than there were in 2023 (82,000 vs. 78,000 countywide). But the crisis definitely feels much worse because the homeless population is FAR less concentrated than it was in the 70-00s when the overwhelming majority of homeless were on Skid Row.
Encampments have spread out over the entire county now. This was an intentional policy choice by service providers in the hopes that it would reduce long-term homelessness. Instead it built a hundred little Skid Rows across LA.
Or has the city just gotten better at "counting" the homeless to make it seem like they're doing something? I know I see way more homeless people while driving around than I used to.
Thank you, no
I have faith that this time that this will finally help solve the problem. The other 4 times and 24 billion spent just wasn’t enough.
They definitely won’t find a way to fuck it up.
We just need that little bit to push them over the edge .
We just need a couple more dollars to get this thing really poppin' off!!
Your family HATES you! Only I love you!
Cue Karen Bass with Anakin Voice: "You underestimate my power!"
Doubt it
It’s the last one they pinky promise
Super ultra mega swear cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in my eye
Question?, how would a super ultra mega swear sound like?
That sounds like a fun creative writing assignment.
and I’ll vote no. Los Angeles is already spending 1 billion dollars every single year for homeless and the situation has not improved a bit since I have been living here.
It’s gotten worse, if anything
Agreed. In the last few months I had two homeless people sleeping on the stairs to my house. One of them had a broken arm with exposed bones. I called 911 and they did zero to help him. The other one was a woman completely wasted and unable to take care of herself.
I yelled at a homeless woman last week peering into a car window, she fled. That was two weeks after some meth head tried to steal my gfs car, leaving an empty hole where the ignition used to be.
Reply with your no votes here
Right because the $24b wasn't enough I guess.
It literally wasn’t if you had been paying attention. People like you are so uninformed and why nothing will ever change. They need a few billion more so they can build more housing1 , then you’ll start to see real changes
1 “more housing” = summer vacation homes for these crooked politicians
What you did there... I see it.
Tax me harder daddy
Senpai Newsom, I deserve more punishment 😍
Nani?
As someone who has advocated for homelessness my whole life, I’m done. This is the city’s fault and we’ve given plenty of money to this corruption already. BYE
Let’s start taking it out of politicians salary. No more taxes.
Agreed
And the LAPD budget.
Absolutely not. Whoever proposes and endorses this needs to be voted out of office. Corrupt bastards
I really want to give the city more money so it can go into a black hole with no results. I'd be OK with more taxes if I thought it would help in any way. Also the only way to solve the homeless crisis is to build more housing. Why don't we take those billions and build apartments?
Yes. Build more housing out in the desert or somewhere where inexpensive but accommodating real estate exists. Karen Bass has no idea what she’s doing. We all had hope for her but she’s proving to be dysfunctional.
I'm not defending her at all, but I think most of these people have no idea what they're doing. I've been voting yes on these increases through multiple mayors. Not one of them has been successful, so I'm done voting yes on these.
It's because none of these address the actually issue, the housing shortage
It’s much more then the housing issue, the city can’t even make people addicted to drugs and with mental health issues go inside when there is housing available
I'm not defending her at all, but I think most of these people have no idea what they're doing.
Maybe the guy who ran against her, who has decades of actual private-sector management experience might "know what he's doing"?
I mean plenty of LA elections are a choice between the corrupt Democrat machine stooge and the bomb-throwing DSA provocateur, but the last mayoral race was a real choice between different political management ethos.
yeah it was between a corrupt Democrat and Karen Bass
It isn’t cheaper to build out in the desert lol
The people who say that just want a concentration camp for street level homeless but they don't want to say it with their chest
Beyond being unspeakably evil, it's the dumbest idea imaginable.
Much of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts are ecologically sensitive and home to numerous endangered species. Joshua Trees, Desert Tortoises, and Inyo Rock Daisies, just to name a few. As a result, any construction in natural areas goes through painstaking environmental review.
Then there's the fact that most of the "emptiest" areas of the California desert are BLM land, meaning you'd have to go through the Department of the Interior. Good luck getting the federal government to sign off on your concentration camp.
LA's homeless population is over 30,000 individuals. That's bigger than the city of Yucca Valley. The cost of building and maintaining this open-air prison would be astronomical. You'd have to build out a massive amount of infrastructure, roads, electricity, administrative buildings etc. etc., as well as re-route water resources from neighboring communities.
There's that little issue, also. There are actually people who live out here. I'm in the high desert part of the year and there's a constant debate over crime and cartel activity in the local media. Do you think voters in SB or Imperial County are going to be happy with a massive homeless concentration camp thrown into the mix?
Lastly, the desert north of LA is in the shadow of a concentration camp already-- Manzanar. It's a major tourist attraction off of 365 and would be the first point of comparison for many Californians.
It's never going to happen (nor should it) and its proponents are total nutjobs if they think the state, federal government, and courts would allow the City of Los Angeles do this.
It's undeveloped or agricultural, which is so much cheaper. Nothing in the valleys or the basin is undeveloped, and the costs associated with teardown, abatement + remediation, and the final redevelopment are astronomical.
Yes being undeveloped makes it more expensive, not less. Now you need utilities. And now these people have no access to public transportation.
The city, state, and federal government already own tons of land in LA. Build apartment towers there
Have you worked in construction or development at all? Bringing the utilities is so much cheaper than the aforementioned redevelopment costs in Southern California. Also, there is considerable public transit access to Antelope Valley, and more is being built already.
The people of Palmdale or wherever do not want to be the dumping ground for tens of thousands of homeless persons from LA city (rightly so!). Also, I don’t think any of the homeless persons are going to want to live out there anyways - so they just won’t go.
Between Barstow and Vegas
Why not the moon? Maybe Narnia?
Why would you want to pollute Narnia with these miscreants?
And now these people have no access to public transportation.
First, what is their pressing need for public transit? It's not like they have jobs.
The subset of the homeless population we're talking about here are the chronically unsheltered, with mental illness and/or addiction issues. We're not talking about the couch-surfer who's back on their feet in 6 months.
Second, what's wrong with building public transportation to these areas?
Is it just because it goes against that stupid little urban planner "15 minute city" pipe dream? You can have efficient sprawl, and public transit is the way to do it. Tokyo is 850 square miles. LA is 500.
I knew she was going to be awful.
Her election was a reason I moved up my time table to move out of Los Angeles.
I was in her district when she was in Congress and her office was chaotic and extremely dismissive, more so than your average Congressperson, if you weren't in her pet groups.
Where ya headed?
Why do Californian's keep voting democrat and expecting different results?
republicans also do not have a real solution to homelessness
We're beyond the point of voting for homeless issues - no one has a viable solution. They'll all try something, it won't work, we'll be back where we started. Vote the other issues
Los Angeles, as well as the state it resides in, is economically better off than red cities and the red states they are in. So That should, alone, answer your question. Vast majority of welfare dependence come from the red states. Homelessness is not unique to blue states, the only difference is large population means more homeless.
They do build apartments but apparently they cost $600,000/unit. It’s ridiculous while u can buy multi family property in LA for 1/3 of that unit cost.
Where can I find a multi family for 200k?
1985
-2176 South Venice Blvd (17 unit multifamily sold for $196,000/unit last week)
-1146 North Formosa Ave in WeHo (8 unit sold for $280,000/unit last week).
There’s a lot more deals like this.
That isn’t remotely what you implied lol. Your statement sounds like $200k total
Not really I said unit cost which implies cost/unit
You said I could buy PROPERTY for 1/3 of THAT UNIT COST. Read that back and you might see why I say that
Idk I read it as per unit to per unit…
I think they meant build, not buy.
Even building something for 200k seems absurd but I now see they meant 200 each, which is not how it came off
Years ago, the United States military offered a proposal to house all of the homeless in Los Angeles. I think the cost was somewhere around 25 to 30m. it would only be months to get this operational as well, not years with nothing to show for it and $700,000 price tags per unit. Although this would be in tents, it would allow them somewhere to sleep safely, shower, cleanup and have kitchens. But the unions got into it, and it was squelched immediately.
The US housed thousands of Vietnamese refugees at Camp Pendleton, when they fled their homeland after the fall of Saigon.
Try doing that today and the DSA would start screaming "Auschwitz!"
So instead we just dump people to rot in the gutter. That's somehow more progressive, apparently.
I have never heard of this and call BS on it. Maybe, MAYBE, there was a plan to house homeless veterans. It certainly wasn’t all the homeless in LA and it certainly would cost way more than 30m today.
And what unions are you referring to? Homeless individuals probably aren’t working so I don’t know what union they would be represented by
I'd assume construction? If this was real it was probably up against a permanent housing solution
It’s not housing ffs 🙄
Also the only way to solve the homeless crisis is to build more housing.
Yes.
Why don't we take those billions and build apartments?
Because when the local government builds housing the money just gets passed through a massive funnel of legal, semi-legal and (in some cases) criminally corrupt cadre of bureaucrats, politically connected builders and "consultants." This is how you get $800,000 "tinyhomes" that took 8 years to build from HHH.
The private sector should build housing. The government needs to step out of that process by removing zoning restrictions, not get themselves more involved.
They can fuck off
Account for the money you’ve already spent.
NO MORE UNTIL THEN
No more after then either
That’s a no for me dawg.
Absolutely not. And incumbents are getting the boot from me.
The state of homelessness in this city is a fucking embarrassment.
Same. The surest way to lost my vote come November is already holding an office.
Unless those taxes are being used to reopen the asylums then I'm voting no.
Absolutely the fuck not.
Slash the salaries of the top administrators and actually count where the goddamn money went otherwise a sweeping overhaul of these imbeciles in charge.
Voting no. We already gave money for this and it’s been seemingly wasted.
Yeah, good luck getting this to pass. The grift is up.
Just one more tax raise bro
They’ve “spent” over 25 Billion over the past 5 years, the amount of money isn’t the issue, it’s how it’s used, and they have not even bothered to do an analysis on the effectiveness of their current expenditures
How much more money do we have to waste? Vote no. Tax increases are unacceptable
No way. The city doesn’t deserve one more dollar of our hard earned money. Election after election they propose tax increases and absolutely nothing has been done to help the homeless. If anything the situation is more dire. I’m happy to pay taxes if I see results. Now deliver some results with what you have and cut your inefficiencies, otherwise leave us alone.
It's time for federal housing.
And it's also time to address the new P2P meth that drives people into psychosis in just a couple days.
We already have federal housing. When thousands and thousands of Vietnamese refugees arrived homeless in CA, we housed them in Camp Pendleton.
Apparently that was akin to Nazi Germany according to the "advocates," so now we just leave the homeless to rot in a gutter, then pat ourselves on the back for being so progressive.
Totally agree it's what's needed, but Even if we somehow approved/funded federal housing, we'd probably fuck it up by hiring some greedy corporations to build and oversee it and wind up costing millions per apartment with lots of waste.
I have very little faith at this point.
It would cost a lot more if the government didn’t contract it out
I know. I'm tired. And also just finished watching "Fallout". So yeah, corporations ugh. We are fucked.
As someone who loves giving even more money to the city to sit on their ass and not do anything with it, this sounds like a great measure!
I hope everyone votes against it. Already wasted billions on homelessness and it’s just worse. Like most taxes, just gonna hurt the ones who are already struggling the most.
I’m always surprised when this shit passes. Don’t look at these comments and think most people are fed up. The majority still vote in favor for these taxes
This is a real argument someone made to me the other day when I said the taxes need to expire and not be renewed:
Hey, if you want the problem to be worse than you can happily vote against this measure in November.
I understand that we're chasing a larger problem but, short of somehow reducing the cost of housing in LA in the near term, fighting against these sorts of policies helps no one. More people will lose their housing as costs rise regardless of what we do. There's no reality where voting this down and having the 0.025% expire results in a better situation when programs lose funding.
I just want to be perfectly clear that your proposed method will result in more homeless folks around the city than leaving the current tax in place or expanding it. When I weigh the options, saving myself less than $200/year in incidental taxes isn't worth letting the homelessness crisis in LA get worse but different strokes for different folks, I guess.
These are the people that vote for this dumb shit and expect things to change. They feel so morally superior about it, and I imagine a good percentage of their choice to vote on these types of things are just a "fuck your feelings" defiance to the people they've decided are villains, or maybe they really are that stupid to actually believe that THIS time things will be different. Let's just keep doing the exact same thing and expect a different outcome, one of these times it's got to work!
Because the internet is not a good barometer for how voters feel or how they will vote.
Because these threads are astroturfed/brigaded. A lot of the shit posted on this sub is disingenuous. I wouldn’t even be surprised if a lot of the stuff is bots at this point. Dead internet theory is real.
This sub has become a joke that doesn’t even represent Los Angeles.
Absolutely NO WAY😤
I’m as progressive as it gets. F THIS MEASURE. you’ve had many years and many billions I voted to give to you and it all fizzled into what? Yeah, still waiting.
Haven't we already spent "billions." More money for all the corrupt politicians friends... fuck that shit. VOTE NO.
The last time they raised taxes for homeless rehabilitation services, that money was never spent and programs never developed. Where did that money go?
Unless it’s for asylums/compulsory drug treatment, I’m not interested anymore.
Usually I’ll happily vote for tax increases to pay for stuff. But I’m no longer convinced it would actually be used for what they say it will.
didn’t we vote for like a billion $$$ with HHH or something? and they can’t keep track of the money they have now. big nope
AUDIT NOW. We’ve been taxing ourselves to hell and back for over a decade. Not another cent
Well it warms my Dark Libertarian Heart that everyone in this thread is, with very good reasons based on decades of track record, massively skeptical when LA government asks for more money to fix this particular problem.
Why can't we get a ballot measure to end single-family zoning? That'd get things really popping...
Classical liberalist here, you are not alone.
No way. Only because we keep voting for things to improve the homeless situation and they never work, and the money just gets funneled to people’s pockets who don’t need it. I have no faith that raising the sales tax is close to the solution.
Watch this pass with flying colors, thats how dumb as sheep we will be revealed.
Aka the people who voted for Nithya Raman to do nothing productive
nithya raman is the only council member who actually sorta supports building more housing which is the only productive thing you can do
Unless its in a neighborhood where she considers it "gentrification"
everyone knows we have to build more housing. its all about getting big developers to get in your corner.
The reason we can’t build isn’t because developers don’t want to
What happened to the last increase? How was it spent? Was it mostly stolen by consultants and administrators?
Who is voting yes for these. Thats the problem.
haha, No, not this time.
No. Your allowance is revoked.
The language on the ballot will be intentionally misleading, I'm sure. It'll be phrased as a repeal, with the finer print noting "and replace." Wouldn't be surprised if they somehow try to get out of being clear it's a higher, never expiring tax replacing a lower one that is set to expire in three years.
I hope people stay hip to that shit.
No new taxes without legal changes to allow wide open construction of housing. Anything short of that is allowing NIMBY politicians to light money on fire.
Yall can vote no, but the vote will probably be rigged for a yes
I think it’s not rigged but lots of voters are uninformed
It’s rigged it’s going to pass even if everyone votes no lol
FUCK OFF. They really think this is going to pass after numerous audits have been done and this state can't seem to figure out where the money has gone?? The situation has only gotten worse after more money has been thrown at the issue.
NOPE
Gotta pay for the $600K a unit apartments that the homeless will get for free while everyone else works their ass of to barely scrape by… people can’t be that stupid and vote for this right?
Jesus H.
Lol no thanks. Already sent enough of my money.
I'll give them more money when they show me how they're spending the money they already have.
So happy to see this sub in unison on this issue!
At this point, let’s just put that money to other actual uses like teacher salaries.
Also not to mention they’re setting up 50 million to renovate the stadiums for the Olympics despite a budget crisis
It should require auditing all the money that’s been spent first before they can increase the sales tax.
Is there a not politically charged, reasonable position breakdown of the facts with the funds for aiding the unhoused? Comprehensive data analysis?
So much of the rhetoric around this issue has such bias, an overwhelming hatred of the unhoused or the smaller problematic "any criticism of this is anti-human".
I need the facts and the evolved proposals to make a decision on this.
After all the money they've burned from previous ballot measures? No thanks.
Not without oversight. They need an audit of what they do with every penny.
Do you still reject Catholic doctrine? Please don’t.
Seriously? How many billions of dollars have they spent already? They're just shoveling it into a pit and asking for more.
I'd vote to fund asylums at this point, but they've fucked up their chance to address homelessness. Every other block I drive down has a ranting lunatic screaming into the air.
and the first residents should be these politicians
I'll vote yes when we get a full audit of what's been spent so far.
Increase sales tax to fund state-run mental and drug rehabilitation centers or no dice.
Could we find out where each of them are from and help them get back on their feet to that city? Might be a better use of the money than just burning it as we do now
Fuck that. Zero accountability and they can't properly explain where the Measure H money went, in addition to it being a near complete failure.
The full text of the new measure is linked here if you want to read it: https://boldnewway.com/
On paper this new thing sounds better but the city's track record speaks otherwise.
The homeless have more rights than homeowners in Los Angeles.
Our politicians have been sold to oligarchs.
Feed the rich to the bums.
Here’s a thought: maybe instead of increasing a flat tax that will disproportionately affect lower income residents (including the very population you’re trying to help), maybe try something that will raise money from people who can actually afford it!
HARD NO FOR ME
Do they seriously think people will vote for this bullshit? Like shit isn’t already expensive enough?! My god. People are becoming homeless because of inflation and excessive over pricing. Hell no.
More money for the nonprofit industrial complex.
I have no more money left to give, living paycheck to paycheck as it js
They’ll just line their pockets with the extra taxes.
It would be one thing if people saw the existing funding given to this goal was achieving something and it just needed an extra push to expedite the goal.
But I think people just see the same amount of homeless at least, and more money going to non-profit workers.
Nope. No more.
Vote No.
should change the website to AUDACITY . com
there must be a study corelating higher taxes with higher homelesness, in fact higher taxes cause people to be homeless im sure, so many people can barely afford to pay things because they are taxed into poverty.
no one in the US is taxed into poverty
You are 100% Correct, nobody has ever been taxed into the poverty bracket.
No
Anything that isn't just 100% funding into housing development aint it
Jeezus Christ, just use the money you are already collecting for this to do the job, and not on consultants and kickbacks.
Time for an audit.
I love the zeitgeist. Everyone's sick of this shit.
No
NOPE, you had your chance
Just a little bit more tax and it'll be all better, fam . Trust us this time. [And we will...]
Fuck hla, oh wait, we love bikes . I meant fuck the homeless
Nope
these never do anything. pass
As if basic goods aren’t expensive enough…
Before we get the audit of the last prop?
Oof no. Just futz with some laws or whatever to make it easier to build shit.
Change zoning laws so we can just pump out mixed use and build trains and bike lanes everywhere.
After the Blue Line “improvements”?????? No!
I’ve worked in homeless services for almost ten years. It’s an industry that runs on cronyism, nepotism and favoritism at the very top and incompetence at the very bottom because starting pay is so low.
You can go on Indeed and find shelter worker jobs as low as 17/hr. So you’re getting an unqualified work force and you have consistent turnover which costs more money in the long run.
Since most of these organizations receive government contracts Gov Newsom could have set a minimum wage for homeless services jobs. But he hasn’t and it’s probably for political reasons. I personally would set the wage at 25/hr. You would get a much qualified workforce and wouldn’t be burning through money constantly hiring people because you can’t keep employees.
I’m pretty sure you would also not have to deal with the following: shelter workers fucking the residents, doing drugs with the residents, sleeping in empty units because they are homeless themselves because they are on such low wages.
Let’s make sure it fails
Wow someone really complains to have this taken down
Unless it’s funding thousands of new housing units this money is just going down the drain
Moderator removed comment
4d
Just getting the word out that we need to reject these measures.
Yeah, dude like I said this is the 3rd post I’ve seen in as many days basically. It’s getting spammy.
So don’t engage with these posts? It took you more energy and time to engage than to skip it and move on 🤷♂️
Do you really expect people agenda posting to focus on anything that isn’t part of their agenda? Reddit is becoming nothing but astroturfing and bots.
You’d hope the mods would clean up the sub but lol.
Please use the report button and give a mod a hand.
I think the opposite. Not enough awareness is being made about this issue. None of my colleagues knew about this initially. These posts help with the public about the inner workings of our city and how their shortcomings hurt us
People in this sub can’t go 5 minutes without shitting on homeless people.
Maybe cuz we’re tired of them
Because they’re shitting on our sidewalks, shitting on our stores, shitting on where we live.
That’s because they don’t have anywhere else to shit dawg. Have some compassion.
Let them come to your house and shit wherever they want on your property then, cmon dawg have some compassion.
I’m sure they all support Trump’s proposed “camps”, as well. I get compassion fatigue but some of the people on this sub vouch for the murder or homeless people on the regular. Gross.
Yes 2% No 98%
I personally would much rather see more of my money disappear into policing the graffiti towers
One party county, one party state… hey don’t complain you asked for it !
1 missing reply
Nope. I’d also like a refund on the previous increases pls