Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass urged the City’s wealthy to fund homeless housing during her State of the City speech held April 15.
“We have brought the public sector together,” Bass said, speaking to a packed City Council chamber. “And now we must prevail on the humanity and generosity of the private sector.”
She unveiled a new campaign, LA4LA, that asks business leaders, philanthropic organizations and others to donate millions of dollars to an effort to acquire buildings so they can be used as apartments for the city’s homeless population.
The initiative has secured a $3 million grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in Westlake Village and a $5 million loan from the California Community Foundation in Los Angeles. Beverly Hills-based developer Stephen Cloobeck, founder of Diamond Resorts, said he gave $1 million earlier this year.
“LA4LA can be a sea change for Los Angeles, an unprecedented partnership to confront this emergency, an example of disrupting the status quo to build a new system to save lives,” Bass said.
Last year during the State of Black L.A., held at USC, Bass urged Black people to ‘step up’ too.
“We need to do our own part of this issue,” said Bass. “We need to say that we’re going to bring our faith community together, we’re going to bring our business community together, and that we’re all going to have skin in the game.”
She also explained that the majority of affordable housing is being built in south Los Angeles despite many of those projects remaining empty.
“Councilmen Curren Price and Marqueece Harris-Dawson have built a majority of the affordable housing hand have moved people on the streets but we need to have this same energy everywhere because we can’t move everybody to South LA,” said Bass.
The City held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Dolores Huerta Apartments on April 27, 2023, but as of today still remains vacant.
According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an estimated 75,518 people experienced homelessness in Los Angeles County in 2023.
A continuing concern, still reflected in the 2023 count, is the percentage of homeless persons who are Black/African American. This racial group represents 32% of the homeless in Los Angeles County as compared to only 8% of the African American population in Los Angeles County overall.
Los Angeles voters passed the “Mansion Tax” raised by the Measure ULA but it hasn’t brought in the funds expected since it went into effect.
Measure ULA imposes a 4% tax on property sales above $5 million, rising to 5.5% on sales above $10 million. So a $5-million sale would include a $200,000 tax, and a $10-million sale would include a $550,000 tax, which is typically paid by the seller.
But the wealthy are fighting back and are not selling their homes or are turning to alternatives to avoid paying.
Because the tax affects only sales above $5 million, some homeowners are looking into splitting up their properties into smaller parcels with different ownership entities.
For example, if a homeowner is selling a mansion for $15 million, they’d be slapped with a $825,000 tax bill. But if they split up the property into three parts owned by three different entities and sold all three pieces for $4.999 million each, they would hypothetically elude the tax since it kicks in only at $5 million.
Both the state and city are under scrutiny for how they are spending funds earmarked for addressing the homeless problem.
Would you trust them with MORE money?
1 Comment
Sorry mayor but their is no money is housing homeless. Nobody wants to house those who can’t house themselves in some way. Plain and simple their are 2 kinds of people in this world and only 2 kinds. Assets and Liabilities. Who wants to take on liabilities?