For years, Los Angeles voters have said their main concerns They include housing and homelessness. This election gave them the opportunity to weigh in on those issues.

While Angelenos voted to increase local spending on homelessness, they did not support state-level measures aimed at expanding rent control and making it easier to pass bonds for affordable housing.

Los Angeles policy experts said the results show local voters still care about lowering housing costs and reducing homelessness, but they won’t support everything put up for a vote, especially if the Measurements are confusing.

Measure A is headed toward victory

A clear majority of Los Angeles County voters decided to approve a measure that increases sales taxes to fund homeless services and new affordable housing developments.

Proponents of Measure A claimed victory on Wednesday, when the vote count had support at around 56%. The measure doubles an existing quarter-cent sales tax in Los Angeles County to a half-cent tax, generating about $1.1 billion per year for homeless response efforts.

Some pre-election polls suggested voters might resist the idea of ​​spending more on everyday purchases after a period of high inflation. many voters They were frustrated to see Los Angeles County’s homeless population increase by 37% since the existing quarter-cent tax first went into effect with the passage of Measure H in 2017.

But supporters of Measure A noted that the homeless count in Los Angeles has stabilized this year, and that the number of people living unsheltered on the streets is actually going down. Alan Greenlee, executive director of the Southern California Nonprofit Housing AssociationHe said many people saw that progress and voted to increase this funding.

“I’m not sure there is a compelling alternative at this point,” Greenlee said. “People understand that it is necessary to carry out interventions. And if we decide to stop what we are doing now and replace it with no other alternative, the average person may realize that that does not seem to be a path to success.”

If Measure A had failed, the current sales tax would have expired in 2027. The new half-cent tax will continue in perpetuity, until voters decide to eliminate it.

Even though Measure A won handily, voters still showed some fatigue when it came to funding homeless efforts through the ballot box. The measure received far less support than the initiative that first established the tax years ago.

“Voters are definitely not where they were in 2017, when Measure H had 69% support,” said Shane Phillips, a researcher with the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA.

Proposition 5 Fails Statewide, Narrowly Dividing Los Angeles Voters

Unlike Los Angeles County’s Measure A, Proposition 5 was up for a statewide vote. About 56% of California voters rejected this proposal make affordable housing bonds easier to pass by lowering the voter approval threshold from two-thirds to 55%.

In Los Angeles County, where most renters pay huge portions of their income for housing, Proposition 5 also struggled to gain support. About 50.3% of Angelenos voted “no” according to Thursday’s count.

So why did voters support higher homeless sales taxes and housing funding but reject making affordable housing bonds easier to pass? michael lensprofessor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, said Proposition 5 might simply have been more confusing.

“There’s a lot of information overload when you vote in California,” Lens said. “I think a lot of times the default is ‘no’ because you get suspicious if you don’t fully understand something.”

By comparison, Lens said Measure A was pretty straightforward. A yes vote secured a higher sales tax, generating money that will immediately flow to homeless and affordable housing programs. The value proposition of Proposition 5 was more opaque. Instead of quick results, the measure would have only made the process of approving new funds in later votes easier.

Another likely factor: Proposition 5 explicitly told voters that passing more bonds would result in higher property taxes, something many voters probably weren’t excited to hear.

The third time was not the charm for Proposition 33

Proposition 33, another state measure, aimed to repeal a California law that restricts cities across the state from passing stricter forms of rent control. He was defeated, both in California and in Los Angeles County.

About 61% of Californians voted no on Proposition 33, including 57% of Los Angeles County voters, according to the latest counts. Los Angeles residents are more likely to be renters and tend to be more progressive than the state’s population as a whole, but that didn’t help boost Proposition 33’s chances.

Housing policy experts were not surprised by the result. This The proposal has been on the state ballot twice before. in 2018 and 2020. Both previous measures failed by wide margins.

Owner interest groups also once again spent million dollars in ads to defeat Proposition 33. The opposition campaign raised $125 million, the largest haul for any state measure.