L.A. Raises Sales Tax to 11% Over Stolen ‘Homeless’ Billions

In Los Angeles County, spring is in the air and so are higher taxes. Beyond the usual punishing ritual of April 15, county residents also now face some of the highest sales taxes in the country.

Sales taxes in the area have shot up from 9.75% to as high as 11.25% to fund still more services for the ‘homeless’. The permanent sales tax increase is supposed to raise $1 billion a year to replace the stolen billions spent by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Families will pay even more for food so that LA’s politicians and nonprofits can steal even more.

In 2016 and 2017, LA voters approved $4.6 billion in homeless tax hikes on themselves that included a sales tax increase and Measure HHH, a $1.2 billion bond measure to build 10,000 housing units for the homeless, that taken together were supposed to end homelessness.

“We need to seize this opportunity to make good things happen,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas promised at a ‘victory party’ for the massive spending package. “It is very, very important that we do this work in a way that the voters of the city feel they have done something good and going forward they will be rewarded by our results.”

Ridley-Thomas, who led LA’s homeless policies, and championed HHH, was charged with bribery and corruption. After his arrest, Ridley-Thomas vowed that he would continue “addressing the homeless and housing crisis.” The charges against the close ally of Mayor Karen Bass involved a scheme in the same USC social work school that also gave Bass a free “unsolicited $95,000 tuition award”. Ridley-Thomas was sentenced to 42 months in prison, but continues appearing at public events with Mayor Bass while appealing his conviction.

“Ridley-Thomas was at the center of L.A.’s fight against homelessness. What happens now?” the LA Times wondered, quoting Va Lecia Adams Kellum, the future head of the LA Homeless Services Authority who has now been forced to resign after $2.5 billion in unaccounted spending.

Ridley-Thomas had claimed that through Measure HHH, “we can help 45,000 men, women and children move from homelessness to stable housing in the next five years.”

“Within the next three to six months, with all the work we’ve done, we will see an improvement,” Councilman Jose Huizar promised. “And in two years … we’ll see a significant reduction in people living in the streets.”

Huizar, one of the “architects” of Measure HHH and had co-authored the Comprehensive Strategic Plan to Combat Homelessness, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for soliciting $1.5 million in bribes from developers including trips and prostitutes. The money included a $600,000 bribe from a fugitive Chinese real estate developer to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit.

The number of homeless not only didn’t go down, but shot up, and despite billions of dollars, the annual shortfall was being estimated at $270 million. Homeless housing was being approved at a cost of $479,000 an apartment and total development cost for Measure HHH hit $869 million.

By 2020, the average cost of apartments for the homeless was at $531,000 and by 2022, a city audit found that one project was running to $837,000 for each unit. An audit blamed “a lot of consultants”. After 4 years of this, only 228 apartments for the homeless had been built.

Los Angeles then launched a pilot program to build 8×8 aluminum sheds for the homeless for only $130,000 each and then tent encampments for the homeless for only $2,600 per tent each month. The homeless services complex had managed to take something the homeless were already doing for themselves and charge as much for it as a decent apartment rental.

The 2018-2019 city budget included $430 million in homeless spending (more than $300 million on road maintenance) and the 2024-2025 budget is up to $961 million in homeless spending.

The Los Angeles homeless count for 2019 was 35,550 homeless. The 2024 count found 45,252 homeless in the city. LA County’s homeless population had risen from 58,936 to 75,312 during that same period. The county’s 2024 Homeless Initiative was at nearly $600 million in spending.

After billions raised and spent to end homelessness, the crisis was worse than ever. More money was being spent and more homeless were popping up everywhere in a vicious cycle.

But what no one could find out was where all the homeless billions were going.

An audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which gets money from the city, county and the federal government, found that it couldn’t account for $2.5 billion in spending. It also illegally refused to release information about $800,000 in payouts over abuses at the agency.

LAHSA CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum, a crony of Mayor Karen Bass, who was being paid $430,000 a year, blamed the problems on COVID, and claimed that the billions spent with no paper trail or receipts were “an essential investment that contributed to achieving critical public health and service delivery outcomes.” That may have included the multi-million dollar contract she had signed with her husband’s nonprofit. A spokesperson claimed that she had only “inadvertently” signed the contract.

Critics said that LAHSA’s homeless count can’t be trusted, making it impossible to know how bad the problem that the agency’s nearly billion dollar budget was supposed to tackle really is..

Despite Mayor Bass’ protests, Kellum has resigned from LAHSA as the organization is wound down, but Gov. Newsom had previously appointed her to the Department of Housing’s ‘No Place Like Home Program Advisory Committee’ where there’s no sign that she’s being ousted.

The LA City Council mistrusts Bass so much that it’s refusing to fund her ‘homeless’ program. Most of last year’s $1.3 billion homeless budget, including $150 million from the ‘mansion tax’, was never spent because LA is taxing residents to fight homelessness faster than it can spend the money.

The LA County Board of Supervisors which had initiated the audit to seize control of the homeless program and its vast pot of cash from the mayor’s office are assembling a new county agency to spend it all. Measure A replaced the previous Measure H with a permanent sales tax.

And Los Angeles County residents walked into stores and are surprised that they’re suddenly being charged as much as 11% in sales tax to fund the latest plan to end homelessness.

Supervisor Jance Hahn praised LA voters for being “willing to continue to tax themselves” with Measure A to end homelessness. In reality, less than 2 million, or barely 1 in 5, of LA County residents, had voted for Measure A’s highest sales taxes in the country. And with LA elections and their notorious ballot harvesting, it’s unclear how many of those votes are even real.

Can the LA County Board of Supervisors be trusted any more than the city? Hahn and other BOS members had targeted former Sheriff Alex Villanueva after he raided the home of their former colleague Supervisor Sheila Kuehl in another nonprofit corruption investigation.

Supervisor Hahn had accused the sheriff of “using his office to go after political opponents”.

The Board of Supervisors seized power over the sheriff’s department making its members immune to any future raids. While the Supervisors amass control over another nearly billion dollar budget that promises to end homelessness once and for all, families are struggling with their higher sales taxes on top of the already high price of food and other necessities.

Homelessness keeps rising, homeless taxes keep rising and the money disappears.

Over the last 5 years, California spent $24 billion on ending homelessness. A statewide audit found that no one knew whethether the money was doing anything. The California Interagency Council on Homelessness didn’t even bother to analyze any spending after 2021.

When it comes to homeless spending, $24 billion can disappear as easily as $2.5 billion.

Meanwhile after the worst fires in LA history, partly caused by an underfunded fire department, Los Angeles is spending more money on ‘homelessness’ than on the fire department. The two are more related than you might think because the ‘homeless’, in reality drug-addicted mentally ill vagrants, are responsible for starting at least 17,000 fires in just one year.

Homeless fires made up a third of all LA fires last year.

Several of those proved devastating and the cause of some of the serious blazes that threatened the city and made worldwide news over the winter still remain unknown.

Mayor Bass is promising to counter that with even more homeless spending.

“We know that the cost of doing nothing is far greater,” her spokesman claimed.

And as long as LA voters continue to believe that, the endless homeless spending will continue, the homeless encampments will go on rising and the homeless fires will go on burning.

Source: http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/1715945974358829462/comments/default