2024-04-20 16:30:26
Back in the fall of 2022, Los Angeles voters passed a referendum for a “mansion tax” that would impose a new transaction tax on any real estate sale in excess of $5 million. The measure passed with nearly 58% of the vote, and owners of luxury homes were selling their properties as quickly as they could to avoid being hit with a success penalty.
The money was suppose to help address issues related to the area’s serious homelessness problems. Subsequently, luxury house sales plummeted and the “mansion tax” has only raised a fraction of the lofty fiscal target promised to the voters.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Now Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is pleading with “the most fortunate” to help fund housing for the homeless. She is calling it an “unprecedented partnership.”
“We will not hide people but what we will do is house people,” the Democratic leader touted as she began her remarks on the city’s struggle to house over 40,000 homeless people. “The crisis on our streets is nothing less than a disaster.”
Bass touted the success of her signature Inside Safe program, which moved over 21,000 homeless people into temporary shelters, according to The Associated Press.
She insisted this “strategy” and “system” moving the homeless into temporary housing would eventually end the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles.
I must admit, I am having another attack of schadenfreude. Back in 2022, successful real estate entrepreneur Rick Caruso and then Democrat Congresswoman Karen Bass were in a dead heat in the race to be the next mayor of Los Angeles. Los Angeles residents were very close to picking a savvy business mogul who might have offered novel solutions to troubling problems.
Los Angeles voters chose poorly.
As a reminder, Los Angelinos could have elected a real estate mogul in 2022. https://t.co/o3kEv0TJ2O pic.twitter.com/PM3g5qEaSl
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) April 19, 2024
Business owners and residents have begun noticing that the city hasn’t followed-up on any of its previous promises and have filed a lawsuit.
According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the city’s leading centralized hub for homeless services, more than 75,500 people were considered homeless in 2023, a 9% increase countywide. In the city, about 46,200 were considered homeless, a 10% increase from the previous year.
Fox News Digital reported that a coalition of business owners and residents in L.A. filed a lawsuit against the city, arguing it did not honor its 2020 settlement agreement that promised it would build thousands of shelters and sweep out homeless encampments.
Last week, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay an outside firm $2.2 million to audit its homelessness programs after a request by a federal judge.
Vote in haste, repent in leisure.
And she has the nerve to brand it an “unprecedented partnership”
It’s actually quite precedented. It’s Socialism
— KarenBassProgressReport (@KBassProgReport) April 18, 2024
The approach is going over as well as you would expect.
— Francois Botha (@F_Botha_USA) April 18, 2024
All will be well, though. It’s just a matter of time before “squatters rights” is embraced as a solution.
Some residents in an Arleta neighborhood have raised concerns after a vacant home was taken over by a squatter. But KCAL News’ Joy Benedict was invited into the home, where she got heard his side of it all.
The man, who wished not to be named, moved into the home recently after spending years on the street.
“I used to stay around in the park, but I came into the abandoned house to start repairing it,” he told Benedict.
…The Los Angeles County Department of Building and Safety, along with Los Angeles Police Department and the local Los Angeles City Council member’s office have been contacted over the ordeal. But, with the owner dead and no family members claiming the property, the process becomes more complicated.
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