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Affordable housing is disappearing across the United States, especially in California.
PLANNING WATCH - Before voters approved Measure A, I wrote that the measure would NOT reduce homelessness, and voters should oppose this sales tax increase because it left four major causes of homelessness and overcrowding in place:
- Increasing housing costs.
- Declining real incomes.
- End of Federal and local public housing programs.
- Corporate landlords who use computer software to maximize rents.
For a detailed analysis of the underlying causes of the housing crisis, I recommend this new report from the Institute for Policy Studies: Billionaire Blowback on Housing: How Concentrated Wealth Disrupts Housing Market and Worsens the Housing Affordability Crisis. This remarkable study makes the following points:
- Private equity firms have entered the government-subsidized affordable housing sector. They receive tax breaks and public benefits to invest in affordable housing . . .They then profit from rent increases, evictions, and neglect of maintenance.
- Through algorithms that set exorbitant rent hikes, corporate landlords raise the cost of housing, a primary cause of homelessness.
- Corporate home buyers bid-up land and housing prices, fuel gentrification, and trigger increases in the cost of housing through instant cash offers.
- Big real estate has expanded their housing acquisitions and persuaded local government to provide them tax breaks and scuttle tenant protections.
- Predatory investors have bought up an unprecedented number of single-family homes, apartment buildings, and mobile home parks, to extract more rent from these economically squeezed residents.
- Homelessness is growing, even though vacant homes vastly outnumber unhoused people.
- Wealthy investors not only make money from rents, but also use housing as an asset to park their money until they can profit from real estate appreciation.
- Major real estate investors are entering the short-term rental industry, like AirBnB, which removes rental housing from the market.
- Housing construction is increasingly unaffordable to low-income households.
- Private equity firms have entered the government-subsidized affordable housing sector, receiving tax breaks and building code exemptions.
- Corporate landlords profit from low-income tenants by increasing rents and neglecting maintenance and repairs.
- Through algorithms and exorbitant rent hikes, real estate companies force people into homelessness.
- Wealthy buyers bid-up land and home prices which then increase gentrification and housing costs.
- Billionaires have influenced government housing policy to receive tax breaks, erode tenant protections, and expand their housing acquisitions at the expense low-income tenants.
As explained on this report, Measure A does not address the underlying causes of the housing crisis, such as rising income inequality. Homelessness and overcrowding will continue to expand in LA County, even with the annual infusion of $1 billion into housing production and social services.
How will Measure A work unfold? Measure A raises about $1 billion per year through a regressive sales tax increase of .25 percent. Low income residents will pay a disproportionate amount of their income for this new tax. Alternatives, such as the restoration of public housing programs, which could be paid by progressive income taxes, were never considered.
In effect, the Measure A keeps the primary causes of homelessness in place: especially large real estate companies which treat housing as a lucrative investment and rising economic inequality.
Does Measure A have a winner? We know that it won’t reduce the cost of housing, so the unhoused and overcrowded won’t benefit. The policies identified in the Institute for Policy Studies report will continue, and the big real estate companies which supported the measure will do just fine. When pressed, they can point to the expanded Measure A sales tax as evidence of their concern for the homeless and overcrowded. This new tax gives them and their supporters cover to profit from the housing status quo of privatization and deregulation.
(Dick Platkin is a retired LA city planner, who reports on local planning issues. He is a board member of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA). Previous columns are available at the CityWatchLA archives. Please send questions to [email protected].)
