City Officials Hail Voter Approval Of Prop. HHH To Help Homeless
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Los Angeles city officials Wednesday hailed voter approval of a $1.2 billion bond measure to fund permanent housing for the chronically homeless.
Proposition HHH will allow the city to sell bonds to finance as many as 10,000 housing units geared to homeless people who are difficult to house.
The "permanent supportive housing" will include on-site health, mental health and substance-abuse services and case management.
About 20 percent of the bond money could also be put toward low-income housing to help keep financially struggling Angelenos from sliding into homelessness.
Property owners will be on the hook for repaying the bonds.
City officials estimate that the annual cost would be about $10 per $100,000 of a property's assessed value, if the debt is paid back over 29 years.
The total debt, including interest, is estimated by city officials to be as much as $1.9 billion.
The $1.2 billion bond amount will be the biggest voters have ever authorized the city to issue.
The bond measure, put forward by City Council members Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Huizar, was placed on the ballot amid a time when homelessness in Los Angeles becomes harder to ignore.
The homeless population has increased steadily in recent years, rising by at least 5.2 percent in the last year.
The latest count put the city's homeless population at more than 28,000.
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