In an ambitious effort to address the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, a coalition of housing advocates, labor unions and progressive activist groups plans to file paperwork on Thursday for a ballot measure that would increase taxes on real estate transactions in the city to fund permanent housing for homeless people.
The organizers hope to collect nearly 65,000 signatures by spring to place the tax proposal on the November 2022 ballot.
The measure, if passed, would levy a 4% tax on property sales above $5 million and then rise to 5.5% on transactions above $10 million. The buyer or seller would owe $200,000 on a $5-million sale, for example.
“This is really about millionaires and billionaires paying their fair share to have a transformative approach to solving our housing crisis,” said Laura Raymond, director of the Alliance for Community Transit-Los Angeles, or ACT-LA, and a leader of the ballot measure coalition.
Read the full story at LATimes.com.