Los Angeles County,
Measure A

YES

Measure A would create a $1.2 B/year funding stream to enable Los Angeles County to prevent and resolve homelessness and build affordable housing through a net 1/4 cent sales tax increase (repeals Measure H 1/4 cent sales tax from 2017 and enacts a new 1/2 cent sales tax).  About one-third of Measure A funds would go to the newly created countywide affordable housing agency Los Angeles County Affordable House Solution Agency (LACAHSA) for new homes and for services to help people avoid eviction and foreclosure. Most of the remaining money would go to homeless services.

Measure A would advance Move LA’s mission by a) building more affordable housing near our transit system creating a more affordable Los Angeles and b) providing vital services that make Metro safer by quickly helping people with serious mental health and addiction problems. Measure A will improve our transportation systems and address our most urgent crisis—homelessness and affordable housing.

California State Proposition 4

YES

Proposition 4 is a bond measure on the November ballot that would authorize $10 billion in spending to address climate change and its impacts.  The money could fund a range of programs, from planting more trees in cities to reduce temperatures during heat waves, to building infrastructure such as coastal wetlands that anticipates sea level rise.  It also would pay for programs to expand water conservation and recycling, enlarge state parks and implement ground water replenishment programs. 

More than 100 environmental groups, from the Sierra Club to Audubon California to Clean Water Action, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as the California Labor Federation, and IBEW Local 569, urged lawmakers in Sacramento to place the measure on the ballot to replace funding for climate programs that was squeezed out of this year’s budget to help eliminate the deficit. It needs a simple majority to pass.

California State Proposition 5

YES

Proposition 5 will lower the voting threshold for passage of local bond measures to fund affordable housing and local infrastructure projects from the current threshold of 66.67% to a lower threshold, 55%.  If approved it will become much easier for cities, counties, or local districts to fund affordable housing and local infrastructure projects including transportation projects, parks, water, climate health and clean air projects with bonds and also make it more likely that cities, counties and special districts will try to do so.  Such bonds are typically repaid with property tax increases.

Move LA is especially interested in Prop 5 because we know that to address our transit system and active transportation needs, our affordable housing and homelessness crisis, and the need for renewable power, EV charging and zero-emission trucking systems to address climate and clean air objectives, cities, counties, and special districts will need to create funding sources dedicated to such purposes.  Proposition 5 will make that more easily accomplished. 

California State Proposition 33

YES

Proposition 33 proposes to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act, state legislation adopted in 1995 whereby Sacramento has limited the authority of cities and counties to adopt local rent control laws.  Costa-Hawkins requires all local rent control laws include an exemption from rent control for all single-family homes, even those owned by giant corporations like Blackstone which acquired over 80,000 single family homes  during the Great Recession; a permanent exemption for all newly built apartments, even many years after they are built; and a requirement that all vacant units can go to market rents upon vacancy no matter scale of market rents or the degree of crisis in the availability of affordable rental housing.

Proposition 33, by repealing Costa-Hawkins, would allow city’s greater flexibility to adopt rent control laws that are responsive to local housing conditions. If passed, Prop 33 would fulfill Move LA’s mission by allowing cities the ability to make rents more affordable for our most vulnerable and at-risk residents, slowing down the number of households pushed into homelessness.

California State Proposition 34

NO

Proposition 34 cloaks itself in the language of healthcare, but it is really all about the politics of rent control in California.  It is sponsored by the California Apartment Association and its real intent is to cripple the ability of the AHF (AIDS Healthcare Foundation) to continue its advocacy on behalf of tenants and rent control in California.  AHF is the largest HIV/ AIDS organization in the world, and the leading organization working to expand rent control for the most vulnerable in our society – low-income seniors, veterans, single parents and patients with HIV/AIDS.   

Proposition 34 is an attack on all nonprofit organizations that do advocacy work because it opens the door for cynical and targeted threats against advocates.