Ridley-Thomas courts help from billionaire Tom Steyer for homeless tax initiative

Billionaire Democratic political activist and potential gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer toured skid row Tuesday with Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who said afterward that he is courting Steyer’s support for a potential March sales tax initiative for homeless services.

County supervisors contemplated placing a homeless tax initiative on the November ballot and voted last month to go forward with a proposal to tax marijuana businesses for homeless services. But they quickly reversed course and voted not to place the initiative on the ballot after all, after a number of advocates pushed back against the idea.

Ridley-Thomas had pushed for a quarter-cent sales tax initiative, projected to raise an estimated $355 million a year — compared with a high-end estimate of $130 million for the marijuana tax — but the sales tax fell short of the four-fifths vote on the board needed to place it on the ballot.

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That could change after November, when voters will choose two new board members to replace retiring supervisors Don Knabe and Michael D. Antonovich, who both voted against the sales tax. Ridley-Thomas said he is “very hopeful” that the newly configured board would support a March sales tax measure.

Steyer said he had planned the trip to Los Angeles to attend events at the branches of the non-profit community bank he founded with his wife, and took the skid row tour at Ridley-Thomas’ request.

Steyer was the nation’s largest individual political donor in 2014, spending $74 million that year, and he spent $1 million to help an initiative to increase the state’s tobacco tax qualify for the ballot this year.

County staffers and nonprofit homeless-service providers walked Steyer through the offices of Housing for Health, a county program that started as an effort to house homeless people who are frequent users of hospital emergency rooms and has since expanded into a broader housing initiative; the next-door Star Apartments, a 100-unit complex of prefabricated apartment units for formerly homeless tenants; and then through several blocks of sidewalk encampments to the nearby Downtown Women’s Center.

Steyer said afterward that he was impressed by both the scope of the problem and the “systematic and coordinated” efforts to address it he saw.

“To me this is a fantastic chance to meet the people who are trying to solve homelessness in Los Angeles,” he said.

Steyer said he was not sure yet what sort of help he would give to effort in Los Angeles, but added, “I think what [Ridley-Thomas] was saying is, here’s an issue that’s central to our civic kind of sense of well-being and progress, and it’s a chance to participate in it, and that’s the kind of thing that is interesting to me.”

Ridley-Thomas said afterward that he had intended the tour to give Steyer “a firsthand view of the scope of the problem and the intensity of the problem and to give him an introduction to the innovation that’s taking place” in efforts to address it.

He said he had discussed the potential ballot initiative with Steyer and that “he’s indicated that he’s very interested in helping.”

A spokesman for Steyer’s political organization, NextGen Climate Action, said the group had not taken a position on the potential ballot measure.

Apart from the potential March county measure, the city of Los Angeles is placing a $1.2-billion bond measure on the November ballot, with the proceeds to be used to build more housing for the homeless. But the money maybe used only for construction, not for services.

The countywide homeless population has swelled in recent years and stood at nearly 47,000 as of this year’s count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

Twitter: @sewella

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