California Proposition 41, the California Veterans Housing and Homeless Prevention Bond Act (Assembly Bill 639), is not nearly as benign as it sounds.
Here’s the situation in a nutshell. There is this huge pile of money available to Veterans to buy housing. As it is now they can use the money to buy a house, a mobile home or a farm. As it is now the Veterans get every penny of the 600 million dollars.
This Bill disguised as benevolence will instead give that money to developers LIKE Assembly Leader Toni Atkins who is promoting this measure and her wife Jennifer LeSar to BUILD the housing for them.
And while some people may think that sounds good you should realize how much of that money they get to pocket. Remember all the investigations into the high cost of public housing? One 2 bedroom unit will cost taxpayers $500,000 when the private market would spend $100,000 building it?
Well it doesn’t take an “investigation” to know why it’s so expensive. It’s expensive because politicians like Toni Atkins pocket the majority of the money. Thus if this measure passes Veterans will suffer badly. They will probably only see 10 cents on every dollar instead of the full dollar.
Here it is: “The measure would authorize the state to provide local governments, nonprofit organizations, and private developers with financial assistance, such as low-interest loans, so that they may construct, renovate and acquire affordable multifamily housing for low-income veterans and their families.”
That’s the key right there. It allows the money to go to “developers”….period. It will ALL go to developers if it passes.
Their argument is that there is no affordable housing for Veterans to buy. Well if that is true then give them vouchers or use the 600 million to mitigate the high cost. But no one gets rich that way.
Basically the poverty pimps in the state legislature see this huge pile of cash that they can’t get to and this ballot measure allows them to be the middle men so they can keep most of it while they posture like they care by building low quality, toxic housing projects.
And the last thing we want is to continue to empower these special interests who have been stealing from the taxpayers and the poor for decades.
Here is more on California Assembly leader Toni Atkins and her wife Jennifer LeSar profiting from the poverty business.
Vote NO!!! That way the Veterans have the POWER not the legislators.