LOS ANGELES—A measure that would require hotels in Los Angeles to place homeless people in vacant rooms and the city to consider its affordable housing needs before approving new hotel developments will appear on the March 2024 ballot.
If the measure is approved by voters, the city’s Housing Department would pay hotels a fair market rate to lodge each person after identifying hotels with vacant rooms. It would require hotels to report the number of vacant rooms to the city and prohibit them from refusing lodging to homeless people seeking housing through the program.
The initiative received more than 126,000 signatures and was submitted to the city council, which voted unanimously Aug. 5 to place it on the ballot rather than adopt it immediately. The proposal comes as Project Roomkey, a program created in response to the coronavirus pandemic that provided shelters for more than 10,000 homeless individuals during the past two years, is being phased out….