Homeless Initiative Spurs Backlash From Business Groups

Organizers of the Hunger and Homeless ballot initiative filed 650,000 petition signatures with the state’s 58 county registrars on Tuesday--bringing them an important step closer to a spot on the November ballot and fueling a growing backlash from powerful business groups.

If qualified for the ballot and approved by voters, the initiative would create a state agency to raise as much as $90 million annually for various housing, food and job-training programs by slapping new fines on safety, health and building code violators.

“This initiative provides a cost-effective way to address these problems,” said Conway Collis, a member of the state Board of Equalization and a proponent of the initiative.

But grocery, apartment and restaurant owners statewide say the measure singles them out to pay for a problem that concerns all of society.

“It is putting the burden of feeding and housing the poor on the backs of three industries,” said Don Beaver president of the California Grocers Assn. “It’s going to encourage inspectors to be overactive. And it’s not just going to affect the slumlords. It’s going to affect all of us.”

“Our biggest concern is that it sets up a system where (health) inspectors could come under political pressure to raise more money,” said Stanley R. Kyker, executive vice president of the California Restaurant Assn. “They will raise more revenue by getting bigger and bigger quotas (of citations).”

And apartment owners fear that the law would give one more weapon to housing activists in rent-control havens such as Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Berkeley, said Charles Isham, executive vice president of the Apartment Owners Assn. of Greater Los Angeles.

Under terms of the initiative, no new safety, health and building code rules would be imposed, but new fines would be levied on existing violations and infractions. Currently, violators are given warnings and told to correct the problems. They are prosecuted only after repeated infractions.

Last year in Los Angeles County alone there were 122,000 violations cited by inspectors. But current law does not provide for automatic fines. The homeless initiative would provide for fines averaging $200 and, at that rate, last year’s violations would have raised nearly $25 million.

With this kind of money at stake, the business groups are already exploring ways to deal with what they see as a good chance the measure will be passed.

“We’re going to look at what can be done, but it will be like fighting apple pie and motherhood,” Beaver said. “It’s like (Prop. 65) the clean water initiative. Who’s not for clean water?”

Still, the natural allies are looking at a variety of ways to combat the measure.

Stephen Carlson, executive director of the California Housing Coalition, a trade group of large apartment operators, said his group is contacting newspaper editorial boards around the state. “We’re saying, before you take a position on it, take a good look at it. . . . On it’s face it sounds justifiable,” but when you get below the surface, he said, it is unfair to single out just a few industries.

Some opponents reason that it may be more cost-effective to fight the measure when and if it becomes law, rather than wage a television advertising battle now. A full-blown advertising campaign could cost a minimum of $1 million and as much as $10 million, said officials of the groups.

Since kicking off the initiative campaign in November, Californians Working Together has raised $500,000 to pay for the signature-gathering process. The organizers say they could possibly raise an equal amount to push for its passage.

Another alternative being explored by the opposing business groups is to support another housing initiative.

Several of these groups said they are supporting a series of bond issues that are expected to be on the June, November and 1990 ballots.

Would Raise $600 Million

The bond issues would seek to raise $600 million to be used as loans for private and public developers to build a full spectrum of low-income housing--from shelters to apartments and single family residences and child-care facilities. The bond measures would largely finance existing housing programs that have been dormant for lack of funding during the last six to eight years.

Some business groups are choosing to join with the organizers of the Hunger and Homeless initiative so that they can have some role in its implementation.

Stephen Koff of the Southern California Grocers Assn. said, “I don’t see any point in fighting it, as the public is probably totally in favor of it.”

Rex Hime, executive director of the California Business Properties Assn., a trade group of large commercial building operators, was an early supporter of the ballot measure. “It does not create any new violations; it is an innovative approach to meeting a need without raising taxes and we believe that the homeless situation in California has to be addressed now,” said Hime in explaining his decision to back the measure.