California may get its first continuous revenue stream to address homelessness, depending on whether certain measures are approved as part of a November vote to legalize several forms of sports betting.
The funding would be spread across four sports betting initiatives that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars annually through taxes, licensing fees and other contributions, the Mercury News said. Three aim to spend at least part of their revenue on homeless and mental health programs. The one projected to make the largest impact is backed by several big-city mayors, including Oakland’s Libby Schaaf, the newspaper said.
Only one of the initiatives has qualified for the ballot so far, and even if they all do, each will face two obstacles: a battle with gambling interests fighting for control of a legalized sports betting market and voters skeptical about the industry’s ability to meaningfully address the state’s longstanding homelessness problem.
“I wouldn’t take this as a sure bet,” Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Southern California’s Claremont McKenna College, told the Mercury News.
The measure that would raise the most is the California Solutions to Homelessness and Mental Health Support Act, which would allow online sports wagering run by Native American tribes or betting operators that contract with them. The act, supported by Schaaf and other big-city mayors, has raised $100 million and collected more than a quarter of the roughly 1.1 million signatures required to qualify for the ballot, the Mercury News reported.
It could generate “mid-hundreds of millions of dollars annually” through its license fee on operators and tax on wagers, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. Most of that money — 85 percent — would go toward mental health and homeless programs. Native American tribes not involved in sports betting would receive the rest.
The other initiatives would allow Native American tribes and racetracks as well as California card rooms to offer in-person and online sports betting. Because such tribes can’t be taxed or obligated to give money to the state under California law, it’s “highly uncertain” as to how much one of the measures involving them will raise for homelessness, the Legislative Analyst’s Office says. That initiative, which legalizes online and in-person betting managed by tribes only, is backed by several of them, the Mercury News said.
[The Mercury News] — Matthew Niksa
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