When Los Angeles city residents approved a $1.2 billion bond measure in November to provide thousands of units of housing for the homeless, they voted for compassion over their pocketbooks.

The new housing will go a long way toward helping our community’s most vulnerable, those who have struggled with mental illness, substance abuse, or simply hard times. But housing alone isn’t enough.

While a roof and a bed can provide physical warmth and comfort, the next step is to help provide the services necessary to help them regain, to the best of their ability, the mental and financial wherewithal to contribute to society.

There is an opportunity to take a significant step in that direction.

Measure H, the Los Angeles County Plan to Prevent and Combat Homelessness, on the March 7 ballot, would create a 10-year, quarter-cent sales tax to help provide that second essential component.

It would fund mental health and substance abuse treatment, health care, education, job training, rental subsidies, emergency and affordable housing, transportation, supportive services for the homeless, and much more.

Many of these services would benefit those who will be moving into the newly created homeless housing funded by last year’s vote. The services also would provide those who are teetering on the between poverty and homelessness with the means to lift themselves up, preventing more Angelenos from fading into the shadows.

The election, now a month away, will be a decisive one for the city and county. At stake in this otherwise backwater stop in the never-ending series of campaigns is whether we embrace the growing inequalities among us or take steps to mitigate them.

Passage of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, Measure S, would stymie efforts to bring affordable and workforce housing to Los Angeles, exacerbating an already critical problem. Passage of Measure H would reflect our better selves.

L.A. County organizations last week conducted their annual homeless count, and the results were expected to be much the same as in 2016, when almost 47,000 people were found to be living on the streets and in shelters.

Measure H offers the best hope we have had to do something about that.