LA Mayor Karen Bass and lefty councilmember unveil splashy $300M housing rollout

Lefty DSA Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and Mayor Karen Bass touted greater than $300 million in housing funds anticipated from town’s embattled “mansion tax,” earlier than the cash was even accredited.

A press convention Thursday got here forward of any vote by the Metropolis Council or the ULA advert hoc committee.

Jurado acknowledged that actuality when pressed by The California Publish Thursday, confirming the proposal nonetheless must undergo the formal approval course of.

Bass’ staff framed the second as progress, pointing to homelessness efforts, housing initiatives and a broader technique to stabilize the disaster, with a transparent message that momentum is constructing.

The proposal leans closely on Measure ULA, the voter-approved “mansion tax” meant to fund inexpensive housing and homelessness packages, which has generated greater than $1 billion since taking impact in 2023.

However earlier reporting by The Publish exhibits the cash has barely translated into housing. Of the roughly $1.03 billion collected, solely about $93.9 million has been spent, and fewer than 1% has gone towards truly constructing, buying or rehabilitating housing.

Administration and overhead have consumed one other $16.6 million, accounting for 17.7% of all spending.

In different phrases, a billion-dollar tax, with little to indicate in new housing inventory.

“To date, the one concrete results of Measure ULA on housing provide are to trigger builders to flee Los Angeles,” mentioned Mott Smith, an Adjunct Professor at USC with experience in Actual Property.

Smith and others argue the tax has additionally affected the broader market, and a UCLA Lewis Heart evaluation he co-authored discovered that property transactions above the ULA threshold dropped between 30% and 50% in Los Angeles in comparison with the remainder of the county.

“The measure’s patrons are proud they’ve collected a billion {dollars} of tax cash, however they need to be mortified that they’ve barely managed to spend any of it on actual initiatives,” mentioned Smith. “The taxpayers have gotten little or no however the metropolis’s hopes and prayers for extra housing. “

Metropolis officers themselves have begun to acknowledge points.

A latest Housing Division report recommends a set of focused, and notably “slender,” adjustments aimed toward making it simpler for inexpensive housing initiatives to entry ULA funding, significantly in the case of financing guidelines and venture necessities.

This isn’t the primary time Metropolis Corridor has tried to promote the success story.

Again in mid-January, Eunisses Hernandez joined different ULA backers exterior Metropolis Corridor to have fun ULA crossing the $1 billion mark, touting it as a milestone and a long-term answer to the housing disaster.

However even then, the identical query lingered: the place is the housing?

DSA backed mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman launched a movement to reform the measure and discover inserting adjustments earlier than voters, together with changes to financing guidelines and exemptions aimed toward addressing considerations raised by housing suppliers and lenders, however the proposal was in the end despatched again to committee, delaying any potential poll motion.

Metropolis officers have additionally raised considerations about ongoing authorized challenges tied to the measure, including one other layer of uncertainty.

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