Mott Smith

This is a dialogue re Measure ULA with Joan Ling, former executive director for Community Corporation of Santa Monica (a nonprofit housing developer) and a staff attorney for Public Counsel.

www.planningreport.com/2025/09/18/r...

2) This is a more fair point. Still, Taxing Tomorrow includes a supplemental analysis showing total entitled units fell dramatically after ULA. Again, entitlements aren't as good an indicator as permits, but falling entitlements does suggest fewer permitted units.

1) If you include ED1, you credit ULA for the ED1 boost & make ULA’s harms look smaller. Ward & Phillips flagged this, explained why the bias is ambiguous, and excluded ED1 to avoid mixing policy shocks. A good-faith rebuttal would have engaged that choice, not pretended they didn’t address it.

Super interesting. What's the source for that?

In the last week of session, I am always prepared to be surprised. That way I'm never disappointed. :)

The Consequences of Measure ULA: Some Clarifications This report responds to criticisms of two earlier UCLA Lewis Center reports. We show that these criticisms are misguided and also examine a claim that Measure ULA created 10,000 union construction job...

Before you say you agree with the critiques, please read our detailed response to them: www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the...

Asm. Buffy Wicks has been leading on this. 80% of the taxes that would be killed by the Howard Jarvis initiative are in Northern California, her home. She is trying to thread the needle between preserving revenues, restoring incentives to build and unlocking funds for new aff hsg.

Very much so.

My pleasure. I'm up for more procrastination excuses, so don't hesitate to lob more questions or thoughts. :)

Again, my fingers are crossed that some efforts in Sacramento will fix this problem and all the ULA programs will be available for leverage.

The upcoming Notice of Funding Availability (housing.lacity.gov/ula/homes-fo...) was designed accordingly. Two of its big subcategories--"Alternative Models: Preservation" and "Alternative Models: New Construction"--allow for 80-100% ULA financing for exactly this reason.

No problem! Ask away. (It's helping me procrastinate about some other stuff I should be doing, so I appreciate it.)

The average 10% TDC you're referring to is for projects that have gotten ULA *awards.* Only a couple have actually closed their financing. Most will have a hard time doing so.

You can say that again. :)

There is a ray of hope -- local and state leaders are working on fixes to unlock the money for its intended use and, hopefully, provide relief for new construction. If that happens, we'll be able to protect ULA as a revenue source, and it will do what voters wanted.

Sadly, no. Measure ULA was supposed to be be a "soft money" gap source. But because its authors flubbed the design--and made it unchangeable without state legislation or another initiative--for the most part, ULA money will have to ~100% of the financing in anything it touches.

1. Unlike most "soft money," ULA requires its affordability covenants to be senior to the 1st mortgage. This isn't unheard of, but it's unusual.
2. ULA projects can only be sold to nonprofits (a big problem for banks)
3. The AMIs are strict and can't "float up" in the event of foreclosure

The Consequences of Measure ULA: Some Clarifications This report responds to criticisms of two earlier UCLA Lewis Center reports. We show that these criticisms are misguided and also examine a claim that Measure ULA created 10,000 union construction job...

In the meantime, let's keep the good faith, evidence-based conversation going. To that end, check out our detailed response to the advocate/authors' critiques in this recently published paper.

www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the...

/end

If ULA’s supporters won’t acknowledge its flaws and work toward solutions, they may hand HJTA the very case it wants to make.

Because this isn’t happening in a vacuum. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is already advancing “TPA 2.0,” a measure that would wipe out most local transfer taxes in the state, among other revenue sources.

That doesn’t mean ULA is doomed. The flaws are fixable. But when defenders deny the problems and resist reform, they don’t protect ULA--they put 42 local taxes in California at risk.

The uncomfortable truth is that ULA is raising less money than promised, hobbling the real estate market, slowing property tax growth, and producing almost no affordable housing.

When you see someone respond with ad hominem attacks, recycled talking points, and double standards, it suggests the evidence isn’t on their side.

It’s also notable that these same advocate/authors dismiss Ward & Phillips’ paper -- which is based on two years of post-ULA data -- as “premature.” Yet they were fine declaring ULA “already a success” a year earlier, before it had funded a single unit. A clear double standard.

With few exceptions, the new Oxy paper doesn’t raise serious questions about Ward & Phillips’ research. Instead, it leans on insinuations -- like that UCLA’s work is suspect because the Lewis family funds the Center. But the same authors were happy to publish there in 2022.

Same here: when advocate/authors make wild, clearly false claims like “10,000 jobs,” it’s a signal. If we can’t trust them on straightforward things like jobs or housing results, how can we trust their subtle critiques of research design? It should give one pause.

All of this is context for how seriously one should take the advocate/authors’ supposed critiques of Ward & Phillips. Think of Van Halen’s “brown M&Ms” rule: if promoters didn't pay attention to the band's candy preferences, how could they be trusted with dangerous pyrotechnics?

That collapse in permits is alarming. Fewer projects reaching the permit stage means fewer market-rate and affordable homes coming online. No amount of spin about entitlements changes that.

Or the false claim that development activity in L.A. has increased since ULA. It hasn’t. They point to entitlements, but most entitlements never become buildings. Permits--the true measure of progress--have nosedived.

The Oxy advocate/authors, by contrast, aimed to discredit Ward & Phillips with misrepresentations and unserious claims -- like the fantasy that ULA created 10,000 jobs with just $1.5M disbursed.

This is especially notable because Phillips co-authored the 2022 paper that predicted the opposite. Confronted with new data, he revised his view and made good faith recommendations to fix the problem. That’s what serious academics do.

Case in point: Ward & Phillips’ Taxing Tomorrow found that flaws in ULA (e.g. no exemption for new development) discourage mixed-income projects that produce affordable units. The result: a net loss of affordable housing production post-ULA.