Today on LA Reform Watch, we’re in the machinery of the city: ULA money rules, new housing going up near rail, and a City Hall power fight over who answers to whom.
This is The LA Daily Fix. We’re tracking the policy levers behind housing, accountability, and street-level change across Los Angeles.
Alright, let’s get into it.
First up: Measure ULA, and the rules for how that money is supposed to move.
From the Measure ULA program guidelines:
Drafted by homeless service providers, affordable housing nonprofits, labor unions, and renters’ rights groups, Measure ULA will create an unprecedented funding stream for affordable housing production and homelessness prevention in the City of Los Angeles. Over 200 organizations signed on in support of the movement, which earned nearly 58% of the vote in November of 2022.
So this is L.A. trying to turn a voter-approved tax into something that actually functions year after year. The hard part is the follow-through: can the money move fast enough, and cleanly enough, to meet the scale of the crisis?
Now, here’s Joe Linton at Streetsblog Los Angeles:
The Santa Monica & Vermont Apartments, a transit-oriented mixed-use affordable housing project in East Hollywood, has been opened for about a year and already serves over 300 residents. The project, developed by the Little Tokyo Service Center and partnered with Metro, provides 185 affordable units, half of which are permanent supportive housing for people who have experienced homelessness.
The ribbon cutting is the easy part. But the policy signal here matters: affordable housing, supportive housing, retail, sidewalks, buses, and rail access, all stacked together.
For a city that talks constantly about homelessness and transit ridership, this is the model. Stop treating stations like parking lots. Treat them like neighborhoods.
Next, from Current Staff:
Los Angeles City Attorney, Feldstein Soto, has opposed a proposal that would split her office into two, arguing it would shift power away from voters and weaken the independence of the city attorney. The proposal would allow voters to elect a city attorney to handle misdemeanor prosecutions, while a separate attorney appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council would provide legal counsel and guide legislative affairs.
That is not just an org-chart cleanup. That’s a real power shift. If City Hall wants to split prosecution from legal advice, okay, make the case. But voters are going to ask the obvious question: who gets more influence when part of that office stops being elected and starts being appointed?
And from Hoodline:
City filings describe a six-story structure rising roughly 67 feet, with 40 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments and on-site parking for 61 vehicles. The same documents note that 10 recreation rooms in the new building are slated for conversion into ADUs, which would bring the total unit count to 50 apartments.
The ADU piece is the giveaway here. L.A. is still squeezing housing capacity out of every regulatory seam it can find.
Sawtelle gets more apartments, yes. But the wider trend is that these density-bonus projects, and these recreation-room-to-ADU conversions, are starting to feel pretty routine.
If any of today’s stories made you want to dig in, the links are in the show notes, with the full reads and sources behind the headlines.
That’s The LA Daily Fix for this Saturday. This is a Lantern Podcast.