Measure ULA is collecting tax dollars, the guidelines are written, the council voted 12-to-1 — and a 177-million-dollar renter-aid contract is still sitting unsigned on a desk. This is LA Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: where ULA's money actually gets stuck, and a new number that says housing reform could plug the city's budget hole. And for once I've got a price tag. California YIMBY and Streets for All peg SB 79 at up to a billion dollars in new city revenue. Which happens to be about the size of the shortfall everyone's been wringing their hands over all week. Let's start with that contract, Matt. The path is short, Hope. Tax comes in, guidelines say who gets paid, contract gets signed, checks go out. It's stuck at signature — and the signature is Feldstein Soto's. And here's the part to say out loud — those permanent program guidelines weren't drafted by City Hall. Homeless service providers, nonprofits, labor, and renters' rights groups wrote the rulebook. Right — the experts built it, the voters funded it, the council passed it. So the only thing between that money and a renter is one office that won't sign. The same city attorney two well-funded challengers are trying to unseat. Whoever wins that runoff inherits this exact decision. Let's pivot to the SB 79 report, because the budget framing's been hanging over everything. A billion in potential revenue — is that number credible? It's by-right approval near transit. Every project that dies in permitting — that 44-unit Westlake one back in February — means fewer homes and less money coming in. The housing argument and the fiscal argument are finally the same argument. Careful — it's an advocacy group putting that number out. I'd want HCD's read on LA's low-rise alternative before I treat a billion as banked. Sure, but it reframes Bass opposing SB 79. You can argue about density on aesthetics all day. It's a lot harder when the analysis says you're leaving the exact size of your deficit on the table. It also pushes back on the idea that LA's permitting problem is just departmental culture. The report's saying it's a policy lever — and the lever's right there. One more name here — the Knock LA social housing piece. Nithya Raman, now a mayoral candidate, wants to change how ULA finances social housing. From United to House LA:
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.
Let's name what this document actually is: the permanent program guidelines for Measure ULA, drafted by the coalition itself. Homeless service providers, affordable housing nonprofits, labor, renters' rights groups. Over 140 organizations. January 2024. So the people who wrote the rulebook for how this money gets spent are not the people who control whether the $177 million contract actually gets signed. Different desks entirely. Right — and that's what makes the delay so damning. The framework isn't vague, and it isn't half-built. Experts from 140 groups, a measure that won 58 percent of the vote, contracts approved 12-to-1. Every piece exists. The tax revenue's coming in. The guidelines are written. And the contract's just sitting unsigned on Feldstein Soto's desk. The choke point has a name now. And remember the question we left hanging on Tuesday — what exactly does the city attorney's office defend from here? Here's your live example: $177 million in tenant aid, and her signature is the thing not happening. And Nithya Raman wants to rewire how ULA finances social housing — the Knock LA piece lays it out. She's running for mayor. The person redesigning the spending model could end up running the City Hall machinery these contracts move through. So if Measure ULA is already bringing in tax revenue earmarked for renters, why is there a $177 million contract just sitting on someone's desk unsigned — what's the holdup? Short version: in LA, 'the city approved it' and 'the money is flowing' are two very different things. The City Council voted 12-to-1 in March to approve $177 million in tenant-aid contracts — Councilmember John Lee was the lone no — but per LAist, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has left that contract unsigned for months since the vote. And there is context for her caution: before the Council vote, members were pulled into a 90-minute closed-door session with the City Attorney, where they were warned about a pattern of missing receipts, weak oversight, and unanswered questions about how earlier public funds tied to eviction-defense programs were spent. So the pipeline has several valves — voters approve the tax, revenue comes in, the Council allocates it, and then the City Attorney still has to sign the contract before any provider can touch the money. Any one of those stages can stall. Is this just the City Attorney being cautious about accountability, or is there a bigger fight over whether this money should go to tenant groups in the first place? Both, honestly — and that tension matters. The California Apartment Association has formally pushed the city to redirect ULA funds away from tenant right-to-counsel programs and toward direct rental subsidies instead, so the lobbying isn't only about administration; it's about what the money should fund. Meanwhile, an Ad Hoc Committee was convened in late March to look at changes to Measure ULA, with supporters rallying outside City Hall and warning that proposed amendments could effectively gut the program. The unsigned contract is the immediate bottleneck. Whether ULA survives in its current form — or gets reworked under political pressure — is still an open fight. Here's California YIMBY:
The City of Los Angeles could largely solve its $1 billion budget shortfall by allowing more homes to be built near its transit stations, according to a new report out today from Streets For All, an LA-based safe streets and land use advocacy organization.
California YIMBY and Streets for All put a number on it today: SB 79 could bring up to a billion dollars in new property tax revenue to the city. That's about the same size as the shortfall City Hall keeps citing. A billion. The same billion they say they're fixing by laying off 1,600 city workers. Using the report's own numbers, even 20 percent buildout is nearly 200 million, more than those layoffs save. And it speaks directly to the budget frame we've had all week. Bass opposed SB 79 even after Newsom signed it — this report just attached a price tag to that position. 0.7 percent of the city's land. That's the whole footprint we're fighting over. For a billion dollars I'd think you green-light it before lunch. Still needs a hard look on the methodology before anyone spends it, though. Streets for All co-sponsored the bill — the number's plausible, but it's a number with a rooting interest. Here's Los Angeles City Attorney:
On her first day in office, Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto joined Mayor Karen Bass as she declared a local emergency on homelessness. The City Attorney’s Office provided the legal framework for this declaration, which cuts red tape, facilitates additional resources, and streamlines efforts to bring people inside.
Here's the piece we've been circling all week. The City Attorney's office wrote the legal framework for Bass's homelessness emergency declaration — Feldstein Soto, day one, standing right next to the mayor. Which makes today's other fact a little awkward. That same office is the choke point holding up the $177 million ULA tenant-aid contract — the one the Council voted through twelve to one. Right — so the office that can stand up an emergency declaration to cut red tape on day one somehow can't get a signature on a contract that's already been approved. The framework exists. The tax revenue exists. And remember who drafted those permanent ULA guidelines — the service providers, the nonprofits, labor, the renters' rights folks. The experts did their part. The contract's just sitting on a desk. The 42,000 figure is the part I can't shake. That's the unsheltered count the city's own page cites — and that's the population that $177 million is supposed to reach. Same office, two speeds. Emergency-fast when it's a press conference with the mayor. Glacial when it's a check that actually moves money to people on the street. Whoever wins that City Attorney runoff inherits this exact decision. Here's Knock LA:
The council approved the motion. The program Raman referred to — ULA, or United to House LA — is a sustainable funding stream dedicated to affordable housing production and homelessness prevention. It traces its origin to the widely debated (and widely cursed in the real estate community) “mansion tax.”
Knock LA's social housing series, part two, puts a name and a policy on the table — Nithya Raman, now a mayoral candidate, and her pitch to rework how ULA finances social housing. The Vienna model, the Paris model — okay, fine. But the line that matters is this: Raman's office, with Harris-Dawson and Hernandez, got a motion through to research a new financing model because the existing affordable housing pipeline, in her words, simply won't work. And here's the thing that lands today — the person most publicly trying to redesign how ULA spends its money is now running for the office that signs the ULA contracts. That's not a coincidence I'm going to soft-pedal. We've got a 177-million-dollar ULA contract sitting unsigned on the City Attorney's desk. Raman's saying the financing model itself is broken. Two different failures, same fund. To be clear, this is a 2023 newsletter quote doing campaign work in 2026. I want to see what she'd actually do with the financing fix as mayor, not what she wrote as a councilmember introducing a motion. If you follow Los Angeles politics closely, check out California Governor's Race: daily 2026 coverage of candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We’ve put links to every story from today’s show in the notes, so if something caught your ear, you can read further there.
That’s Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.