Forty percent. That's the share of people moved off the street under Inside Safe who are back outside again — and it lands the same week the Mayor's Office said move-ins nearly doubled. This is LA Politics and Urbanism Daily. I'm Hope, and that 40% figure comes from the LA Times this morning. And I'm Matt. Four in ten back outside, while $177 million in ULA money is still sitting unsigned. We've got receipts today. We've also got two stories pointing to the exact same Measure ULA — one cheering $300 million raised, one saying the tax is eating its own revenue. So let's actually open the hood. Let's start with the collision. Mayor's Office yesterday: move-ins nearly doubled. The LAT today: 40% return-to-street. Same program, opposite directions — so my first question is whether they're even counting the same people. Which is exactly why I'm not spiking the ball on it yet. I want to know if the LAT is looking at City Inside Safe, County Pathway Home, or both — because the return rate means something different depending on the answer. Fine, but here's the part that reframes the whole week. I spent days saying, just sign the contract. The 40% number says the placements aren't holding even when they happen. The problem's upstream and downstream. And Feldstein Soto's caution looks different to me today. The missing-receipts, weak-oversight worries she raised behind closed doors — with retention this bad, they sound a lot more like warnings than foot-dragging. Right — pivot to that. California YIMBY's research argues the Mansion Tax is suppressing the high-end sales it depends on. LA2050, the same day, is touting $300 million raised. Before anyone declares a winner, I want both methodologies on the table — who funded what, and what the mechanism actually is. Fair point. But notice who this helps — the people fighting Measure ULA in its current form have wanted exactly this kind of third-party framing. It's not just lobbying anymore; now there's research behind it. And it sharpens Raman's argument. She was already redesigning ULA's financing model — if the tax is choking its own intake, that redesign just got a lot more specific. Here's where I land this week: I came in pointing at the unsigned contract as the single choke point. Today I'll say it plainly — the strain's structural now, top and bottom, and the city still hasn't moved. Los Angeles Times reporter David Zahniser is tracking this. Quick update on the Bass homelessness numbers we've been following all week — the L.A. Times, with reporting from David Zahniser, puts a number on it: 40% of Inside Safe participants are back on the street. And that runs straight into the Mayor's Office release from yesterday — move-ins nearly doubled. Two numbers, same program, pointing opposite directions. I keep coming back to whether they're even counting the same thing. Four in ten back outside, on a 300-million-dollar program. Bass bragged about move-ins, the county's routing money in, and $177 million in ULA funds is still sitting unsigned — and people are back on the sidewalk in Chinatown anyway. That guy in the photo, Jonathan Torres — kicked out of an Inside Safe motel last year. A move-in counts in the press release the day he walks in. When he walks back out, nobody's tallying that. Here's what shifts for me: all week I've called the unsigned $177 million contract the choke point. This 40% number says the problem's downstream too — placements aren't holding even when they happen. So the City Attorney's caution about missing receipts and weak oversight? Today, it sounds more like an early warning than obstruction. I hate to say it, but my 'just sign it' line needs an asterisk. Mark the date — Matt putting an asterisk on his own take. Keep the Torres detail in mind too: we're talking about a sidewalk in Chinatown, not some Hollywood-glamour homelessness story. That's where the $300 million is supposed to be working. California YIMBY writes:
New research suggests Los Angeles’s “Mansion Tax” cancels out a portion of the revenue it was meant to generate. Measure ULA, passed by voters in November 2022, adds a 4% to 5.5% levy on property sales above $5 million to fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention. According to the researchers, California’s Proposition 13 creates an unintended complication: assessments reset only when a property sells, so every sale the tax discourages is also a reassessment — and a property tax increase — that gets deferred.
Thirty-eight percent. ULA knocked high-value sales down by nearly 40% — and because Prop 13 only reassesses when a property sells, every sale it scares off is also a property tax bump the city never collects. So the money's leaking from both ends: the $177 million sitting unsigned, and now the intake itself suppressed. Voters passed a tax, and the structure may be eating its own revenue. Before anyone runs with that — this is a working paper by four academics, hosted on SSRN, and California YIMBY is the one amplifying it. I want the mechanism sitting next to that 40%-returned-to-street number we just hit. Because right after this, we've got LA2050 celebrating $300 million raised under the same measure. Same ballot line, two stories — one says it's working, one says it's canceling itself out. Here's LA2050:
Over $300 million has already been raised for affordable housing, homelessness prevention and good jobs programs by the game-changing Measure ULA, passed by City of LA voters in 2022. The comprehensive housing solutions measure was created by on-the-ground experts in the United to House LA (UHLA) coalition, the most powerful community and labor coalition for housing justice LA has ever seen.
So here's the United to House LA coalition's pitch page: over $300 million raised under Measure ULA, 'game-changing,' the works. And it's all true — voters passed it, the coalition built it. It hits a little differently right after the 40% return-to-street piece we just talked through. Same $300 million, two very different stories about what it bought. And put it next to that California YIMBY research, and the $300 million stops looking like a floor. If the tax is suppressing the high-end sales it taxes, that number's the high-water mark — the coalition did the work, and the math may already be eating it. That's the collision I want to name carefully. LA2050 points to ULA and says it's working; California YIMBY points to ULA and says it's canceling its own revenue. Before anybody crowns a winner — who funded which study, and what's the actual mechanism? Fine, vet the funders. But money not going out the door — that's the unsigned $177 million contract — and money not coming in the way voters were promised? The fund's leaking from both ends. If you follow city politics here, you might also like California Governor's Race — daily 2026 coverage of the candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy, for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
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That's Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for this Wednesday. This is a Lantern Podcast.