The Council spent weeks debating how to carve up the mansion tax — and today they just... didn't. The ULA exemption vote got shelved. If you're just joining: Measure ULA is LA's voter-approved transfer tax that pays for homelessness prevention and affordable housing — but builders say it's frozen up multifamily deals. After a statewide measure that could've wiped ULA out got pulled, City Hall was weighing a narrower carve-out for apartment buildings built in the last ten years: revive investment, but don't blow up the revenue stream. This is LA Politics and Urbanism Daily. The tax fight, a Skid Row murder number nobody's put on the table, and human rights language creeping into the Olympics plan. Buckle up. Let's start with what the Council chose not to explain today. David Wagner, writing in MyNewsLA.com:
The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday scrapped a plan to exempt newly constructed multi-family and mixed-residential buildings from the city’s so-called “mansion tax” for a 10-year period. In a 13-1 vote, the council decided to “note and file” the proposal, holding off on major changes for future discussion.
Thirteen to one. The Council just took Yaroslavsky's apartment carve-out and noted-and-filed it straight into a drawer, right before the November ballot deadline. So the exemption fight is dead for this ballot window. Remember, this carve-out started as a bargaining chip against Sacramento. In Yaroslavsky's own words, they came closer to losing ULA outright than people want to admit. And here's what nags me — the mansion tax funds homelessness and affordable housing. You exempt new apartments to build more housing... by starving the fund that pays for the housing you say you want. The CRE lobby didn't vanish; it just lost this round. Traci Park was the lone no. Curren Price was absent. And Yaroslavsky's already flagging that the pressure isn't going away — this comes back. From Agya K. Aning and Alain Stephens at LAist:
Law enforcement officials acknowledge violent deaths among L.A.’s unhoused people have remained persistently high, even as homicides fell over the last decade across the general population. Data from LAPD show fatal shootings involving unhoused victims are clustered around encampments in Skid Row. The murder rate in census tracks that make up Skid Row was more than 17 times higher in 2024 than the city as a whole.
The number is 278 unhoused people shot and killed since 2015, and the murder rate on Skid Row was 17 times the city's in 2024. Everybody's been arguing about clearing camps for months, and nobody put a body count on the table until now. LAist and The LA Local got there by working through LAPD data — and then they went further, cross-checking with the county Medical Examiner and finding two dozen victims the LAPD numbers missed. So even the 278 is a floor, not a ceiling. And this is what cuts into the 'clear the camps and everyone's safer' pitch — the reporting says the answer's far from clear. You can scatter a Skid Row encampment, but the danger just moves somewhere the outreach workers can't find it. That puts it right next to that RAND two-month census — unsheltered population down fourteen percent, but harder to locate. Same sidewalks, different counts: one measures how many people are out there; this one measures how deadly it is. Right, and the grim part — while homicides fell across LA over the decade, violent deaths among unhoused people just stayed high. The whole city got safer around them and left them standing in it. From Libby Rainey at LAist:
At a Tuesday L.A. City Council committee meeting on the coming Olympics, a city-appointed civil rights expert skewered LA28's plans for protecting human rights, and some questioned the city's preparedness for how the Games might displace hundreds or potentially thousands of unhoused people. The private Olympics committee's human rights strategy was submitted to the L.A. City Council at the end of last year, but wasn't made public until months later.
So the LA28 human rights strategy got handed to the Council at the end of last year and just sat there — nobody made it public for months. And now a city-appointed civil rights expert stood up Tuesday and shredded it in committee. This is Libby Rainey's reporting for LAist — the same newsroom that's been chasing the still-unsigned cost-cap deal. The displacement question and the financing question are tied together; it's getting hard to separate them. Hundreds, potentially thousands of unhoused people displaced for the Games. And after the Skid Row numbers we just hit this hour — a murder rate 17 times the city's — 'clearing camps' as a safety plan doesn't hold up. You're relocating people with no address to land at. The language is what escalates it. 'Human rights concerns' in a City Council committee is the kind of phrase that follows a city all the way into an opening ceremony. You're already hearing the international framing show up early. This one's from LAist:
The Los Angeles Police Department has completed its investigation into the killing of Keith Porter Jr., 43, and presented its findings to the District Attorney’s Office, according to a statement from the District Attorney’s Office. Federal officials have said Brian Palacios, the off-duty ICE officer who shot and killed Porter on New Year’s Eve in L.A. was acting in self-defense.
Roughly six months to the day — Keith Porter Jr. was killed New Year's Eve, and now LAPD has handed its findings to the DA. That's where it stands, per LAist. Credit them for staying on it while everyone else moved on. And note how Palacios' name even got out — it didn't come through any official channel. It came through a custody dispute in an unrelated court record. The off-duty ICE officer who shot a man wasn't named at the time. The DA's language is the tell, Matt. 'Several months or more to resolve,' and they won't predict a timeline. Six months in, and the clock effectively resets at the review desk. Federal officials already called it self-defense. So one side has its verdict out in public, and the family gets 'thorough analysis, beyond a reasonable doubt, no timeline.' There's the whole asymmetry, right there. Edwin Folven, writing in Beverly Press & Park Labrea News:
Construction on the D Line subway extension project continues in Beverly Hills, Century City and West Los Angeles, with crews working on the Beverly Drive, Century City, Westwood/UCLA and Westwood VA Hospital stations. To inform the public about the latest details, Metro is holding a webinar on Wednesday, July 8, from noon-1 p.m.
So the D Line's crawling west — Beverly Drive, Century City, Westwood, the VA Hospital station — and the segment that's actually open runs Union Station to Wilshire and La Cienega. Real progress, and I'll take it. Per the Beverly Press, K-rail's still up on Wilshire between Beverly and Crescent, and there are lane reductions on Wilshire near Veteran and up Veteran itself. So for anyone driving that stretch — plan around it a while longer. The thing I notice, though. We just spent a whole segment on encampments and Olympics displacement — the working-class end of this city. And the shiny transit build? It's tunneling straight into Beverly Hills and Century City. Same city, two completely different response times. The line does start at Union Station, Matt — it's not purely a Westside amenity. But your point stands: the streetscape restoration is happening on Wilshire's gold coast first. And there's a webinar July 8, noon to one. Because nothing says street-level fix like a lunchtime Zoom about lane closures. If Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily helps you stay informed, consider subscribing and leaving a quick review wherever you're listening. It's a small thing that helps other people find the show.
What we're watching next: Metro is holding a public webinar on the D Line Extension on Wednesday, July 8, from noon to 1 p.m.
We'll put links to every story from today's briefing in the show notes, so if one story caught your attention, you can go straight to the source and read more.
That's Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.