Gonna be closing out my participation on Twitter over the next few months. The misinformation and electioneering by Musk is beyond the pale at this point and I really can't stick around any longer. Already active at Bluesky so find me there

So that's my summary, and my appeal to constructive conversations (and criticisms) going forward. I hope this work can play a small role in making LA a more inclusive and affordable city.

There are real problems with Measure ULA, and we can't bury our heads in the sand and ignore them. If we want the tax — and its benefits — to stand the test of time, then the best way to do that is to face its problems honestly and work to fix them.

There are people who really do want to see Measure ULA completely undone, and it's likely they'll misuse this report for that purpose. I wish that weren't so. But policies can't be immune from criticism simply because some people will abuse that criticism in bad faith.

But right now there's an opportunity to improve Measure ULA. City council and the legislature are interested, so we can revise the tax in positive ways — ways that improve housing affordability and stability, and align with voters' intent, but couldn't be realized at the ballot.

But here's my appeal to the people who see this as an attack: When ULA was being developed, no one thought it was perfect. Not a single person anywhere. Like any policy, it was a product of compromise and political constraints. That's the way things work; we all understand it.

The report is already getting pushback from Measure ULA's biggest defenders, and that's probably inevitable. The ad hominem attacks, by some, have also started, and that's disappointing.

We are proposing a targeted reform that would exempt multifamily residential, commercial, and industrial projects from the tax within 15 years of sale, then they would pay it like any other property. We explain in the report why we think this should extend beyond multifamily.

Our message is not that Measure ULA is bad. We are saying that Measure ULA does a great deal of good, but that it is also doing a lot of unnecessary harm to the same people it was created to support. We can dramatically reduce its costs with minimal impact on its benefits.

Now let me step back. There are ways to interpret these findings correctly, and there are ways to misinterpret or overinterpret them. Here's an incomplete summary of what I think our findings do and do not say (from a presentation last night):

Again, emphasized bc some people place no value on market-rate housing supply, despite very strong evidence that it improves affordability: . The part of Measure ULA that taxes newer MF projects is *reducing* production of *affordable housing* in LA by about 100 units per year.

Based on a cost of $672k/unit for non-profit projects, w/ 60% of this cost is publicly subsidized, the ULA revenues raised by taxing newer MF projects can subsidize only about 70 units per year. So this part of the tax is reducing the affordable housing supply by ~100 units/year.

So ULA is reducing multifamily production by at least 1,910 units/year, mostly in mixed-income projects, incl. 168 affordable units. The tax on these types of projects is raising about $29 million. How much can that funding offset the losses with publicly subsidized development?.

Newer commercial and industrial properties have also generated a very small share of ULA revenues to date, around 5%. We show the estimated effect of the exemptions on annualized revenues in Figure 10:

If anything, the 8% in revenues generated by sales of newer multifamily projects might be an anomaly *on the high end* — the result of a few large distressed, unplanned sales caused by the sharp rise in interest rates, for example.

We show ULA revenues from the pre-ULA period to get some sense for how the tax changed sales behavior, and whether the small share coming from newer MF was the result of a behavioral response, and therefore possibly temporary. In fact, fewer new MF projects sold before ULA.

As it turns out, newer multifamily buildings — those sold within 15 years of construction — generate a very small share of Measure ULA revenues: About 8%, or $29 million/year.

It's the tax on recently built projects that is discouraging MF dev, not the tax on new luxury houses or 50-year-old apts. So we have a credible estimate of the costs of taxing new developments — 1910 homes/year, incl. 168 affordable. What do we gain from that part of the tax?.

Adding more, hold. .

The message here is *not* that Measure ULA is doing more harm than good. Our report is too narrowly focused to conclude that one way or another. It's not the question we're trying to answer anyway. We want to know whether *the tax on new development* is doing more harm than good.

I will say again: These estimates are conservative. We do not consider, at all, effects on parcels of land that are redeveloped by a long-time owner, for example — we only look at development following sales. Development also happens on parcels we didn't identify for our sample.