Is the Marxist Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass smoking too much marijuana? She is claiming the city if having the fastest recovery. Yet, she has an announced $800 million deficit, has to fire cops and firefighters, she can not account for over $2 billion in homeless spending—though the number of homeless continues to climb. LAUSD is the past few years has lost 250,000 students. If the recovery went faster, they would have to declare bankruptcy even sooner.
“Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass bragged about the city’s post-fire recovery being the “fastest” in state history, but data from Hilgard Analytics shows home permitting is down by two-thirds since 2022, when the city passed a major transfer tax on all real estate over $5 million.
In 2022, the city permitted 15,285 homes. In 2023, the first year the city’s Measure ULA 4% transfer tax was in effect, permitting fell to 11,272. In 2024, permitting fell again to 8,705 homes. Now, in the first quarter of 2025, just 1,325 homes were permitted, putting the city on track to permit 5,300 homes this year.”
This is the future of L.A. Investors, develops and other no longer are willing to invest in L.A. Recovery? Just another scam by Bass, to pretend she is doing the job.
LA mayor brags about ‘fastest recovery’ in CA history, home permits down by two-thirds
By Kenneth Schrupp | The Center Square, 4/22/25 https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_d746ec7a-e11e-4ced-9ab7-5f96e014e952.html?utm_source=california.thecentersquare.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=today-s-top-california-headlines-current_date_mdy&_bhlid=f12ce7c688c1a6e98f5f8e566521d98ce198556c
Evening light falls across homes and neighborhoods devastated by the Palisades Fire in areas near Pacific Palisades, California, on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025. More than 2,500 National Guard personnel have been called up as part of wildfire response efforts and have been providing aerial and ground firefighting support, security and traffic control, and logistical support in support of state, and federal authorities.
(The Center Square) – Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass bragged about the city’s post-fire recovery being the “fastest” in state history, but data from Hilgard Analytics shows home permitting is down by two-thirds since 2022, when the city passed a major transfer tax on all real estate over $5 million.
In 2022, the city permitted 15,285 homes. In 2023, the first year the city’s Measure ULA 4% transfer tax was in effect, permitting fell to 11,272. In 2024, permitting fell again to 8,705 homes. Now, in the first quarter of 2025, just 1,325 homes were permitted, putting the city on track to permit 5,300 homes this year.
“Housing production is down everywhere, but it’s nearly dead in Los Angeles,” said Mott Smith, a University of Southern California real estate development professor who analyzed the impact of Measure ULA, to The Center Square. “Thanks to Measure ULA, the car wash that could have turned into 200 units of mixed income housing is now almost certainly going to remain a car wash.”
Smith’s report with the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies found that Measure ULA — which was written by nonprofit housing developers to fund themselves, while exempting themselves from the tax — has reduced “both housing affordability and fiscal health.”
“Our estimates suggest that the tax is responsible for a roughly 50% decline in sales above the $5 million tax threshold,” said Smith’s report. “That lower property tax base translates to an estimated $25 million per year in forgone property tax growth — money that schools, city services and other critical programs would have otherwise received.”
Due to Proposition 13, California property tax bases remain tied to the purchase price, not current value, except in the case of rebuilding or major changes. This means that less sales turnover results in fewer resets to current market value, with losses growing over time.
“Slowed revenue growth, moreover, compounds,” wrote Smith. “If ULA continues to reduce the probability of higher-end transactions occurring in subsequent years, within a decade its annual cost in lost property tax revenues could total in the low hundreds of millions.”
Measure ULA produced $300 million in revenue for the city in fiscal year 2023-2024. This means in the coming decades, the tax will eventually cost the city more in lost property tax revenue than it gains in transfer tax revenue, on top of the forgone revenue from development spending.
Bass signaled during her State of the City address that she wishes to make it easier to rebuild and build in Los Angeles, especially as the city faces a $800 million deficit for the coming 2025-2026 fiscal year. However, builders’ ongoing frustration with city bureaucracy — including one man’s months-long slog to secure a bond for a tree that it turns out was no longer needed — suggest more work is still to be done.
