“The whole point of preservation is to maintain the historic look,” Cowan said. “Don’t buy a house next to an airport and complain about the noise.” Great piece on historic preservation battles in Hollywood in @latimes.com www.latimes.com/california/s...

'It's not like I'm painting a tiger on my house': Sunset Square squabbles over its HPOZ rules

A battle is brewing in Sunset Square, where residents are fighting over HPOZ rules. Some say the historic protections are saving the neighborhood. Others claim they're destroying it.

latimes.com

Fantastic reporting here by Libby Rainey that confirms what we've been hearing about the "clean zones" around LA28 venues: "Carter Hewgley, chief strategy officer for L.A. County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing, said his office had been told to plan for perimeters as wide as a mile"

The LA Olympics is expected to displace unhoused people living around venues. So what's the plan?

L.A. officials say people living on the streets will likely have to leave certain areas come 2028. They don't know how they'll be moved or who will pay for it.

laist.com

Two Los Angeles businessmen told Pacific Palisades residents this week that they’re planning a $250 million investment in rebuilding the community and that state Sen. @benallenca.bsky.social was on their board. But Allen said that’s not true. www.politico.com/news/2026/07...

Two LA businessmen say a California state senator is part of their nonprofit to help wildfire victims. He isn't.

Lee West and Steven Dietz plan to raise up to $250 million to buy lots and build homes in Pacific Palisades. They told residents that state Sen. Ben Allen was on their nonprofit board, but Allen told ...

politico.com

Fascinating debate in LA wildfire recovery areas where a decade's worth of state laws aiming to increase density in single-family home neighborhoods is clashing with stiff anti-developer sentiment among rebuilding residents www.politico.com/news/2026/07...

'We can have seven homes or we can have 70.' In wake of Los Angeles wildfires, homeowners and developers clash

Many LA wildfire survivors are united against 'predatory developers,' who they say are exploiting vulnerable residents and changing their communities. Lawmakers are trying to balance the need to build...

politico.com

Absolute dismal satisfaction rates for federal, state, local government among LA wildfire survivors in survey released today static1.squarespace.com/static/6792c...

New owner of LA's downtown "Graffiti Towers" will remove the graffiti immediately but plans to memorialize it in a coffee table book. www.latimes.com/business/sto...

Graffiti towers set to be cleared for cleanup and sale

Work cleaning the Oceanwide Plaza skyscrapers — known informally as Graffiti Towers — will begin immediately, according to the $517-million sale agreement tentatively approved by a federal judge.

latimes.com

Rebuilding in Pacific Palisades and Altadena from the 2025 LA wildfires is close or at to some milestones, per @politico.com tracker: * 148 completed homes * Almost half of the 9,900 properties with destroyed homes have filed permits to rebuild

A big issue to the ROAD to Housing Act is that much of it asks HUD to do things, which it will struggle with since staffing is down 30% in the DOGE cuts www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

New report from me at National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders (NAAHL) breaking down what happens now that the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is law. Key takeaways: -No provisions in the…...

New report from me at National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders (NAAHL) breaking down what happens now that the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is law. Key takeaways: -No provisions in the ...

linkedin.com

Am I wrong that this is Teddy Roosevelt for some reason??

AP just called the LA mayor's race. It's Bass-Raman.

Politico@politico.com · 2mo ago

Bass will face progressive challenger in LA mayor runoff

With @nithyaforthecity.bsky.social in line to make the mayoral runoff in Los Angeles, take a look at how she and NYC Mayor @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social are attempting to end the left's civil war over housing — the most important affordability issue in both cities. www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

The left’s housing civil war is ending

For a decade, progressives argued over whether greedy landlords or blocked construction caused the housing crisis. Zohran Mamdani and Nithya Raman say the answer is both.

politico.com

Nithya Raman surges past Spencer Pratt in L.A. mayor's race, closing in on runoff with Karen Bass

Nithya Raman surges past Spencer Pratt in L.A. mayor’s race, closing in on runoff with Karen Bass

Nithya Raman pulled ahead of Spencer Pratt in the race to get into the Nov. 3 mayoral runoff on Sunday, five days after the vote counting began.

latimes.com

Obviously the Raman-Pratt battle is the headline but it’s also quite significant that Bass’ high-water mark appears to have been the first drop of results where she was over 38%. Now she’s below 35%. Especially interesting compared to what happened four years ago

Los Angeles Times@latimes.com · 2mo ago

Raman cuts deeper into Pratt's lead as new votes are tallied

NEW: There was NOT a batch of L.A. mayor votes with zero votes for Pratt. But there was a "lag in an automated update" to @apnews.com vote tallies that split the batch and updated Bass & Raman's votes about a minute before updating Pratt's. Read me @latimes.com: www.latimes.com/politics/sto...

How a simple mix-up fueled false conspiracies about L.A. vote count

An update of votes for Los Angeles mayor, reported by media outlets, led some observers to believe there was a large batch of votes counted that included zero votes for candidate Spencer Pratt. There ...

latimes.com

Feel solid about this one www.82-0.com/share?id=dUS...

Today's press release from @governor.ca.gov's office on homelessness is pretty congratulatory but leaves out some, uh, context.

Bass did stronger than expected and Becerra is almost certain to advance following yesterday's California primary. Lots of votes left to count, and takes to warm up but our first is the anti-establishment current coursing through the state has its limits www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

Becerra and Bass surge in California as anti-establishment fever breaks

Karen Bass advanced to a November runoff, while Xavier Becerra was in position to make the runoff in the governor’s race in early returns.

politico.com

There are lots of things that have gone wrong for the news media in the 21st century, but the feature they have in common is the destruction of incentives to produce accurate information. www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/you-...

You couldn’t create a more anti-news internet if you tried

What can behavioral economics add to the story of news decline?

niemanlab.org

The newest estimate of California's homeless population is 182,000, DOWN 2.8% from 2024 to 25, according to long-awaited official figures released by HUD. California's decrease mirrors a national 3% decrease over the same period. www.huduser.gov/portal/sites...

LA Council Committee reviewing the city's mansion tax/Measure ULA decides NOT to recommend a November ballot measure to make changes. Chair Ysabel Jurado says it's too early to evaluate the tax's long-term effects.

The city of Los Angeles lost a lawsuit over a megacontroversial affordable housing project its been trying to block in Venice this week. Last fall, the state threatened to pull the city's zoning authority if it didn't approve the development. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026...

POLITICO Pro: Stalled Los Angeles affordable housing development should advance over city objections, judge rules

The decision boosts state regulators who have threatened major sanctions against the city.

subscriber.politicopro.com

State worker unions threatening lawsuit under California Environmental Quality Act over the governor's return-to-office mandate: “Putting 90,000 people on the road and pumping that much carbon into the air has an environmental impact." www.sacbee.com/news/politic...

State worker union tries novel legal angle to stop Newsom’s return-to-office order

The union representing state attorneys argued that the governor’s return-to-office order has unrecognized environmental impacts.

sacbee.com

New LA transfer tax ballot measure proposal supported by Council President Harris-Dawson calls for cutting rate for multi-family projects to between 2% and 3.5% lacity.primegov.com/viewer/previ...

Voters: We want infrastructure faster and cheaper. Abundance Politicians: Us too. Let's strip away regulations to make it happen. Voters: No. Because you can't build infrastructure we don't trust what you'll do with weakened regulations. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

A threat to the Abundance movement? Trust.

A sweeping poll finds that Southern Californians want housing and infrastructure built faster, but don't trust their elected officials to weaken regulations.

politico.com

I don’t know why Karen Bass keeps saying that rebuilding in the Palisades is going faster than other California fires. The @ms.now anchor even pushes her on it later in the interview and she admits it’s not

The governor's impact fee elimination proposal appears even more narrow that I thought. Language seems to reflect it only applies to state-funded affordable developments where a local government is the co-applicant. So that rules out pure LIHTC projects. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026...

POLITICO Pro: Newsom wants to ban city fees on state-funded affordable housing

The governor want to eliminate fees on a narrow slice of publicly funded low-income housing developments, arguing they're counterproductive.

subscriber.politicopro.com

Looks like the governor's housing proposal today is going after local fees on affordable housing developments:

I'll be talking housing and wildfire recovery with LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger and California Community Foundation President Miguel Santana at @politico.com's LA event on 5/20. Come check it out! You can request an invitation here: californiaagendalosangelesrequest.splashthat.com/Reporter

US Army Corp has been widely praised for fast debris removal after the LA wildfires. The other side of that coin is the the concern the work was rushed and shoddy www.nbcnews.com/video/contra...

Contractors allege problems with L.A. wildfire cleanup

In an NBC News investigation, our team spoke with contractors and a homeowner who allege the Army Corps of Engineers did not properly clean up debris after devastating California wildfires. Now, they'...

nbcnews.com

This week's @politico.com Los Angeles wildfire rebuilding update. We've now topped 50 completed homes between Altadena (37) and Pacific Palisades (15). Still trailing Paradise (79) and Santa Rosa (153) following same amount of days post fires.