This report evaluates a proposal from Our Future Los Angeles that would allow developers to build five to 10 units on parcels with single-family houses in higher-opportunity neighborhoods throughout California. It also mandates that developers include affordable units or pay an in-lieu fee.
“Major transit stop”: how these three words are defined determines what can be built where, throughout much of California. In order to address housing supply constraints, the state legislature has enacted a number of laws that streamline approval and remove zoning constraints in areas close to high-quality transit. But what, exactly, is a “major transit stop”? Planners, developers, and elected officials construe the sparse definition in state law in many ways — though genuine interpretive disagreement, due to modeling and data constraints, and/or in order to serve political goals of encouraging or stymying development. Differences in interpreting the definition of “major transit stop” collectively make a big difference in what areas are covered by state zoning incentives. A maximal approach to defining “major transit stop” grows the eligible area by over three times more than a minimal approach. The area within half a mile of a major transit stop has generally increased over time. But areas with low vehicle travel are doing more to drive affordable housing eligibility than areas with quality transit. Finally, tying transit service to land use regulations has created a perverse incentive to cut transit service in order to avoid state housing mandates.
In this report, we assess whether and how residential mobility contributes to enduring patterns of residential segregation and unequal access to opportunity-rich neighborhoods. This analysis makes use of a new dataset to explore the relationship of moving patterns over time to segregation in a way that was not previously possible and concludes by discussing possible policy responses.
A growing number of U.S. transit agencies are adding transit ambassadors to their systems to improve the customer service and safety experience for passengers. These personnel can play a variety of different roles, including providing wayfinding, system navigation, fare payment support, and other passenger support roles that enhance the customer experience. This research examines the Los Angeles Metro’s transit ambassador program, which began as a pilot in 2022 and is moving in-house in 2025 as a permanent program. Ambassadors provide key customer service functions that are not filled elsewhere. Ambassadors spend most of their time with vital, basic tasks of orienting and aiding riders; they also assist with the first level of homelessness response, with crisis de-escalation, and by administering Narcan to prevent overdoses. Broadly, they provide more eyes on the system and offer a highly visible presence to riders. Training during the pilot period was customer-service oriented but lacked thorough instruction in conflict resolution techniques. The contractor model, while quick to implement and iterate, created some employment drawbacks during the pilot phase, such as paying below living wages, lack of on-the-job resources, and reports of strenuous working conditions. System satisfaction, ratings, and safety perceptions increased over the period ambassadors were deployed, but we lack data to draw firm causal conclusions. The program to date demonstrates progress towards meeting the intention to advance a community safety approach to meeting riders’ needs and appears to be making a positive contribution to the system.
This study set out to explore the potential feasibility of a novel housing model, one that we at the UCLA Lewis Center call shared prosperity rental (SPR) housing. The Lewis Center engaged real estate analytics firm MapCraft Inc. to build a real estate financial pro forma model that could represent the financial performance of various SPR approaches. This pro forma modeling exercise was intended to illustrate how an SPR housing program could be designed to build tenant wealth, and the results should be understood as highly speculative. This report presents the Lewis Center’s interpretation of this study’s results, which rest on the generous contributions of reviewers and MapCraft. The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the contributors, who are in no way responsible for the final publication or any errors therein.
One hundred years after its first boom, social housing is again capturing the attention of advocates and governments around the world. This report provides a detailed description of the French social housing system as a reference point for governments that seek to create their own, with a discussion of financing, landlord–developers, rent setting, residents, and recent reforms. About 600 social housing landlords, both public and nonprofit, have been building nearly one-third of the country’s housing in recent decades using long-term loans, their own equity, and local subsidies. The system’s main ingredients are the large public savings account that funds these loans, the cost-rental model, employer contributions, and direct rental assistance to support lowincome households. France is a useful global model for its successes — the system is both large and growing, proving resilient in a diverse and contentious political context — and its limitations — it has inefficiencies and a history of perpetuating segregation, and is less progressive than direct housing assistance. The report concludes with reflections on how a system like this might be created in a country without it, including the supportive institutions that are necessary. Two important takeaways from France for these countries are that it is possible to build large numbers of new units without deep subsidies; and it is not landlords with older, equity-generating housing stock that are building most new social housing.
This report responds to criticisms of two earlier UCLA Lewis Center reports, both of which evaluated the effects of Measure ULA, a real estate transfer tax implemented in the City of Los Angeles in April 2023. We show that these criticisms are misguided. No social science research is perfect, but there is no reason to think our earlier reports are fundamentally flawed. We also examine a key claim made by the critics, which is that Measure ULA has already created 10,000 union construction jobs. We show that this claim is almost certainly untrue.
Measure ULA is a ballot initiative that increases real estate transfer taxes on sales of high-value properties in the City of Los Angeles. Revenues are dedicated to subsidized housing development and preservation, rent assistance, and similar efforts. Permitting for new multifamily housing has fallen sharply since Measure ULA went into effect in April 2023. Many blame the tax for this decline, but it could be caused by other changes to the housing market and macroeconomic conditions over the past two years. In this report we establish a robust causal linkage between Measure ULA and housing development, providing empirical evidence that the transfer tax is reducing multifamily production in Los Angeles.
