The Iced Coffee Hour - WTF Happened To Los Angeles - Graham Stephan Confronts Nithya Raman

Episode Date: October 25, 2026

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Los Angeles, to me, is the epitome of the American dream. So what would you tell me when I say I'm never going to invest another dollar in California real estate ever again? Well, I hope to change that. Counselwoman Nita Rahman filed to run just hours before the deadline. Raman and Bass are going from allies to opponents. So what do you think of the biggest issues facing Los Angeles? Homelessness and housing costs. And they're two sides of the same coin.

Researchers found that more than 171,000 people experience homelessness daily across California. What I am saying is we will audit every dollar. We will monitor performance. We will ensure that we are... But isn't that what everyone else said? Yes, but I already did it in six years. If we want to raise taxes, we got to earn trust again. And I am here to earn your trust.

Yeah, but why should we tax first before actually getting the spending under control? That's not what I'm... I just literally said the opposite, sir. Speaking of waste fraud and abuse, what do you think of Nick Shirley? My hope is that we build a system here in Los Angeles where Nick Shirley cannot come and find anything to complain. Hey, everybody. So I usually don't do a disclaimer like this, but with this episode, I have to. I left Los Angeles about six years ago because it was really unhappy with the living conditions there.

And Nithia Rahman is currently running for mayor of Los Angeles. We reached out to both her and Karen Bass to come on. Karen Bass never got back to us. But Nithia did. And it got a little contentious in a few moments. If there's not a crime happening there, if they're not a threat to themselves. Oh, there is a crime. They're doing drugs.

Well, no, if they're just sitting on your sidewalk. No, no, they're doing drugs. Well, that's a different situation. Yeah. But I do think that we should give her a lot of credit because she agreed to come on. She didn't have to do this. And she said that we could ask her whatever we wanted. So with that said, I hope you enjoy the episode.

Thanks so much. Let's get into it. Nithia and Jason, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. This is a very unique panel of guests. Just the fact that you're willing to sit down and have a conversation, open dial, I think is extremely commendable because it's super, super rare. So we appreciate that. And I appreciate you guys doing the same thing and you.

So this is something that's really interesting for me because you're running from mayor of Los Angeles and I left L.A. Yeah. A lot of the policies for me were really bad. Well, you left Santa Monica, right? I grew up in Los Angeles. Before Santa Monica, it was West Adams. Okay.

And so I've lived there for years. I moved to Santa Monica and it just progressively got worse. And it wasn't just Santa Monica. It was everywhere. Jack's family is also from, you know, Ventura County. So he grew up there. He was living with us in Santa Monica as well. So I'm curious from mayor specifically, what powers does the mayor actually have?

We have a weaker mayor system than other cities. So a city like New York or a city like Boston, they have a more powerful mayor system. Here in California, we designed a lot of, you know, historically, people do. designed more decentralized governance structures. And it was the old progressive movement that was pushing back against corruption, you know, in Chicago. And so they wanted to make it, they tried to ensure less corruption by making it more decentralized. So we have weaker mayors, generally speaking in California and on the West Coast and stronger city councils. But about 25 years ago here in L.A., there was a charter reform process that actually put more executive authority back in the mayor's seat.

And so the mayor of Los Angeles now has the ability to hire and fire every department head. They have the ability to actually set the priorities of each department. And they have the ability to make sure that they are designing the metrics through which those department heads are held accountable. And so if you care about something, like if you care about responsiveness to trash complaints, you can actually generate metrics around that and hold your departmental leadership accountable around that. if you care about homelessness, which everyone does, you can actually say, hey, let's make a map of encampments. Let's make sure that the entity's responsible for it actually making progress for addressing encampments over time. When mayors don't use that power to actually push city departments to deliver for residents, it looks like the mayor is not as powerful. But I want to use those powers.

I want to make sure that we're actually governing L.A. I want to make sure that we're pushing it in the right direction and that the departments are working to deliver results. So what do you think of the biggest issues facing Los Angeles? The two that are, I think, the biggest are homelessness and housing costs. And they're two sides of the same coin. Obviously, homelessness has other complexities in it, including mental health issues, substance use issues. But if you look, again, at data from across cities in America, where you have the most unsheltered homelessness, people living on the streets, is also where you have the least affordable cities. And so those two issues are very connected.

Is it connected or is it that the homeless go to the areas where people have money to give? Most of the people who are experiencing homelessness in L.A., especially outside of the beaches and Hollywood, like I represent right now a lot of the valley. And the people who work on the streets in the valley, living near the river or in encampments, are mostly people who are from L.A., who came to L.A. to work, struggled, lost their homes, and are now on the streets. or people who were born and raised here, just like the composition of most Angelinos. In some parts of the city,

there are places where it's a lot of people coming from other places. The beaches are, you know, are one of those places. And there's also a little bit of outsider coming to L.A. in a neighborhood like Hollywood, which attracts actually a lot of LGBTQ youth who are, you know, maybe not accepted at home. And then they come to L.A. seeking that inclusion and acceptance.

So there's a couple of neighborhoods where there's definitely a lot of outsiders. But I would say for the most part, people who are homeless in L.A. are from L.A. or were last housed in L.A. came here to seek their fortunes, failed to do that and then ended up on the streets. So what would you argue is the highest impact, lowest effort decision that needs to be made or change that needs to be made to positively affect the homeless population and to positively affect the housing costs? For housing costs, I think we need to build a lot more housing. The government cannot build all the housing that we need. So we cannot all be 100% affordable, publicly funded housing to fill this housing shortage. The state estimates we need 500,000 more housing units in Los Angeles to fill the gap based on kind of what they estimate as the need locally. So we need to make it easier, cheaper, faster to build more housing.

And the biggest obstacle to building more housing in Los Angeles is often the government. We make it very hard to build apartments. We say apartments are the thing that we need the most of. But in LA, we have the longest processes for approving new apartments. We have a lot of costs, permitting costs, entitlement costs, so on and so forth. DWP costs are often enormous and completely unpredictable. So I think the more that we can do to make it cheaper, faster, easy, to build housing and to ensure that we're pushing the private market to build the kind of housing we need, I think we can actually build more housing.

I want to push back on that. What about abolishing rent control? Wouldn't that make housing a lot better for privatized businesses to go and create more housing? So here in L.A., here in California overall, there is a state regulation that prevents new construction from falling under rent stabilization or rent control. So anything built after 1978 actually cannot have... Yeah, but what about in 1975 two rent control tenants in there? You can't tear down the building. But the question is, does rent control restrict new construction?

It does. Well, okay, explain. Because land is limited. And if you have a building, let's just say, like, my duplex, there was a tenant in there who was making well over $200,000 a year, they were under rent control. Getting them out for the sake of tearing it down and building a new four unit. Ellis Act, if you actually want to tear it down, you can. But that is another step.

That's another regulation that someone now has to overcome to get them out to apply for the Ellis Act. All it takes is, you know, they go and get a free tenant attorney, delay the project for a year. Landlords say it's not worth the risk. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to go somewhere else. Yeah. And I would say, you know, we have a ton of real estate that is along major corridors like Ventura or Sunset or Wilshire, which right now has no housing on.

it. Unlike most major cities, they just have single-story strip malls on it. And in other cities, you would actually see along these major boulevards, you'd see more dense housing. You'd see apartments being built there. And this, I think, is, these are places where it's absolutely appropriate and necessary to build more housing. So I think there's a lot of places where there's potential to build. I'm not sure that a rent control policy that doesn't apply after 1978 is the biggest block to building more housing. I would say that making it, you know, by right to build along our major boulevards, making it much easier for the Department of Water and Power to show up and build more housing. Yes, but the problems that a lot of those buildings are built before

1978. But they're not, many of them don't have any apartments in them at all. They're, they're, you know, like a strip mall like this with no, with no apartments. And so it wouldn't, rent control wouldn't apply there. On April 1st, LA's so-called mansion tax kicks in. supporters of the new tax celebrating in Korea town today. That money is going to raise much needed funding for affordable housing and tenant protection. Here's how the mansion tax will work. Home sellers will have to pay an extra 4% tax on property sales over $5 million. If your home is over $10 million, the tax goes up to 5.5%.

Because, Nithia, I mean, you, and I think this might have been where we sparred. Yes, actually, we spart over the mansion tax. I was a supporter of the mansion tax coming in. It created a new source of funding for affordable housing construction that we didn't have after the CRA was dissolved in California. It created funds for things I know that you're probably very critical of, which is legal defense support and things like that. And rent relief. So direct payments to landlords for renters who have fallen behind, which actually has been a very good intervention that has helped renters stay in their homes and has helped landlords stay whole. So I think there's a mixed bag of potential goods in there that I,

thought are important for Los Angeles. Mixed back, according to you, I would imagine. And I was a supporter of it, and it came forward. And what has happened in the years since? And I know that there's a lot of disagreement out there about the data, but the studies that I have seen suggest that the mansion tax has actually significantly impacted new apartment construction here in the city of Los Angeles. And for me, as someone who believes that unlocking new housing here in L.A. is the single most important thing to maintaining the city's resiliency into the future, to keeping it a place where people can come here and build their dreams here. If you can't afford to live here, you can't do that anymore. And if you're not building new housing units, you'll never be able to keep it a city of opportunity. And so for me, reforming that mansion tax to exempt new multifamily construction was something that I felt was very, very important to do. I put forward an effort on the city council to do that. For many reasons, it hasn't moved forward yet, but I do still, based on the data that I'm seeing, I still think that that's something important for L.A.

And I actually think that's a bigger factor in inhibiting new apartment construction than rent control because buildings after 1978 are not subject to that year. And because that has really been, there's been such a stark difference. You can actually see the number of housing units that have dropped. So what would you tell me when I say I'm never going to invest another dollar in California real estate ever again? Well, I hope to change that. You know, I think that there, this, I believe that this is the most incredible place in the world to live. The weather is perfect. The food is incredible. It has the atmosphere that I want from a city, which is an atmosphere that invites people here to dream big here, to be entrepreneurial. Like I moved to America when I was six years old. Los Angeles, to me, is the epitome of the American dream. Like it is a place that invites people here to work hard and to change their lives. Like, there's a spirit about this city that feels really powerful to me and that I don't think is everywhere in America necessarily. Or rather, it's much more keenly felt here for me than in any other part of America that I've been to.

But, you know, I would say that if we can address our unsheltered homelessness crisis and we can get a, we can really wrap our arms around that, I think we can bring investment back into Los Angeles. And I also think that if we can find common ground to, I don't think whether you're progressive or you're more moderate or you're more conservative, no one likes government red tape. No one likes regulations that stand in the way of creativity and entrepreneurship. No one likes regulations that stand in the way of small businesses being able to function well. Like there's a lot of common ground here for reforms that I hope can bring investment and trust back to Los Angeles. And that's part of the work that I want to do. I just want to say, though, I feel like we oftentimes hear from politicians that they want to deregulate.

They want to make community safer. They want to protect local wildlife. They want to do this. They want to do that. But what does that actually materially mean from a policy perspective? Like if you say that we all here agree that we need to build more homes and decrease red tape, it's like, well, what policy is the specific one that's getting in the way of most people that would build if this policy was gone?

But because it's there, this. is preventing them from actually increasing the housing supply. Like once you get into office, people say, day one, I'm repealing this act, I'm fixing this, and I'm removing this person from office and putting this person in. So it's, I mean, this is, it feels fairly straightforward to have for simple interventions like sidewalk dining, which in a city like Los Angeles where the weather is wonderful, you want, obviously, to have a few cafe tables on your sidewalk, rather than having a city process, which is lengthy, potentially costly, have.

has multiple inspectors coming in, just have restaurateurs be able to follow a straightforward set of rules and self-certify that they're meeting those regulations. And you come out and audit every once in a while, but that you don't actually need to have an expensive permitting process in order to do something that feels very, very straightforward. Daniel Lurie in San Francisco did the same thing. It was one of the first things that he did when he came into office. And I was like, this is very straightforward. And I would not say that this is a left wing or a right wing thing. It's just a straightforward thing to allow the thing that we all love, which is great food in L.A. to be able to thrive.

But what about the housing stuff? Because I feel like restaurants are one thing. Really quick, I just want to say that cutting the red tape on something as simple as a few cafe tables just makes a lot of sense. Nobody is out there opening up a restaurant because they're excited to deal with permits and inspections. Yeah. When you're starting a business, you want your time and money going into the. actual business, not a bunch of costly steps before you've even opened up your doors. And really, one of the first things you need is just a way for people to find you.

Because before anyone tries a new restaurant or hires a new business, they're going to look you up online. And if they can't find a website or a business email, a lot of people just move on to the next option. Which is why we love our partner, Northwest Registered Agent, because they give you a domain, website, business email, and dedicated business phone line for free. Listen, you don't have to be a paying customer, purchase anything, or even form an LLC, so you can get started without paying for those basics or giving out your personal number. And your domain and website belong to you, so you could move them elsewhere. Northwest just wants to help you get started, support you as you grow, and keep you independent, even if you never buy anything.

So if you're putting in the work to build a business, make it easy for people to find you and feel comfortable reaching out. Get started for free at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash ICH. That is Northwest Registeredagent.com slash ICH, or just click the link down below in the description. But what about the housing stuff? Because I feel like restaurants are one thing. Yes. So with housing, one of the things that I've proposed is a shot clock. So a shot clock is a deadline by which departments have to respond to your request for a permit or an entitlement. And so I'm saying 60 days for a zoning compliant project, 120 days for a non-zoning compliant project, and making sure that the city of Los Angeles is not going to. going beyond that to give you the approval to build.

And what is taking them so long? And you get your fees back if they don't come. Yeah, that there's an entire, that you can actually say, enforce that by saying, there's an incentive structure. There's an incentive structure to actually enforce that. And what's the average length of time to pass these things right now and like what's taking them so long? Oh, L.A. they just did a study that compared approval timelines in Los Angeles versus I think it was one city in Colorado. and a city in Texas. And we had double the time that it took in double or triple-locity.

Walk through your experience. I want Nethia to hear your experience about trying to permit an ADU. If you could quickly just walk through that. Oh, gosh. Yeah. So I set up an ADU and I started building it. The approval to get it initially constructed really easy. But to get the certificate of occupancy for a tenant to move in took months.

Wait, was that city of L.A. or San Monica? It was city of L.A. Okay. All of my rental housing, by the way, was city of L.A. And I applied for the certificate of occupancy. The first time the guy never showed up. The second time the guy showed up, inspected it. And he said, because this AC condenser line was like not properly installed, we had to reschedule him.

And my contractor said, it's a 20-minute fix. Can you just, yeah, we'll do it right now. And then you sign off on it. He said it was Friday. And he wanted to get home early. didn't want to wait, but said that he could call in and reschedule it. And that was it. And we rescheduled it.

The next guy comes out and comes up with a new list of things that the first guy never even mentioned. Said, well, no, that's fine. But this and this and this and this. Right. Contractor, you never pointed this out to me. Well, now you need to do that. Fix those things. Now, the third guy comes out. Oh, my gosh.

This is all fine. But we need to do a sewer line inspection. The contractor said, no one's ever told me that. Yeah, but now you need to do it. We did a sewer line inspection. They found a crack in the sewer line. We had a tenant who was supposed to be moving in. And they said we can't issue the certificate until you get the sewer line fixed.

And we said, how about this? We just will sign in writing that we fix it within 30 days. Let the tenant move in with a conditional certificate. No, we can't do that. So we go in to try to fix the sewer line. It's $40,000. But to get to the sewer line, you have to break the city sidewalk. And so now we have to wait for another person to come out to give us approval to cut the city sidewalk.

That was another $8,000. It was a delay of about six months. In the process of that, I got a fine for not planting a tree in front of the median. And the whole experience made me to say, I'm out of here. It's like it's not worth it. The rent control restrictions make it so that you cannot run as a mom and pop landlord in California at all. There is zero incentive, which makes me think if I'm selling and I'm getting out, who's going to maintain any rental housing?

And I know a lot of landlords because their tenants are paying so little, they do nothing. They're living in dilapidated conditions. And the rent control is not applicable. It applies to the same person making $30,000 as the same person making $500,000 a year. And I've seen people making a half a million dollars a year who get the same rent control treatment as the other person who's barely scraping by. Didn't you offer your tenant money to leave? $40,000 to leave and they said no. And by the way, this is a very well-to-do family.

These are not people who are struggling, and they wanted initially $80,000. And they were making over $200,000 a year. Correct. I think there's a lot of good that comes with rent control. But I think that human nature tends to take advantage of power. And if you give, if there's too much power in one side, and we can disagree whether there is or not. But I think you would be surprised at how, because I deal with it all the time. I'll give you an example.

I was trying to sell, well, I was trying to sell a house. four and a half million dollar house in Beverly Hills his father passed away, he inherited it, he's living in the house, there's a squatter in the house, and he's been trying to get him out for a year and a half. In Beverly Hills? In Beverly Hills? In the city of Beverly Hills.

Even they don't do better with squatters? No, no, I guess who had a point though? It was Beverly Hills. But, and I just walked away. I said, dude, I'm not, I can't deal with this. I can't sell this house with this guy in this house. Then I had a, this is a duplex in L.A., and the tenant refused to allow us to photograph her,

she wouldn't let us in. And then, so we used, just aerial photographs. We got into escrow. And then the appraiser came to measure it. And she wouldn't allow the appraiser access. So we lost that loan. We lost that buyer. And I said, I cannot sell this property. And that tenant had no right to do that, obviously. But what are you going to do? It takes six months a year to go through court. So, I mean, a lot of these owners just throw up their hands. They can't, they can't compete with it. They get free legal defense. They abuse their system. They don't want to leave. They don't want a new owner. They don't want anything. They can be purposely

difficult. This is a small minority of tenants. I'm not suggesting it isn't. But when you have such a like a dichotomy of power, there's so much abuse going on among tenants that threaten. I have tenants that are making a million dollars a year living in my house. It's paying $40,000 a month. And I can't sell that property because they won't move out unless I pay them a fortune. And I can only get one month security deposit. I had $300,000 of furniture stolen from some fraudster that ended up living in my house. He was a lawyer. I don't know how he lost his license. Blah, blah, blah. I can't even get a security deposit for furniture because it goes all the way up to millionaires getting protected by the city of L.A. who are paying $40,000 a month. And I can't negotiate a fair

contract with them because they have tenants' rights, even though they're millionaires. Let me ask you this. How would you feel if landlords also got free legal assistance? If they qualified financially for it right. Yeah, it's not, first of all, it's not every renter that gets free legal assistance from the city. It's only renters that meet an income threshold. And that kind of policy was put in place because of the imbalance of power that did exist. And that still continues to exist in many of the cases that we're seeing where when you have a very powerful landlord, a landlord who has a lot more financial resources, they are in court almost inevitably with the- How do we know the

landlord has more financial resources? What if it's someone, generally they do? Generally, they're their property owners, they're making money, and they are generally represented in courts. And when tenants go into court, especially in cases, look, and exactly like you were saying, a small minority of tenants are bad actors, I think a small minority of landlords are bad actors. Like, I, you know, I'm a real optimist. Like, I really believe that most people are just good people who are trying to make a living. And if we could just find a way for the rules to work better, that most people would be able to get along, right? But there are bad actors who are trying to take advantage of the system.

And in those situations, renters without representation end up getting kicked out of their homes more often than not. And so to even the playing field, we, you know, there has been a push here in the city of Los Angeles to provide more of that legal support for renters. What about for landlords? What about for a mom and pop landlord? And they're breaking even. Maybe they're paying money every single month to keep the property that they worked for. And maybe that's something that they save decades for. And now they're losing money and their tenant stops paying.

So there are resources for business owners as well. There's small business resources. There's business support that we're providing across the board to any kind of business. But not for evictions. It does not exist for evictions. Oh, I don't know. Probably not. It does not.

Yeah. But look, I just want, I hear you on the, that there are exceptions where these kinds of policies feel, I think, harder on landlords. But I will say that as someone who, you know, I have a council office. We get calls from constituents all the time. What we are seeing much more frequently is situations where renters may not know their rights. They're dealing with situations where there's services being taken away in a unit where landlords are trying to, you know, issue eviction notices even when they don't actually meet the criteria for issuing an eviction notice. So what we're seeing much more frequently is the other side of the case, particularly in the city. And a lot of the rules and regulations are really trying to say, hey, this is a necessary thing.

And if people get evicted, if people lose their homes, it's destabilizing for our neighborhoods and communities. So is there a way in this environment to make this a more even playing field? What you're saying is, oh, the playing field has gone too far in the other direction. I do. I do believe that. And I would say I am in constant contact with people from, uh, not just from tenants associations, but also from landlords associations, to say, show me the data. And if there is, you know, if there's really a crisis out there that people are exiting the market, if smaller mom and pop landlords are really facing those kinds of conditions, like let's make sure we're changing the policies.

And I have always been very open to that. And I continue to be. So what do you think is a fair rent control cap? Well, I think it's 3% or 4% now. It's, yeah. It's no, it's less. It's whatever, it's under CPI. In LA, it is a 1 to 4% range right now. Yes, but it's under CPI.

It's 90% of CPI. But that's not necessarily taking into account the insurance raises, the utility raises, the plumber who's costing double, the electrician who's costing double, all of the other expenses, which are way higher than CPI. Well, I would argue it's not even expenses. I mean, as I think an important data point, multifamily in Los Angeles, the value of those properties are down about 30%. in the last four years. So a two million dollars. Why do you think that is? It's a multitude of reasons. High interest rates is certainly a significant aspect, although that wouldn't explain the discrepancy between a more significant drop in value in Los Angeles, multifamily versus, say, Beverly Hills or Newport. Or single family, because I own both. I have a single family and a duplex. A single family is substantially.

But specifically, I do think that a lot of people are, I mean, we're now back to prices from about 10 years ago. So if you bought a fourplex in 2017, you made zero money in 10 years. You could have put that money in the stock market and doubled it. So it is hard to get people. You probably made rental income from it. No, because you generally lose money every month. If you buy a fourplex today for $2 million, it's a fourplex.

You're probably going to lose a little bit every month. There's a landlord, you cannot break even with rents right now. Even if you don't have rent control. If you're buying it new, you're saying. No, if you're buying any amount of real estate. Even if you're buying a fourplex that's under rent control, Well, then it depresses their price probably another 20, 30%, depending how many rent control. But let's say there's no rent control at all.

If you're buying a fourplex today for $2 million, and it's probably going to cost you about, call it $12,000 a month to carry that property with your loan and your property taxes or whatever, you're not going to get $12,000 in rent. You'll probably get $10 to $11. So most landlords lose about, you know, whatever, one or $2,000 a month to carry their property. Now, they generally would like to expect and appreciate that their assets, going to appreciate. But we're back down to asset values of 10 years ago. So not only are they losing every month for the last 10 years, most, I'd say most people that own multifamily in LA lose a little

bit of money every month. And unless they bought it when interest rates were extremely low, maybe they're breaking even. But now they're not making any money on the asset. So they're saying, why am I going to own multifamily in LA? So they sell and that reduces their price more and then you go buy somewhere else. So there's definitely data points showing, I think it's 29% is actually what apartments have gone down in the last four years in LA, across the board. Some where you have, let's say, a tenant paying $1,200 and the market is $2,100, where no one wants to go in there and buy that because they know that person's never going to leave. And so they're never going to be able to increase the rent. So they're not getting near that fourplex. So that owner who's owned it for 20 years,

everyone's stuck. Now, I get that obviously you don't want to displace that person either. So there are a lot of complicated interests, but it is worth understanding, like how devastated the asset values of multifamily in Los Angeles have gone in the last few years. Right. So let's, if we were getting back to the question of kind of the question that you started with, which is what is the big intervention that you would make to increase housing production here? I would ask the same thing to you as someone who's dealing with this issue and looking at kind of changes in pricing. What would you say to a policymaker who wanted to make a difference? I agree with a lot of what you said, for one.

I really think that you, if you get in there, I think you're going to remove a lot of red tape. And I think you've got a lot of good strategies on increasing housing, including removing the mansion tax possibly, which I think is a huge one. It'll take, yeah, we'll have to go back to the voters and all that. Yes, of course. I'm not holding you to it. But I know that you at least are willing to look at the data. Yeah. Where I think, and maybe this is superficial, because this is a very complicated topic, but where I would appreciate us is saying, as a community, we want to make sure that we don't displace people because that's going to make

a homeless problem worse. And we can't just raise someone's rent from $1,200 to $1,800. But what I would appreciate is if because it's important and we can all agree it's important, why don't we give vouchers to tenants, let's let the free market work so that we don't destroy the values and we don't get people wanting to leave from investing in L.A. Why don't we give that tenant say, hey, your rent's going to be able to go up, you know, to market. But we're going to, as a society, we believe that we can't, we're going to give you the money so you can give it to your landlord. So it's a. way of saying, and I don't even mind, so rather than putting it all on landlords and saying,

you're just going to have to suffer, why don't we all pay our taxes, give it to tenants who qualify, and let them use that voucher to a landlord till we have a free market? But would that be temporary? Because I feel like that would just then be a bleeding system if you're just constantly feeding these people that can't technically afford the market price. I think we do that. And then it just seems like a lottery system that, oh, you just so happen to have rented your place 30 years ago. And so you're like, okay, as a tenant, I have one year. Anyone who makes a certain amount of money can get. a voucher towards rent. It doesn't really bother me.

I don't mind supporting the people I need it. Why should rent control also be indefinite? Why not just apply for something like 10 years? Wherever you land on the rent control debate, going from $1,200 to $1,800 a month is a huge jump. And with rent going up, every dollar matters. Yeah, so when you do spend your money, you want to get as much out of it as possible.

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order with every brand. So testing new products is a lot less risky. So if you're ready to join more than 700,000 retailers with access to over 100,000 brands, sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order up to $100 at F-A-I-R-E.com slash ice coffee. That is F-A-I-R-E dot com slash iced coffee with the link down below in the description. Terms may apply. Why should rent control also be indefinite? Why not just apply for something like 10 years? So here's, I think, one of the challenges that we face as a policymaker looking at the housing market is that if you are just using, relying on the private real estate market to produce housing, what ends up happening is that the market does a very good job of producing

housing for higher-end renters and for like higher-income people. But as you get into that kind of section of the population that is making lower than, you know, average incomes in an area or significantly lower than that, the market is just not producing units that people can afford. And so in those situations, what you end up with is overcrowding, right? So what's one way that people have solved that problem. It's by having multiple families live in a single home or by having multiple people live in a single home. And so you have neighborhoods here in Los Angeles

that are some of the most overcrowded neighborhoods in the entire country because you have eight people living in a one-bedroom apartment. That's how COVID spread so much in certain neighborhoods here in L.A., but it was actually a response to the market not providing housing for the poorest residents. But couldn't you allow more dense? though, if you build...

Potentially, right? So, but my question is, if the market is never producing for people who are amongst the lowest income, what is the response? What is the... Allowing more height, allowing more density, allowing... Well, here's two things. All right. Maybe subsidizing it.

Yeah. One is look at... That's where I think about your program could be helpful, you know, or... I think we do subsidize and allow, I mean, if there's... If you build low-income housing, you get a lot of subsidy, you get a lot of density. Here's two things. Number one is Austin. Look at Austin, Texas.

They built a lot. They privatized. everything and housing prices are down about 30% because they built so much. Second, here in L.A., it's land. Land is so expensive because everyone wants to live in Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Marina Del Rey. Why should those areas have low-income housing when there is cheaper land that's further inland? Why should someone have the right to live in Santa Monica versus 20 minutes east?

I think it's less about the right to live in Santa Monica and more about what kind of of communities you're trying to support here. Like, are you saying, if I were a resident of Santa Monica now, I would want a rich, vibrant community around me. I would want residents who've been in Santa Monica for a long time to be able to stay in Santa Monica and enrich the community of Santa Monica. I would want newcomers to be able to come and build their dreams in Santa Monica as well. And I don't think those two have to be in opposition to one another. And so that's the policy mix that we're trying to find here. I don't believe that. that you have to think about housing policies as a zero-sum game. I think there are ways to ensure that we are stabilizing existing communities, stabilizing existing residents while also encouraging new housing construction in places. But wait, look at the voucher program that I just suggested. Under that voucher program, you still, you don't, they won't go. They won't live in Beverly Hills.

They won't live in Santa Monica because they can't afford it. So they'll take their voucher and they'll live where the market dictates that they would live. It sounds like a bleeding system where so much money is going to be just misappropriate and abused. And I'll give you an example in terms of- We have more faith that the government can do right. Oh, well, I'll give you an example for Santa Monica, by the way. There's a parking structure that is being torn down. You could build a ton of units.

But instead, what they're doing is low-income housing. And each unit is an estimated cost of a million dollars because it's government funded. A million dollars unit is insane. We've talked about that. This should not happen at all. And I think if you privatize the market, people would have an incentive just to build as much as they can. And yes, land is expensive. And yes, not everyone's going to be able to live in certain cities.

But that just is the name of the game. That's just how life works. But I don't think you're for the government spending $800,000 a unit building low-income. I think some of the policies that have gotten us to a place where each unit is costing so much money, I think, do have to. they deserve real scrutiny. So, you know, a single unit in those, or a single building, that's an affordable housing unit often requires eight different sources of financing in order to get built, right? So you're getting state funding, you're getting city funding, you're getting federal funding. And by the time you put all of these different pieces of funding together,

you've basically sat on the land for six, seven years, then there's a lawsuit, then you're waiting to build again, and you're slowed further. And all of that time, you are paying for the land that you've bought and you're sitting on. And so I think you've actually increased the cost of that housing through the exactly this kind of red tape and regulatory environment that we're subjecting this to. And the unions also, by the way, increased costs a lot. I know that's a little sticky topic. Well, and I, you know, I think that's this is a, this is a, I think something that Angelinos, Californians have said, if we're using public money, we should be making sure. that the workers who are working on those units are able to make a good living.

That's a policy decision that's been made in California that's been made in Los Angeles. And I think if you ask most people who lived here, they would support that, you know. And I understand it increases the cost. But I think we say when we're using public funding, it should be trying to do that. So that will, yes, that will mean that each individual unit costs a little bit more. But there's all these other ways that we can reduce the cost for those individual units, like making it a single source of funding, making sure that Department of Water and Power

is not adding time and costs to those projects. Like, there are ways to reduce the costs of that funding that the city is not taking up yet, and I want to make sure that it's doing that. What about the amount of money spent on homelessness? That has exploded lately, and homelessness has not been getting any better. I would argue, if anything,

some areas have gotten substantially worse over the last six years. Also, statistically, they went up this year under BAS 7.9% despite 400 million being spent on Inside Safe and $2.2.2 billion approximately being spent overall. So this is a huge issue, and I believe that we do need spending on homelessness to address it. I think we've also lost the trust of the people on this issue. And so a lot of the work that I have done on my time on City Council and the work that I want to do as mayor is in making sure that we are tracking every single dollar that we are investing in what works.

And we're making sure that every single dollar is actually leading to people moving off the streets. Here's what has worked. In my district, we had very different outcomes from the rest of the city. I've had a 70% reduction in tents RVs and encampments over three years. Just last year, we had a 49% reduction in unsheltered people because of the relentless work of our office and because we're making sure that every single step of that process has oversight and accountability. What did you guys do differently? We're ensuring that when we are bringing people into.

doors. So we're making sure the outreach workers, when we're funding them, are actually going out to encampments and working with people on their path to housing, right? We're holding them accountable for that. We're making sure that once people get into shelter, that they're able to stay in shelter. So if you look at our housing sites, we have four shelter sites that are in the district. We are working really hard to ensure that every single person in those shelters is getting access to substance use treatment. How much does it cost per person? It depends on the intervention, okay? Just on average. Like, the average person on the street. So the most successful intervention, the one that I think is scalable, is called a time-limited subsidy program, which is a short-term rental voucher, exactly what Jason's been talking about. And what we have seen is that that short-term rental voucher, which is about, it can be up to $2,000 a month for an apartment voucher subsidy, that actually has 75% of participants staying housed after the two-year voucher. and they stay housed through a number of different interventions. Maybe they go back to their families and reunite with their families.

Maybe they actually build up to self-sufficiency. They're able to get work. They're able to pay for that unit themselves. Or three, they're able to get benefits. If they're veterans, let's get access to your veterans' retirement. Let's make sure that you're getting the benefits that you need to stay housed. Whatever it is, that program results in really good outcomes for people. And it's one of the cheapest, $29,000 per year to $35,000 per person.

significantly cheaper than Inside Safe, which can be up to $100,000 per person per bed. What's the worst program to solve the homeless crisis? The worst program is the non-functional program. It's not held accountable for outcomes. So which one would that be in? Like, why is it failing? I would say that if you don't have oversight over a program, if you have a lot of turnover amongst your employees, if you have, if you're not held accountable for making sure that

people are getting access to their paperwork so that they can move into their next step in whatever it is, that that work doesn't always happen. I mean, you've all worked in jobs before where if you're not held accountable for results, then you don't always deliver them. If that's not what you are, if that's not what you're being evaluated by, then that's not what you deliver. And I would say that everyone needs good management, everyone needs transparency. And, you know, you can have the exact same type of nonprofit doing the exact same type of work and one will have great outcomes and one will have worse outcomes and the difference is management. And you know that about every business across America. So you're just better at managing these people that are like holding the people

that get the vouchers accountable. We work with, yeah, if you are monitoring outcomes, you can actually take your dollars and put them in those nonprofits that are delivering results for you. If you're monitoring performance, you actually are able to. say, hey, this service provider is not delivering results. Let's move to this service provider. What do you do if someone is offered? Is that a fair answer, by the way? You've seen two companies and one's well run and one's It's a completely fair answer. I'm just curious. Because it's the same people. It's the same thing. Yeah, but what is the delta? Is it literally just the management? Like,

you have either better employees. What is the delta between a great business and a bad? I'll tell you. I mean, if you have a question. But I mean, I would agree. I would say that answer would be the same answer. If it's the same idea, same premise, same tile of two construction companies, one failing, one is not, then it's probably. Yeah, the team members. Right. So that, but so that I would say management. Yeah, the management, right? Yeah. That picks and moves around, organizes the teams. And so I would say that you have to be able to build a homelessness response system here in the city of Los Angeles that is building trust with Angelinos again. It has to. And the only way you're going to do that is if you are monitoring performance and making sure you're putting money into those service providers that are delivering on results. So what do you do that? So what do you do with someone? if they've been offered shelter 10 times and they refuse. So it really depends on the individual. And I've dealt with so many people who are on the streets who, when they're offered a shelter, gladly take it.

That's the majority of people. Sure. But there are individuals who are deeply mentally ill who have real, real mental health challenges. There are people who may be dealing with substance use issues. With those individuals, you have to follow different paths. I remember people with, we had a gentleman who. had PTSD, he was, he had fought and, you know, been deployed as a, as a, in the army multiple times and dealt with a lot of issues as a result of that. It took outreach staff four months and he

moved around. You know, we'd say, oh, we, you can't be here. And then he would move around. And we were finally able to build trust. He started accepting mental health treatment. He is now in his own apartment. He is working again and he's doing incredibly well. So let's, you know, and so So again, with individuals who have deeper mental health issues, substance use challenges, whatever it is, there may be people who are, you know, who are doing things that are criminal activities, right? Drug sales and all of that. That is an LAPD pathway. For everyone else, it is relentless engagement, relentless work until they get off the street. To be honest with you, Angelinos, I don't think care how you deal with this problem.

They would prefer that it be done with compassion, with services, with care and the shelter. And so what I'm trying to do is make sure that the system that is built on service to shelter and housing works. Because I want them to believe that that can work and I want to make sure that they can trust that system and that they don't mind that their taxpayer dollars are going to. And what if they set up, what if they set up an encampment should that be removed? If whatever the regulations are should be followed. It's not about. But what do you think? Should the encampment be removed if it's on the sidewalk?

If it's blocking the pathway, if it's doing all of that, of course it should be removed. But the question is if you remove it and don't offer that person another place to go, all that will happen is that they move across the street. Right. I don't have, no one has in Los Angeles. We don't have the capacity to compel a person to accept shelter. Do you think that you should? Wait, can I jump in? This is, yeah, please.

I want to jump in because I actually researched this last night. One of the, by the way, there's I think Senate Bill 43, which has been expanded so that you can actually have involuntary conservatorship for people who are unable to take care of themselves, close themselves, feed themselves, et cetera. It is really hard to enforce that when you don't have beds and services around there that can actually take care of that person. Because are you going to put them in jail? We can't, we don't have the room in jail either. So, I mean, I grew up in Twin Towers is our largest mental health facility, right? It's our largest mental health. It's our big jail, our county jail, is our largest mental health facility.

And, you know, that's where a lot of people end up because the mental health care system is not taking people in because it is, I think, very, very under-resourced. I think we did fund a bond, though, a California bond to build a lot more of these big. You know, it's still playing out. We got some of that funding to build. We're going to do a, what are they called, not tiny homes, like a, yeah, like a tiny homes facility for women in all. Many different types of beds you have to build. Some for people that don't need the conservative ships, some that do, some that need the medical treatment. So you have to build multiple different types of beds over the next five years.

And it's billions and billions of billions of dollars. Then you can start enforcing the conservatorships in Senate Bill 43. So the hard part is I grew up in Venice and Santa Monica. And it was compassion that I was raised with for a lot of the homeless people. Yeah, please. that what you have been experiencing is a system that is, I think, broadly has values that are aligned with Angelenos, but is not functioning as well as it could. And so people are turning away from it because they're saying, I'm, I can't, I can't have compassion anymore because the problem needs to be addressed. What I am saying is we will audit every dollar. We will monitor performance. We will ensure that we are, hold on.

But isn't that what every one else said? Yes, but I'm actually, I already did it in six years. in my district. We've delivered results, and every Angelino deserves that. I want you to not have to ask me this question again because our homeless services system is so responsive that when you see someone who is in an encampment that our team is already out there doing the work to get them indoors, that is the city that I want to build for you. I want you to not have to ask this question again.

I'm tired of this hypothetical. What I want is a system that works, one that is aligned with the values of Angelina. And I will build that. What I'm seeing a lot is people who are not mentally well whatsoever being offered shelter, but choosing instead to scream in the middle of the street. To throw rocks cars, the police take two hours to show up. People are passed out in the alley. They're doing drugs.

My mother doesn't feel safe. Friends with kids don't want to go anywhere near the alley because there's constantly people roaming. One time they called the police on people who were doing it. and the police said, well, you know, unless they're an active threat, we don't have time to show up. So we called back and said they're ODing. And immediately they showed up. And so I think that- But they still can't do anything, even when they do.

Well, once they showed up, the people are like, and they roamed off. Like, that's all that happened. By the way, this has been around for, unfortunately, decades, have been getting worse. It's probably what you're going to be judged on as mayor is, as how you handle homeless. It's never been as bad as I've seen over the last probably three to four years. Not in my district, though. Like, it has actually improved in my district. Big encampments that were there are not there anymore because we're doing the work.

What's causing homelessness? It's definitely rooted in affordable housing issues, right? There used to be a large number of single room occupancy hotels and cheaper housing in Los Angeles. I'm not saying that people don't have mental health issues or substance use issues. There is a lot of that as well. But when housing was cheaper, people were indoors. People were in the single room occupancy hotel. hotels, people were indoors dealing with those same challenges. We had a different set of

interventions to respond to those issues. Now, in a very, very expensive housing market, a lot of those people who are vulnerable in whatever way, who are, you know, one health issue away from being kicked out of their apartment are now ending up on the streets. And then once you're on the streets, I think it's very, very hard to get back in doors. And way more expensive to It's way more expensive. Yeah. And it's much more expensive. And so I think at the root of it, there is a housing issue that is at the root of it.

That doesn't mean that there aren't mental health challenges or substance use challenges as well. But it's just at the root there is a, it is a housing issue. So you think if housing was cheaper, we would not have as much homeless? Not as much unsheltered homelessness. Not as much unsheltered homelessness. I mean, I think that's just a correlative fact. Yes. You can't argue that.

If we immediately had. How much is mental health? Because just, again, anecdotally, from why. I've seen, it seems like 80% are people with severe drug or mental health. The estimates show about 11,000 of the, how many is it? How many people are homeless? There's a lot. There's 45,000 in the city. County, I think, is like 69 or 70,000. I think of the 70,000 estimates are between 11 to 15,000 have anywhere from moderate to severe mental health. Why does it seem like it should be flipped, that it should be 75%? Because you're not, a lot of the people that are unhoused and are mental health.

stable are not, you know, screaming and yelling right outside my office here. So it feels like so many of them have drug addiction and mental illness. The most visible people, the people who are, so you'll never see the mother who is living in her car with her children or couch surfing. You won't see them on the streets. But the people you see on the streets are people with mental health challenges. The people you see on the streets are the people who are going to be screaming and yelling. What do we do for those 20% that are severely mentally ill that should not be roaming the streets that could be... What we do in the district is what I want to make sure that we're doing citywide. Each of those people has an individual pathway forward, right? And whatever that pathway is,

our job as a city is to push them into that pathway. So for some people, it's going to be getting back on your meds. You do that with street medicine teams. You take injections of antipsychotics. you're able to normalize and then you get back indoors. Can you parley this, by the way, because right now you're calling the call. I don't mean to interrupt. No, no, no, please. I don't want to be boring. But this is your policy positions that I agree with because we may agree to disagree on how much we fund the police.

And I know that you've agreed that your position is not to remove any funding from the police. But one way to help the police is to not have the police be doing these types of jobs. So can you get into that? Yeah. So, you know, if we had what I want to invest in is making sure that we have unarmed mental health responders that can take so many of those calls for service off of LAPD's plate. That situation that you described where police showed up two hours after you called for help about people who are who are out of it in an alleyway, we actually have a tool to respond to that. That would have been much more effective in that situation.

We have something called a Circle Team, which is a trained homeless outreach and mental health crisis worker who can go out to those calls for service. They have a sobering center that they can bring people to. They say to folks, hey, you're having a substance use issue. You can't be here, but come with us. And they'll sit in their van and they can, you know, relax there. They can go to a sobering center. They can sit there or they can go take them to a hospital.

Whatever that pathway is, they can actually take them off the streets. Police are, you know, they don't have the time even to respond to these kinds of calls. and they're not able to take action there unless there's an active crime being committed, unless someone's being assaulted, unless someone is in danger. And so there's actually a response that can work. Let's actually build that out citywide and let's make sure that we're actually getting people with those challenges off the streets and into places where they can get treatment and care. And I think that will make the city better. That will make our response much more effective. There are people who need things who are dealing with mental health issues who may need things like involuntary conservatorship.

That process is long for a reason. You're taking away someone's freedom. And that process is something that needs to be followed in those cases. There are other cases, though, where people can go into a mental health treatment bed or can get access to medications that can help them stabilize. That's what we need to be doing. Let's be out there doing that work, fighting for every bit of that care, making sure that it's being delivered in ways that actually. actually addresses the issue. Speaking of police, so I want to follow up on this two by saying, because I feel like

it's not a good enough answer for you because you're so frustrated with. I know. And by the way, there's no one's going to, no one can sit here and give you two sentences as to how we're going to address 10,000, 15,000 mentally ill, homeless people running in the streets. And I'm equally frustrated because it's outside my office all day long. But I will say maybe the best and first thing that we can do is have a CEO. And I'm not endorsing Nithia.

And I've got, you know, I think there's, I'm not endorsing Karen or Nithia. But I do believe that it takes a good CEO to get rid of fraud and abuse, to have to judge programs on their efficiency and on their success and better manage the money. I mean, that really is the first step in solving homeless. And I would say in this, you know, I am in a mayoral race, right? And I would just say I feel like the trust in the system and the results that we're seeing are worse underbass, are worse underbass. Speaking of waste, fraud and abuse, what do you? you think of Nick Shirley? I think that the I want people to trust government again. And so my hope is that we build a system here in Los Angeles where Nick Shirley cannot come and find anything

to complain about. That's what I want to do. What do you think about the work he's doing and the fraud that he's allegedly. Well, I don't think it needs to be personal to Nick. I think why don't we just address fraud waste and abuse? It's bad. It's like I believe in a system where people should trust that their taxpayer dollars are going towards good outcomes. and good results, right? And so that kind of, if he's uncovering fraud, it's bad for government. It's bad for the cities that he's operating in.

Again, I want to make sure that we're building a city that he can't come to. It just seems as though there's a lot of money funneling to homeless advocates and homeless programs, and it creates an incentive for people not to really solve the problem. But that's why audits are important. that's why performance management is important. That's why transparency is important. That's why data is important. How do we get all of that?

I want to know how do we increase transparency? Because that's the main thing. Like if I could go documentation on the budgets of local governments, federal governments is so complicated. It's inaccessible. But if there was a sheet that was passed out to every citizen or whatever, like an email or something that was sent out once a month, hey, this is how much we made.

This is how much we spent. This is what the spending actually at, achieved, like, I don't understand why we don't have something like that. Almost like public corporations. It should be. Like, the government would never pass an audit, right? And yet I'm supposed to be able to keep control of it. Well, governments are audited all the time.

There's so many odds. I mean, the Pentagon has failed. It's like eighth audit. And everything runs in a deficit. There's a billion dollar deficit here. Like, where does the money go? Well, what are you using the controller? Because I think that best is.

Yes. So to me, it feels like transparency. Oh, transparency is number one. Transparency is the key. Transparency is the key. key. And part of the reason why I'm, you know, I'm endorsed by our city controller who has asked to audit our homelessness dollars, including Mayor Bass's Inside Safe intervention, which is $400 million, 40% of participants back to the streets, you know, $100,000 per person per year, some of those most expensive

motel rooms, most expensive interventions in homelessness. That is the exact kind of thing that we need to be auditing and being transparent about. And the way you can do it is by partnering with people like the city controller to not just make it transparent, but to make it easily legible for the public. Let's really show where our taxpayer dollars are going. Let's show where our beds are, how many of them are full on any given night, and how we can actually restore trust in the data that we're putting out there. Are we doing in-person visits to those sites?

Are we actually making sure that this data is robust? That system is one that I have actually been trying to build. at the city. I push really hard to create a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight. I created the first set of data and performance metrics at the city on these issues. And when I pushed harder to make it something that would be for every dollar in the city, this mayor and other people in leadership pushed back. And so that's part of the reason why I'm running. Why did they push back? Why did they not want the problem to get better? Have you seen the stats on Inside Safe? It 40, over 40 percent, And I don't know if the word recidivism is accurate, but 40% of the people that went into the program are back on the streets.

It's an abysmal record. The homeless count is up, unsheltered count is up 7.9% this year. We spent Inside Safe. Bass had a chance to work on homelessness. That was her baby, Inside Safe. It has been an abject failure, I think, in many metrics. And homelessness is up. So, I mean, I don't think she wants people to audit that.

I don't, I mean, naturally, I don't think she'd want to have that auditing. I think that we keep going back to homelessness, which is obviously it's a very pressing issue and extremely important to a lot of people that live here. I do want to go to the fraud, though, and I am curious if you could answer one of two possible answers. Is it a spending problem or isn't an income problem? And that's another question that a lot of business owners also ask themselves. It's like, am I having a spending problem or an income problem? Either way, more sales never hurt anybody. And with Black Friday coming up, this is the biggest chance all year to get them.

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I do want to go to the fraud, though, and I am curious if you could answer one of two possible answers. Is it a spending problem or isn't an income problem? Both are true. Okay. We definitely do not have the management and oversight that we need over many of our essential services to ensure that the city is delivering. what Angelinos expect and deserve. Whether it is on fixing potholes, fixing streetlights, on picking up trash, addressing graffiti, investing in our parks and public spaces,

these are all things that I think the departments can do better on delivering. And I think with better management, better oversight, we can deliver better outcomes and results? Why does it seem like Orange County does so much better in terms of their services? I want to interject because that's, by the way, it's such a complicated question what you just said. But I want to interject on a particular point, which you didn't raise, but I think it's a good kind of litmus test for this.

And I think we'll disagree on the income because, you know, I'm not as pro-tax as you probably. But Mayor Bass pushed for a remodel slash expansion of the downtown convention center, $2.9 billion project with another nearly $3 billion in financing. So it's going to cost nearly $6 billion. And by the way, that debt now is so much more expensive because of the bond. The government, have you seen the government bond market? I think it did go up a few hundred million dollars. Yes, it's going to be more expensive.

It's like this high speed rail. It's the LA version of the California high speed rail in terms of a boondoggle. Yeah. Now, I understand that my personal belief is that is that Mayor Bass want to do this to placate the unions, to get a bring jobs to downtown to get money in and endorsements into her campaign. Downtown, a lot of the downtown business interests, Airbnb were really pushing these, this intervention. I think there was one or two city council. I know you were one of them. I think there might have been one other that voted against this. And by the way, probably not in your political interest because the unions probably wanted this and the DSA probably wanted this, et cetera. But I give her a lot of credit for this. It's actually one of my favorite things about your, I think, your approach to this is that you're not, you don't just say yes to every project, even if the unions are for it, etc. But the cities, and I'm sorry to belabor this because you're a national audience, but I'll be really quick. The city's own rosy scenario, meaning their own best case scenario, is that the city of Los Angeles loses $90 million a year.

We don't make money on this investment. For the next 30 years. Yeah, for 30 years. So we lose $90 million. And Karen Bass pushed this. And now our tax dollars, who cares if it's income or expenditure? Let's say it's both. You don't need to agree on the income.

We definitely should not be throwing our money away so that politicians are getting endorsements and money into their political campaigns. And yes, of course the $6 billion is going to create jobs. And obviously we're not burning the money. It's going to do some good. But why would you spend $6 billion if you're getting $5 billion back? That makes no sense. And she said, no, this makes no sense. I give you credit for that.

Yeah. But this is the kind of thing that I, you know, this is part of why I want to bring more people into politics. I want more people looking at our local political system. I want more people making sure that politicians are actually pushing for things that actually deliver results for people. And I think that's at the heart. part of what you're asking for is transparency and accountability. And I do think that if we have more people engaged in our local politics, that these kinds of decisions, which often get made, you know, in back rooms, like they will come out into the open and people can say, hey,

this isn't the kind of city I want. This is not where I want my taxpayer dollars going, is into a convention center expansion when the convention business is shrinking. That just because downtown business interests want this, that we don't necessarily need to invest $6 billion of our public funds in it at a time when the city is already financially unstable, when we have the Olympics coming in and we may be facing financial issues as a result of that. So I think this is exactly the kind of thing that I believe that cities can do better at is actually making the case for our public spending, making sure that dollars are being tracked, making sure that we're actually delivering results and what I want to do as mayor.

Honestly, even if it was an abject failure, but there was transparency, I would be, like, the first person in line, like, rooting just at the ballot box, like, here we go, knit the around. Like, let's go. Okay. Well, I can, I can start, I will commit to transparency, but I also hope that it's not going to be an abject failure. We're actually going to deliver results.

Like, of course. Yeah. Naturally. Let's have something off to your goal. Obviously, that would be an amazing thing as if it was a success. But for me, it's, I just like, feel like. the average person experiences all of the negatives and virtually zero of the positives of the local policy. And they also have no idea why things are so bad.

They don't even know. And they ask questions like, oh, well, how do you reduce homelessness? Well, we're going to bolster the initiatives and we're going to make it easier to build homes. And we're going to do that. It's like, okay, that's like sort of descript, sort of nondescript. It's not very specific. I don't know what change I can actually expect because it's really easy just to say, this is the villain.

Like identifying the problem is not solving it. Right. But let's audit every dollar. Let's be transparent about what we're spending on and let us invest it. I love that. Let's invest in what works. And how do you how do you expect to reduce crime? I think people are feeling unsafe.

They feel a sense of of kind of insecurity because of street homelessness, because of, you know, because of encampments being on the streets. And I think making sure that we're able to bring people indoors is really important. It's really important for safety and it's also important for perceptions of safety. You know, studies have shown that people who are on the streets are also mostly the victims of crime. Like if there is crime in an area connected to homelessness, it's usually people who are experiencing homelessness themselves. Is it homeless on homeless crime, though? That it's hard, you know, people are, but people are victims out there.

It's not safe to be on the streets for mostly for people who are actually on the streets themselves. Like bringing people indoors into safety is really important for me. It is a humanitarian crisis on the streets. But I also think that if we can address graffiti, address pickup trash, make sure that we're addressing street homelessness, bringing people into safety, I actually think that people will feel safer. Do you think that, yeah, but don't you think that we need more police officers? So the city has, you know, tried to hire more police officers and our police force is shrinking. And so what a lot of the policies that I'm talking about, I've said I want to maintain the size of our existing police force. We need to make sure that we're hiring to attrition, which means improving our personnel department, making it easier and faster to recruit people, all, you know, all stuff that I think needs to happen at the city of Los Angeles across the board.

but I also really do think it's important for us to take a lot of the calls that are currently coming to LAPD off their plates. That there's thousands of calls that are coming in, calls for service that are for things that you don't need armed officers to go out for. Like the issue that you had with a person who is on your sidewalk, who is clearly homeless, who is maybe not someone you feel comfortable talking to, LAPD would come out to that situation and not be able to. to do anything, right? If there's not a crime happening there, if they're not a threat to themselves. Oh, there is a crime. They're doing drugs. Well, no, if they're just sitting on your sidewalk. No, no, they're doing they're doing drugs. Well, that's a different situation. Yeah. Right. What I'm talking about is someone sitting on your sidewalk talking to talking to themselves potentially. Oh, no, no, no. I mean, that that that's that's not what I'm taught. Anytime the police have been called, it's because they're doing drugs in public.

Right. So, but what I'm talking about is there's a whole set of calls that are coming in for situations where people feel uncomfortable talking to an individual, but they clearly need some assistance, right? That is where you have this unarmed mental health responders. And if you actually build that out, you can take thousands of call load off of LAPD, thousands of calls off of LAPD's plate, leave armed officers able to respond to the calls that you need armed officers to respond to. And you'll have actually trained responders for these other calls. We've done it in parts of Hollywood. We've done it in Los Fillas. There's a group that's responding to calls in Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys. And all, All of those places, what we've seen is that they are actually responding more effectively to those calls.

They don't often, almost never do they actually need to call LAPD as backup because those situations don't require police response at all, but they're actually able to deliver more safety, you know? More safety for the people who are calling. Also, if you can't hire and listen, I think both of us would want more police officers. There's obviously budgetary constraints, but it would probably be more of a priority for me than. There's necessarily budget constraints because we're spending, you know, we're wasting all this money. So we have the money for it. I don't disagree with you on hiring more police. But I think there is a compromise, which is if we're going to keep at least not let the

police force shrink and keep it the same size, that at least get those police officers out there handling crimes instead of being at desk jobs and instead of going out to call. But it also seems as though police officers lately have been villainized. And there's less of an incentive anymore to become a police officer. Like I remember as a kid when I was like six years old, I want to be a police officer. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Same. Now it just seems like, oh, the police officer is the bad guy.

We don't like the police officer. You know, I think that that environment is changing. I think that may have been true in the past. But I don't feel like that is the reason why we are not able to hire here in Los Angeles. The reason why we're not able to hire is because our personnel department is very slow. It's because we're not able to even fill our recruit classes fast enough. It takes a year to bring someone into a recruit class. This is bureaucratic barriers that we're facing to hiring.

What about the desk jobs? Because I don't think of that's. Oh, yeah. So there's like people in LAPD now who are doing jobs that are civilian jobs, administrative jobs, desk jobs. We need to think about how we can actually get people, hire civilians to do that work and get police officers deployed. And I think thinking about deployment, making sure deployment is adapting to meet new

conditions. Our basic car and patrol plans are from 30 years ago. Like, let's actually have a conversation about what deployment looks like and what it needs to be for 2026. But you think we should keep the police officers the same? You don't think we should hire more. I want to maintain the size of our police force. That's where we're at right now. Why do you believe that that is the right amount of police officers? I think it's too many because I got pulled over on the way over here. He did. On self-driving, by the way. Thanks, Jason. I want the record to reflect that I donated $100,000 to the police department and fire department. What, so they don't pull you over?

And then, and then, yeah. And all I wanted was a bumper sticker that I donated to that I can't get a mess with. And I didn't get a bumper sticker. But what makes you think that the current amount is the right amount? Why not less and why not more? Why is this the perfect? So I think that's a good question. That's, by the way, a question that should be asked is like, what is the right number of officers to respond to these?

Per citizens than like New York and other cities. No, that is actually true. But if you, it's interesting, I just looked at a comparison. list of the number of officers, like per capita officers, comparing a number of cities in California to other cities across America. And except for Beverly Hills, which is an outlier. Yeah, it's too small anyway. Well, but they have a lot of cops per population. How do we compare to like Chicago, New York? So compared to those cities, we have fewer officers per capita. But we have across California cities, we have almost the same per capita. Compared to San Francisco, yeah. Yeah, like compared to San Francisco

or I think San Diego. I can look this up. This was a RAND study. I'm sorry, I don't have all of these. No, but you're right, because I looked at it too. It's interesting. Like, California has fewer officers per capita than other California cities. But our cities are relatively similar.

Yeah, and I don't know. So what is the right number? The right number is the number that you need to respond to the calls for service that you're getting, right? So the question that I would have is, how do we get to that answer? What are the number of calls that we're getting? What kinds of calls are we getting? What is the appropriate deployment for the kinds of calls that we're getting? That's not a study that the city of L.A. has done recently.

Let's do that work. Let's actually answer those questions. This isn't what has, I'm sorry, but this has become just like an ideological test. It's like, you know, what do you? Well, that's why I want to push back and ask you, what's the difference between hiring more officers and hiring people to take the desk jobs and respond to the calls that don't require officers so that officers are available to do their work? Isn't that the same thing as hiring my office? I think whatever it takes to have a call under 10 minutes. I think it's reasonable to get someone out there.

I want to have a system in Los Angeles where if you call 911 for help, that someone picks up the phone quickly and that the right person shows up for your call. And I will do whatever it takes to build that system out here in the city of Los Angeles. It's not an ideological response. It's literally how do we make sure that residents of Los Angeles are getting the help that they need. I think that's a really good data point. Because what I love about your perspective is you want everything to back into some sort of metric that you can say, okay, you know, this used to be 45 minute average call time responding, you know, person on scene. I'm going to get that down to 32.

Right. And you slowly kind of like try to chip away at that. I really enjoy that. What would be an idea? You said every single call gets responded to. You're going to have someone there. What would be a good amount of time that the citizens of Los Angeles could kind of fall back into? There's too much nuance from, I mean, that's just a...

Yeah, it's a tough question because depending on the call. It's an impossible question. Because, well, yeah, you're going to have people my cats stuck in a tree and stuff like that. Right. And also where they live. I mean, it's an impossible question to give an minute, you know, eight minutes or 12 minutes. Right. And there's, and there's, and if it's an crime and commission, if there's violence happening, you need someone to show up immediately.

Drones. Just saying. Sure. Yeah. But if you have a situation where, um, you have a burglary that's already occurred, right? So let's say the burglar is gone. Your home has been burglarized. What is the appropriate and minimum time that you think someone should take? Well, it's not three days, which is what it is. Well, let's not. Yeah, three days is too long. Hours is too long.

What is the appropriate time? Let's try and meet that goal. I don't know off the top of my head what, what that goal should be that we should set, but let's set a goal and let's meet it, you know? And let's say if you don't need PD armed officers showing up to take the report after a burglar has already left, but you need to, someone to show up there and collect evidence and to make sure that you're filing the police report appropriately. Who can we send out? How do we make sure that that person goes out quickly? How do we actually make sure that system is responsive? These are questions that I want to ask about the city and how it functions that I think believe, that I believe require real discussion and analysis. We don't have that and standards. We don't have that and I want to interrupt you, but I know I know you probably are going to tap it at some point. And I want to push on this. I don't know how you guys have the stand. Oh, yeah, we keep going. It's wild. It's just chatting with friends.

Yeah, it doesn't give me. It's a muscle. I know, but I'm in the hot seat here. You can turn us in the hot seat. Ask us questions. Yeah, like, pin it around. I am so down, we can flip it around. But I'm going to keep it a hot seat for a second.

Yeah. But for benevolent reasons. And that is because I think a lot of people dismiss you because of the DSA Association. And by the way, in most elections, probably so would I. If I hadn't met you. And I probably didn't, and I didn't take the time to follow your policies and follow your and say, I mean, actually figure out what you're about. I probably would have dismissed you because I, you know, not everyone has the time. Right. Um, so I want to press

you on some, the, the DSA has some pretty extreme policies, which I highly doubt you, you espouse. And I'm not going to force you to like, you know, it's not a litmus test here. Sure. But at the same time, I do want to get out some of these policies, which concern a lot of people, moderates and conservatives, moreover. And that is, you know, abolish. You know, Abolishing prisons and abolishing the Senate and abolishing the Constitution. Well, I don't want to do any of that. Thank you. What about a wealth?

Wait, but I want to, hold on, I want to finish on the DSA policies if you don't mind. Sure. Because one of them is also getting rid of expropriating property from private ownership, which means basically the government owns housing and landlords and individuals like me and Graham can't own housing. So I believe in a public housing as. well. Like public housing plays a role, right? There's no. But does private? Private also plays a role. Must play a role in, I mean, does play a role and must play a role and must continue to play a role. And must continue to play a role. And my goal is to make it better. I mean, to make it a better environment for

people to rent in, make it a better people environment for, and I would say even make it a better environment for people to build and invest in, right? I don't think those two goals are, but not, I just want to try off these boxes so people don't say that, no, no, but there's, well, I apologize for There's a couple others that I'm trying. Oh, yeah, government owning large businesses. So literally part of the policy is that the government would take over ownership of Walmart or Tesla or other large companies. I mean, do you believe in corporate enterprise or the government should on those? I mean, I do believe in corporate enterprise.

And I would say the Trump administration has actually been doing more of this government ownership. Yeah, I don't disagree. But I just wanted to check these off. So that people can't just say, because if you go on the DSA website, it is a concerning platform. Yeah. But I don't think you're espousing, even though you're endorsed by them, I don't think you're espousing that. Didn't they, like, refuse to endorse you after the housing thing or the mansion tax thing happened? No, they've endorsed me again.

But yes, we have some disagreements. But I would just say, look, the DSA, I think there's, I don't want to delve too deeply necessarily. But I will just say that I think there's a lot of robust conversations. out there, even within the DSA about housing policy. And it's a big tent. And the coalition that I'm bringing into this race is the biggest possible tent, you know. And it has to be because we're up against establishment politics. And to me, the definition of establishment politics in a city like this is one where you

take the voters for granted, where you're not working every single day to earn their trust. And I have never been that kind of politician. And that's what I want to, I want to be a mayor that works every day to earn Angelino's trust. And we should, by the way, we should not be going to the ballot box holding our noses and casting a vote. And I will say that every single person I've talked to that supports Karen Bass, and I'm not taking a position. But I don't think I've met someone who actually is excited to vote for Karen Bass. If anything, they are going to hold their nose and check on Karen Bass in the ballot box. And that is not how we should be voting for a mayor.

Yeah, but on financial policy for millionaires like girls. and billionaires like Jason, would you introduce it? Or do you support some sort of a wealth tax? And how would their taxes change? I think that wealthier people should pay more in taxes. I do believe that. Okay. I know this.

So do I. Okay. I'm not philosophically against taxation. But I will, yes. And I think, you know, I think that people who are making more money should pay more because we are all contributing to a society and that society, the more stable that society is the better off everyone is, right? And I believe that people who are wealthier should pay more. How much more? Hold on. I don't have, look. We, I think we all agree

on that. Yes, but here's the reality. Here's the reality. I disagree. Here's why. Here's why. I'll tell you. Oh, really? I'll tell you why I really believe. I keep harping on the issue of trust, though, because the city of Los Angeles, it does not have the trust of its residents right now. The city hall has lost the faith and trust of Angelinos. And so even if I wanted to pass a tax right I don't think I could get it past. In fact, I know that because in June, there were two taxes on the ballot, a tourism tax, meaning residents weren't even going to pay it. Tourists were going to pay it. And the residents of the city of Los Angeles said no to that tax increase.

And they said no to a tax increase to fund streetlight repairs. So the city of Los Angeles, if we want to raise taxes, we got to earn trust again. And I am here to earn your trust. That is what I'm going. Here's my question back on. I would pay tax if I trusted it was going. Oh, yeah, of course. Everything hinges on transparency.

Yeah. But that's why I'm saying no on higher taxes because it's raising taxes and then it's just being squandered. It is just being wasted. Those are two separate arguments. Yeah, but why should we tax first before actually getting the spending under control? That's not what I'm, I just literally said the opposite, sir. You know, I'm saying let's build trust again.

And then I'll come back to you. But you also said that rich people should pay more. Well, I would say that too. Yeah, but that's not more than what they're currently paying. That's just more than what they're currently paying. That's just more than what we increase taxes. California is already you're paying more than 50%. So like when is it just purely just...

Yes. We're not dictating federal policy. Yeah. I'm sure. What I'm here to say is that not have a hypothetical argument. What I'm here to say is that the city of Los Angeles needs to deliver essential services and earn your trust again. And that's what I am running for mayor.

I want to do that. I really believe in City Hall. I think it can, I want people to raise their expectations for Los Angeles and I want to work as hard as possible to meet them. That is my goal. So in all on, If I'm at the ballot box with the limited information that I have, I would vote for you. Yes. And the reason is.

I mean, you and I probably disagree pretty aggressively on things. We do. But I deeply, deeply, deeply admire your willingness to come and sit down on a podcast. And like, I don't even know. I don't think you asked for editing privileges or anything. You're like, yeah, I'm going to come. I'm going to sit down. Like, I'm going to have a conversation.

I'm willing to have nuanced discussions. And I really admire that. not just because it's really nice for us because we want to make episodes, but also because, like, it's great that you're willing and able to do that. A lot of people completely deny that. And the only thing, the only logical conclusion that I can have is that they're too ideological and they're not willing to actually back into their beliefs. They just want to say something, get people to support them, and then leave.

Yeah. So I appreciate you doing this. In fairness as well, we did reach out to Karen Bass. We never heard back. So for the record, we tried. You responded back. You came on. I really appreciate that.

And so. And I appreciate you, too. And I really, I want to say that, I know that, yeah, there's probably a lot that we have real disagreements about. But I hope that if I am elected mayor, that we can have this conversation in two years and that you'll say, yes, I have more trust and faith in the city of Los Angeles. That's my goal. And we're going to ring that bell. And if I could ever be of service or just a sounding board. Housing policy.

Okay. Yeah. For anything. Seriously. I would love to be available at any point because like I said, I grew up here and unfortunately, I've had really bad experiences. So if there's anything I could provide from my perspective, whether or not it goes anywhere, I'm always open. Let's see what happens on November 3rd, but let's keep this conversation open. So I just want to say to everyone who's watching out there, maybe with some skepticism, my strongest ideology is delivering results for the residents of Los Angeles.

And definitely go out and vote. definitely go out and make your voices heard. And I hope that I have the chance to deliver for you. Thank you so much for calling on the ice. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you for making this happen. Jason.

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