The Brief

Tanner “The Planner" Blackman does not swing hammers or lay foundations. He does not raise funds or finesse land deals. He does not draft blueprints, write contracts, test soil conditions or calculate the varied seismic loads that a new building can sustain.

Blackman’s job is a mostly under the radar, but often indispensable, fixture of California’s urban housing market: He helps people get their building projects approved.

So-called land-use consultants and permit expediters are wayfinders of bureaucracy, sherpas of red tape. If the left hand of a city’s building safety department doesn't know what the right hand of its sanitation bureau is doing, the expediter's job is to pull them into a handshake.

Such services are not in demand everywhere in California. Wherever the path from preliminary application to permit issued is so costly, tedious and unpredictable that developers and desperate homeowners are willing to pay someone else to endure the journey on their behalf, expediters flourish. Los Angeles is one of those places. It’s also where Blackman does most of his work, even though he lives in San Diego.

And yes, he feels a little weird about all of this.

Speaking over Zoom, Blackman wears glasses, a Dodgers hat and the ironic grin of a self-described former urban planning “do-gooder.” As an example of the duties his job sometimes entails, he recounts a recent trip to Los Angeles.

Projects located in L.A.’s hillside neighborhoods require special municipal permission to have dirt taken away. The project Blackman represents is not in a hillside neighborhood, but it is on a road that passes through one, which evidently amounts to the same thing. A city board had approved an earlier dirt removal plan but with allowable hauling hours so narrow the developer estimates the dirt removal would drag on an additional six weeks. Rather than go back to the board, Blackman had to take his case to city council, arguing against this previously approved dirt plan in order to revise it.

Because of course he did.

“This whole stupid thing, we had to do this fire drill, get a bunch of extra billable hours for people like me,” he said. “In a perfect world, my job would not need to exist.”

Los Angeles, like many of California’s big cities, is far from Blackman’s perfect world. The state grapples with some of the most expensive housing in the country. For decades, many experts have pointed to the cumbersome and unpredictable pace of getting new homes approved in our desirable metros as one of, if not the, major cause of our housing affordability woes.

State lawmakers have tried to speed things up. They’ve passed dozens of bills aimed at simplifying residential development over the last decade.

But even though Blackman profits off of the regulatory wrinkles that this legislative blitz is supposed to have smoothed out, the new rules don't keep him up at night. Yes, state laws have created new pathways to speedily approve new housing. But there’s still plenty of work out there finding ways to design and coax projects to fit onto those pathways.

“This just creates a new space for us to fight around,” he said.

Meet the fixer

Blackman didn’t set out to become a project pusher.

Fresh out of graduate school, he got a job with the Los Angeles Planning Department and spent most of his five years there studying possible changes to municipal policy. It was illuminating work, but disillusioning too. “After having been inside the beast for a while, I was less convinced that I was on the side of good,” he said. “I felt like the villain in a Kafka novel.”

He landed his first consulting gig in 2015 where he found the work more compatible with his personality. “I’m better at finding the loopholes rather than being the guy who can keep the boat afloat.”

The work goes by a number of different names, which vary by location and speciality. “Land use consultant” is one you’d most like to have on your business card, conferring a degree of cerebral respectability and an expertise in zoning, environmental review and the overlapping complexities of state and local law most relevant at the early “entitlement” stage of development.

Then there’s “permit expediter,” a title that connotes the more lowly trade of assembling the right papers in the right order and pushing them from one city clerk’s window to another.

In fact, Blackman does both jobs. He’s also a registered lobbyist, as are most members of his professional tribe in Los Angeles. He describes his work as “kind of like a lawyer but cheaper” and “project manager,” though not in the corporate sort of way. Tanner Blackman will also accept merely “planner” — “it helps to have a job that rhymes with your name.”

In the plainest of English, he’s a regulatory real estate fixer. Lucky for him, there’s plenty of demand for fixers in Los Angeles. Getting a project okayed is no simple task.

Tanner Blackman works in his home office in San Diego on Sept. 21, 2026. Tanner is a land use consultant who helps clients navigate through paperwork and permits to get housing building projects approved.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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First a project will often need permission, in general terms, to use a particular piece of land in a particular way — to build a house of a certain size or an apartment building of a specified height. In the City of Los Angeles, that entitlement process, overseen by the planning department, takes an average of 8.5 months, according to data collected by the state housing department. But it can take much longer than that. The project Blackman needed the haul route permit for was stuck in entitlement for nearly five years.

After the thumbs up from planning comes a gauntlet of project-specific approvals. Can the proposed building withstand an earthquake? Will it be vulnerable to fire? Does it comply with state and local energy efficiency standards? Is it accessible to those with disabilities? Do trees need to be added to the site? Removed? All of these questions require an answer and every answer comes in the form of a permit.

That’s assuming you know how to get them in the first place.

A typical project might include 25 separate reviews and clearances, said Gary Benjamin, another L.A-based consultant, who spoke to CalMatters earlier this year. “If you aren’t someone like myself who has navigated this process multiple times, you may not even know who to contact,” he said.

Putting a price on permitting

Such complexity is why the City of Los Angeles hosts a thriving market in “ready-to-issue” parcels, plots of bare land that have undergone all the regulatory prep work necessary to build something, but which are physically untouched. From the sidewalk, a vacant lot with the coveted “RTI” designation would look identical to the same one without it. On paper, the RTI plot is months, if not years further down the approval pipeline.

That makes it much more valuable.

In a recent study, two economists compared the sales prices of lots before and after they’d received the “ready-to-issue” label. Across Los Angeles County, they found, such a state of regulatory readiness adds about 50% to the raw land value.

To put that in perspective, imagine a typical $1.5 million patch of development-primed dirt. Only $1 million of that price reflects the value of the actual land, according to the study. The remaining $500,000 comes from the value of not having to wade through the local review process — and pay insurance, property tax and interest payments while you wait.

That, according to the authors, is the price tag on LA’s approval process.

Which helps explain why people like Blackman can charge tens of thousands of dollars to the developers, builders and landowners who can afford their services.

“Those jobs exist only because we’ve made the process really difficult,” said Evan Soltas, the Princeton economist who co-authored the paper with Harvard’s Jonathan Gruber. “It’s a sad statement of how hard it's become that this has become its own form of expertise.”

What’s the hold up?

Not all delays are created equal.

If one city is especially slow at turning around a set of building permits, that might reflect the fact that it’s especially tricky to build there. Doing heavy construction around existing buildings and infrastructure is going to be inherently more complicated — and may warrant a finer-tooth regulatory once-over — than building the same thing on an untouched plot of exurban farmland.

In many of California’s large cities “a lot of the work is adjusting and fixing and readapting older buildings, which is much different from building something ground up,” said Andrew Junius, a partner at the Bay Area real estate law firm Reuben, Junius & Rose. “This isn’t like making cookies. Every project is different. Every building is different.”

But a city’s permitting process can also reflect its specific policy choices. In Los Angeles most projects with 50 units or more get an extra vetting by the planning department thanks to a city ordinance from 1990. This can add months, if not years, to the development process, which may explain the high number of 49-unit apartment buildings in the city.

Sluggish approvals can also reflect no policy choice at all. In San Francisco no single entity is responsible for making sure that the various regulatory nodes of government talk to one another.

“It just evolved that way, there was no grand design at the beginning,” said Fred Brousseau, a partner with Harvey M. Rose Associates, a San Francisco consultant company that analyzed the city’s permitting process in a report this spring. Though project delays almost always get blamed on the city, even in cases when the developer is at fault, “it would be useful to have a little more birddogging of the laggard applications,” he said.

A new space for us to fight

Times are changing for California’s expediters.

Once upon a time, whether a housing project progressed or not was left almost entirely to the discretion of California’s local governments and their elected leaders. That made the insidery arts of glad-handing and trading on connections the most prized skills for land use consultants.

But greasing the skids of city government can get dangerously close to greasing palms — a point regularly made by pro-development advocates, small government conservatives and the occasional newspaper editorial board.

In 2021, Walter Wong, maybe California’s most notorious expediter, pleaded guilty in a corruption scandal that shook San Francisco city politics. Among his confessed wrong doings: Showering top permitting officials with international travel in exchange for the snappy approval of a major mixed-use development project.

Overly exuberant expediters have been prosecuted in New York and Washington D.C. In 2024, Los Angeles Councilmember José Huizar was sentenced to 13 years in prison for using his perch atop the city’s powerful Planning and Land Use Management Committee to approve development projects in exchange for cash and other gifts.

Quid pro quo-ing one’s way to project approval isn’t as easy as it used to be.

Houses under construction in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Aug. 5, 2026. The area was severely burned during the Palisades Fire in early 2025.

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Jules Hotz

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CalMatters

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The California Legislature has spent the last decade passing a torrent of housing laws designed to override local approval processes like the ones Blackman has developed an expertise in navigating. “Ministerial approval” or “by right” are the terms of statutory art — as in, the act of building an apartment tower in certain urban neighborhoods is now a right enjoyed by developers, not a privilege to be reluctantly dispensed by skeptical council members.

State lawmakers have also passed a series of laws aimed at speeding up, standardizing and outsourcing the building permitting process.

"The political skillset is less important now,” said Michael Hansen, a San Diego consultant who used to serve as the city’s planning director. Rather than attend meetings downtown trying to convince elected officials of the merits of a project, much of his current work is of a more technical nature: Figuring out if and how a given state streamlining law can be applied to a particular project.

“There’s still quite a bit of work trying to get a project to fit within the ministerial box," he said.

Blackman said he can’t remember the last time he had to convince local elected officials to allow a zoning change, which used to be his professional bread and butter. But “I still think there is abundant work in my space for folks like us,” he said.

His job — which in his heart Blackman believes should not exist — appears to be safe for now.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A Los Angeles homelessness planning body voted Tuesday to have L.A. County officials take over the region’s yearly homeless count and handle applying for federal homelessness funds on behalf of the region — two jobs currently held by the embattled L.A. Homeless Services Authority.

The decision by the L.A. Continuum of Care — in a 310-9 vote — comes after the Trump administration sidelined the agency, known as LAHSA, from the federal-facing roles it’s held for decades. It signals a loss of power for LAHSA and a major shift in homelessness oversight for the L.A. area, passing significant control of the region’s homelessness response to L.A. County officials.

What happens next

Volunteers at the 2023 L.A. homeless count review the map of Westwood prior to heading out.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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If Tuesday’s selections are approved by a federal judge, L.A. County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing will soon be in charge of conducting the region’s annual point-in-time homelessness tally, instead of LAHSA. The county would also take over the responsibility for submitting annual homelessness funding applications for hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, on behalf of the whole region.

The timeline for these responsibilities being fully transferred away from LAHSA is expected to be determined by a federal judge in the coming weeks.

How we got here

LAHSA is the city and county’s joint-powers homelessness authority. In June, HUD suspended the agency from performing its federal-facing responsibilities, citing financial mismanagement. LAHSA sued. In August, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter paused LAHSA’s suspension. He also ordered the L.A. Continuum of Care to run an evaluation process to replace LAHSA in federal roles within 60 days.

The L.A. Continuum of Care is a HUD-recognized group representing homeless services providers, government agencies and community advocates across L.A. County. It’s responsible for choosing the entity that fills these federal roles. The Trump administration’s suspension of LAHSA forced the group to consider alternatives.

L.A. County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing was the only agency or organization that applied to manage both the homeless count and the region’s yearly application for federal homelessness dollars.

What’s next?

While a report is due to Carter on Tuesday, Oct. 13, the full selection process he ordered is not yet complete. The L.A. Continuum of Care still needs to vote on its final designations for who should succeed LAHSA in two other federal roles: managing a database that tracks unhoused Angelenos and running the system used to match people with shelter and housing. The City of Los Angeles and L.A. County are competing for those roles.

A vote scheduled Oct. 9 was delayed when over 1,000 people overwhelmed the Zoom capacity. It will be rescheduled — no date has been set yet.

The court’s preliminary injunction pausing LAHSA’s suspension is set to expire on Oct. 27.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Hollywood Park, the home of SoFi Stadium, is throwing its financial weight into a campaign to block Inglewood Mayor James Butts’ bid for reelection on Nov. 3, according to campaign finance records.

The Take Back Inglewood campaign is the latest signal that Butts’ ties to SoFi Stadium owner Stan Kroenke are unraveling as the city battles its stadiums over billboard deals and $400 million in infrastructure payments.

Inglewood’s stadium interests have supported Butts politically and financially in past elections, according to reporting from the LA Times, but a spokesperson for the Hollywood Park-funded campaign said stadium officials lost confidence in Butts. 

“The relationship changed because, in their experience, they could no longer trust him to deal with them honestly and fairly,” Shallman said. “Political support isn’t a lifetime contract.” 

Butts fired back in an interview with The LA Local that the campaign is about trying to protect Hollywood Park’s business interests. 

“They believe because they have millions to spend on advertising, they can manipulate the electorate into voting against someone that has changed the entire trajectory and value of our city” the four-term mayor said, adding in a later written statement that his record speaks for itself. 

Since last summer, Inglewood officials and the stadiums have been duking it out in court over the terms of their relationship and the city’s financial deals with billboard operator WOW Media. Judges have ruled in favor of the WOW arrangement, but last month voided the city’s contract with Hollywood Park.

Now, both sides are pouring millions into Inglewood’s election, looking to sway voters. 

A new batch of election finance filings released Monday in response to a public records request from The LA Local show Take Back Inglewood is entirely funded by $750,000 from Hollywood Park. Butts’ own campaign, by comparison, has spent $264,085 this year out of just over $610,000 in total funds.

Elsewhere, the stadium-backed Neighbors for Beautiful Inglewood has spent $3.1 million campaigning for the anti-billboard Measure BB. Inglewood Residents for Stadium Accountability, funded by WOW, has put $2.5 million of its own into trying to block BB and pushing for the ticket tax increase Measure AT.

Fernando Guerra, a Loyola Marymount University political scientist, said the campaign dollars are unsurprising. Inglewood’s place as an international sports and entertainment hub has turned it into a prime place for a contentious, expensive election, Guerra said.

“It’s par for the course when you combine contracts and politics and cities needing to raise revenue,” Guerra said. “The higher the stakes, the more the money that’s going to be spent.”

Butts told The LA Local he sees the stadium campaigns as paternalistic, and that they treat voters as pawns in Hollywood Park’s economic interests.

Shallman countered that the campaign is not tied to the stadium development’s disputes with the city and said Butts has in the past defended the support he received from Inglewood venues. The stadium development, he said, has a natural stake in the race through its employees.

“These aren’t outsiders who parachuted into Inglewood. The venues have invested billions of dollars in the city, created thousands of jobs,” he said. Shallman added that locals have aired their own criticisms of Butts’ leadership.

Butts isn’t without his own allies. Billboard interests have put $80,000 into the mayor’s reelection campaign since January alone, with more coming from real estate firms. Butts said campaign donations don’t influence his decisions as mayor. 

“My decisions are driven by the needs of our community,” Butts said.

Take Back Inglewood isn’t backing any of the five candidates running against Butts, Shallman said, at least for now. 

“They reserve the right to weigh in if they feel the need,” Shallman said. “The key at this stage is to make sure voters are aware of his record.”

Los Angeles resident Noemi Tagorda’s mother and grandmother used to go to Langer’s Delicatessen, buy chicken and enjoy their meal with a relaxing picnic in MacArthur Park. Tagorda shared her story during her address to Mayor Karen Bass regarding public safety at a candidate forum on Sunday in a Westlake church.

“That’s virtually impossible for anyone to experience now,” Tagorda said. “Now when you say MacArthur Park, you think of a place that is destitute, [where] there’s just a lot of human suffering, and it’s not a place where you think you can go and relax.”

Hundreds of people from different faith backgrounds attended the public accountability assembly at Precious Blood Church hosted by One LA-IAF, a network of diverse religious and non-profit institutions across Los Angeles County.

Mayor Karen Bass says farewell during a public accountability assembly hosted by One LA-IAF at Precious Blood Church in Westlake in Los Angeles, Calif. on Oct. 11, 2026.

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Isaac Ceja

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The LA Local

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The forum included Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman, along with candidates for L.A. County sheriff. 

Parishioners like Tagorda walked up to the stage to share their stories and faith leaders then asked each candidate if they were willing to work with One LA-IAF to address the issues while giving each candidate a minute to respond. 

The key issues discussed during the event included: immigration, public safety, sidewalk repair and sex trafficking. 

Manuel Olvera, a member of St. Anthony Catholic Church in San Gabriel, shared the story of a friend and immigrant churchgoer who asked Olvera to share his story on his behalf due to fear.

In the story, Olvera shared that the man and his son had recently lost their jobs due to the current situation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and have been living off of their savings for months.

“It’s not just difficult trying to survive financially,” said Olvera in Spanish on the immigrant’s behalf. “It’s also having your home be a prison.”

Nithya Raman stands at the podium during a public accountability assembly hosted by One LA-IAF at Precious Blood Church in Westlake in Los Angeles, Calif. on Oct. 11, 2026.

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Isaac Ceja

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The LA Local

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On immigration 

Councilmember Raman committed to hosting an immigration retreat and meeting with One LA-IAF. She shared that she is also an immigrant from India, who arrived in the US when she was 6. 

She added that Bass proposed to cut legal defense funds in the last budget. The city council eventually approved $1.5 million in funds for the immigrant legal defense program in the final budget earlier this year.

“If I am elected mayor, I will make it higher and ensure that immigrants who are facing deportation have the resources they need to be able to respond.”

Mayor Bass made the same commitment as Raman with One LA-IAF but when it came to the topic of immigration, she chose to focus on her past work of being part of a congressional hearing alongside Congressman Robert Garcia. 

“It was several months ago, but you came to me and you proposed the idea of doing a city hearing on immigration, we established a great partnership then,” said Bass to One LA-IAF. “And what we did was we actually turned it into an official congressional hearing and what I am hopeful is that in the next 25 days or so, I try not to count, we will have a change in the House of Representatives.”

Manuel Olvera shared the story of a fellow parishioner who was afraid to speak due to his immigration status during a public accountability assembly hosted by One LA-IAF at Precious Blood Church in Westlake in Los Angeles, Calif. on Oct. 11, 2026.

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(Isaac Ceja

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The LA Local

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On public safety 

Bass wants to focus on differentiating between drug dealers and drug users and fighting for residential drug treatment if elected to a second term in office.

“We need to separate those people who prey on our people, who are the drug dealers and the criminal element, from the people who are addicted to the drugs, and we need to get treatment for those people,”  Bass said. 

Raman shared the successes on reducing homelessness in her district and wants to center a compassionate response to the ongoing crisis.

“We have had incredible results on addressing homelessness, a 50% reduction in the number of people living on the street just last year, even as homelessness went up citywide,”  Raman said. “I do not believe that a compassionate response to the crisis on our streets and the safety of our residents have to be in conflict.”

Closing statements

For the final question, organizers asked each candidate if they were willing to meet regularly to address the topics discussed, collaborate on other issues if needed and if the candidate was willing to host a retreat.

Bass said that she believes the group meets regularly with her office and agreed to not only host the retreat, but also being there in person.

“I believe the way you bring about change is from the inside and outside strategy,” said Bass. “That’s a must-do, and I also think it’s important that if you really believe in change and if you really believe in all the issues we talk about, then you’ve got to show up. You’ve got to be there. It’s not just about your idea or all of that, but you have to be there.”

Raman said that the needs in the city are so great and city resources are not enough to address them, so she is happy to commit to partnering with One LA-IAF.

“I know from my work on the council that nothing succeeds without partnership with the people, and so I’m deeply committed to coming to you and partnering with you before we put any of this forward, so that we face the highest likelihood of success, and so that we can lift up our city and its needs together,” Raman said. 

Tagorda, who is also a parent of a student at Precious Blood school, told the LA Local that she was happy seeing people from different faiths and parts of the city participating in the event.

“It’s really great to have that cross-religious platform of all the different religious organizations coming together and sharing the same stories and working together to get the government’s attention on issues that are important to us as a community,” said Tagorda.

Looking for the facts about what’s on the ballot and how it will affect your neighborhood? Visit thelalocal.org/elections for voter guides, news and more.

The post Voters take LA mayoral candidates to church in Westlake election forum appeared first on LA Local.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years to life in prison for orchestrating the murder of rap icon Tupac Shakur who was gunned down off the Las Vegas Strip over 30 years ago.

Davis, 63, was convicted in August of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon. He is the only person ever charged in the death of Shakur, whose popularity was peaking at age 25.

Prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said Tuesday that whatever sentence the court imposes, Davis is “guaranteed to die” behind bars.

“It’s not just about losing a family member,” DiGiacomo said as Shakur’s sister Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur nods her head in the audience.

The killing went unsolved for years until Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, gave interviews and published his role in the shooting in his 2019 tell-all memoir.

DiGiacomo said Davis was trying to profit off a killing that he committed, and for that he does not deserve the minimum sentence.

“In my mind he deserves the maximum possible sentence,” DiGiacomo said.

Davis spoke briefly in court, telling Judge Carli Kierny he wants items back that police took from his house, including his pictures. Asked if there was anything else he wanted to say, Davis said: “No, I’m good.”

Davis’ lawyer, Michael Sanft, said he plans to appeal the verdict. Sanft said prosecutors waited too long to bring the case.

On the night of Sept. 7, 1996, Shakur was in the passenger seat of a black BMW with music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight when a white Cadillac pulled up at a red light, and shots erupted. Shakur was shot multiple times and died six days later, while Knight survived.

Shakur is considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time and had a burgeoning film career as an actor at the time of his death. His legend has only grown since. His songs still resonate among fans with themes of hardship, love and Black struggles.

In his memoir, Davis explained how Shakur and his entourage beat up Davis’ nephew hours before the shooting in Las Vegas. He said he sought retaliation, and that he was in the passenger seat of the Cadillac and passed the gun to the backseat, where shots were fired. Davis had spoken to detectives years before but avoided prosecution because of an agreement he made with law enforcement.

During the weekslong trial, prosecutors relied on Davis’ own statements he made to law enforcement and documentarians. They argued Davis orchestrated the shooting and provided the gun used in Shakur’s death, which was the result of a rivalry between the South Side Compton Crips and Mob Piru. Davis’ defense attorney pointed to a lack of physical evidence that connected his client to the 30-year-old crime, and he portrayed Davis as a liar who was trying to make money.

After nine days of hearing testimony in August, the jury deliberated for three hours before turning over the guilty verdict.

Shakur was an icon, a brother

Shakur’s family spoke at the sentencing, including his siblings Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur and Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur.

Following the verdict, prosecutor Binu Palal said that to many people, Shakur was an icon or an idea, “but to the family, Tupac Shakur was a brother, a son, a cousin, a loved person ripped from them 30 years ago.”

Palal said the family had to sit through years of Davis “bragging about killing someone they loved.”

“They loved that man. And the arrogance that Mr. Davis had in expressing his joy in killing that man ultimately was his undoing,” Palal said.

Prosecutors say they have insufficient evidence to charge anyone else

Davis is the only person to be charged and convicted in the killing of Shakur. The three other people who allegedly were in the Cadillac — including Davis’ nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, who Davis said was the one who pulled the trigger — have died.

Sean “Diddy” Combs and his alleged role were brought up often throughout the trial. Witnesses testified Combs used members of the South Side Compton Crips for security for Bad Boy Records. In his book and public statements, Davis alleged Combs offered him money to kill Shakur and Knight. Combs, who is serving a four-year prison sentence after being convicted of prostitution-related offenses, has repeatedly denied any involvement in the death of Shakur.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson has said his office doesn’t believe it has sufficient evidence to charge anyone else.

“But like any other case, if we come into more information, more evidence, we can always consider filing additional charges,” he said following the guilty verdict. “But today, we don’t believe that’s the appropriate move to make.”