Eight days after losing reelection, Bass opens $648,000-a-room motel conversion, explains defeat in eight words

Six hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars buys a door in North Hills, and behind the door is a motel room that was a motel room before anyone cut a ribbon in front of it. You will want to know where the mistake went in. There was no mistake. Seventy-two million dollars of Project Homekey money, divided per door, comes to six hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars a door, because the formula that released the money is built to come to precisely that. Not exceeded, mind you. Met. Someone will call this an overrun, and an overrun is a program that has gone past its design ... this one arrived at its design, to the dollar. You are thinking the mayor addressed the arithmetic. She offered eight words, and the subject of the eight words was election results around the country. Eight. On the fifth of November the projection went to Raman, by twenty-six thousand votes, three points. On the thirteenth the ribbon was cut. Los Angeles paid seventy-two million dollars for rooms at six hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars each, and no rule was broken to reach that price.