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Buying a home in California requires a colossal amount of money — and coming up with a 20% cash down payment of $180,000 for a median price home is a staggering hurdle for many would-be buyers.

That down payment amount is based on the statewide median $900,000 price tag for a house, according to recent data from the California Assn. of Realtors. In Los Angeles County, the median price for a single-family home is $935,000. In Orange County, it’s $1.5 million.

Proposition 37 on the Nov. 3 ballot would allow the state to amass a $25 billion down payment assistance program for middle-class households. For perspective on the enormity of the measure before voters, one of the state’s existing down payment programs, California Dream For All, launched several years ago with $500 million, just 2% of the funding involved in Proposition 37.

The ballot measure would allow qualified prospective homebuyers to borrow up to 17% of the sales price of a new home, contributing 3% of the down payment from their own funds.

The program would not be funded by taxpayers, but instead by the interest charged to borrowers on their down payment loans, also referred to as second mortgages. The measure has garnered widespread support, including from Gov. Gavin Newsom, statewide unions and mayors from Santa Monica to San José.

“Prop. 37 is a historic opportunity to expand homeownership opportunities for generations of working families — at zero cost or risk to taxpayers,” Newsom said in a statement.

But Proposition 37 carries a significant caveat: Any home purchased through the program must be new construction, which could limit its potential reach because of the high cost of building, some critics said.

Also, the proposition does not spell out the terms or interest rates on the loans, which would be worked out if the measure is approved. And some have questioned whether there will be sufficiently robust interest from investors to buy the state-issued bonds that will be used to fund the down payment loans.

The concept of down payment assistance is not new. Cities and states, including California, have long offered such programs to low- and middle-income homeowners, either in the form of loans or grants, and there are reportedly more than 2,700 such programs across the country.

Nevada, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York all have programs to help homebuyers afford a down payment. Since 2021, New York has dispersed $70 million in down payment assistance. In Massachusetts, more than $146 million has been doled out in down payment help to homebuyers since 2020.

How the program would work

Under Proposition 37, down payment loans would work like any other, and would carry an interest rate and payback period — all of which would be determined by the California Housing Finance Agency.

To qualify, borrowers would need to have lived in the state for at least a year and earn no more than 200% of the local median income; in Los Angeles County, for example, that equates to a family of four earning no more than $216,200 a year.

Borrowers don’t have to be first-time homebuyers, which is often a requirement of down payment aid programs. But they would need to live in the home.

The program would restrict the price of qualifying homes, depending on the county where someone is trying to buy. A general estimate, though, is that would-be homebuyers would be limited to houses costing between $1 million and $1.5 million and the homes, more importantly, would need to be new construction.

While Proposition 37 has little opposition, and is supported by unions, chambers of commerce and organizations representing builders, the League of Women Voters opposes the ballot measure, concerned it would saddle residents with too much debt and that the terms of these loans are opaque, the details worked out only after the vote.

New homes only

Only buyers of newly-built homes would be eligible for these loans. That could include existing commercial buildings that had been converted into homes, such as condos or townhomes.

This provision is uncommon as many existing down payment assistance programs don’t strictly limit the type of home someone can buy — only the sale price. Bob Hertzberg, former Senate Majority Leader and the architect of the proposal, said he wanted Proposition 37 to spur new construction.

“The problem is we have to increase supply,” Hertzberg said. The shortage of homes in the state is estimated to range anywhere from 840,000 to upwards of 3 million.

By creating more demand for new homes, he said, the hope is that builders will respond en masse.

But some groups are wary of this logic. One analysis, funded by the Proposition 37 campaign, estimated that this program could result in the building of 190,000 homes in the state, although the report’s author said it was “impossible to know” the true number given the various factors that impact housing.

Matthew Lewis, director of communications for California YIMBY, an organization that advocates making it easier and cheaper to build homes, said high prices make it clear that the demand for homes already exists and that Proposition 37 does little to address a bigger issue: the cost of building.

“In concept, [Proposition 37 is] a great idea,” Lewis said. “The thing we’re concerned about is, California is still way behind on its housing production goals, so there’s the risk of an unintended consequence of instead of having 10 people bidding on a house, now you’ve given a couple folks down payment assistance, and so there’s now 12 people bidding on the same house.”

To drive builders to construct eligible homes, the measure would allow them to opt into a “qualified builder” option. As long as they adhere to price caps, agree to certain labor requirements and fix repairs that arise, they’re protected from lawsuits from buyers concerning defects 10 years after construction of the home.

Homebuilders say even given some relief from litigation, they aren’t sure Proposition 37 would push construction into overdrive.

“There are so many more things the state, city and county could do to help add more supply [of homes],” said Paul Schon, a developer who builds apartments in L.A. County. He said tackling permitting times and red tape involved in building would have a greater impact. “This is minor,” he said.

Interest rates could be a tough sell

Many down payment assistance programs offer interest-free loans to homebuyers, including an existing program run by CalHFA.

But in order to be self-funding, the fixed-rate loans offered through Proposition 37 would carry interest. If passed, the state would issue revenue bonds, selling them to investors and using that money to issue loans to homebuyers. The investors are repaid with the interest paid on the loans.

According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, CalHFA would decide the total amount of bonds to issue and over what period of time.

Revenue bonds are generally viewed as riskier than other types of government bonds, in part because they’re backed by the promise of revenue from a specific project — in this case, payment by individual borrowers. That means interest rates on these loans could be higher than borrowers might like or be able to afford.

Hertzberg said he’s talked to investors who may be willing to buy these bonds at cheaper rates, given the crushing issue the funding is trying to solve. This would keep interest rates down for borrowers. He said he’s appealing to foundations and socially-minded tech leaders.

One of the biggest financial backers of the measure is the political nonprofit Building a Better California, which has been fighting the billionaire’s tax with help from wealthy donors, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Hertzberg, for his part, refused to name any organization or person who may be interested in buying the bonds that would fund this program.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is deferring an additional $1.2 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California, citing concerns about potential fraud in a state program that helps older adults and people with disabilities with everyday tasks.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said federal officials took action after they grew concerned about the rapid expansion of California’s personal care services program in recent years. State officials were notified of the decision Tuesday, he said.

“California has been growing that program 24% in the last three years. That is twice the rate of every other state average in the country,” Oz said. “Impossible for us to understand how that could be so we are taking major action in California.”

Oz did not provide any evidence of fraud but suggested the state was paying people too much taxpayer money to help with services that could be offered for free, like “paying somebody to carry groceries upstairs for your mom.”

“Many of you would carry groceries upstairs for your mom for free, but in California, they will pay you a lot of money for it,” he said.

The move is the latest in a series of efforts by the administration to withhold federal money from California. In May, the administration held back $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to the state over concerns about “fraudsters” in the state’s hospice and in-home care programs. The actions have been part of a broad effort by the administration to rein in fraud in federal healthcare benefits programs, particularly in Democrat-led states.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the office has been critical of the administration’s past efforts.

In May, Newsom’s office called the action to withhold funds for in-home care programs a “sick” and politically motivated attack on services that are meant to “keep seniors and people with disabilities OUT of nursing homes.”

Those services usually cover assistants who help people with daily tasks such as bathing, laundry or cooking. They also provide needed care such as injections under the direction of a medical professional. A 2020 report by the California state auditor found that nearly three-quarters of In-home Supportive Services caregivers assist a family member.

Newsom’s office, however, has argued that the program saves taxpayers money, saying IHSS care costs $30,000 a year, while nursing home care costs $137,000 a year.

California’s hospice industry has had problems in the past and authorities have tried to crack down on the issue. A Times investigation in 2020 found that providers were billing Medicare for hospice services and equipment for patients who were not actually dying while the industry boomed.

The Trump administration, led by Vice President JD Vance, has tried to focus attention on the issue of waste, fraud and abuse as a centerpiece policy platform to bring down healthcare costs.

On Tuesday, Trump and Vance announced a $25-million whistleblower program designed to pay out cash to people who tip off the federal government about fraudsters. The program will offer a 1% commission for tips that lead to a successful conviction. Trump said he would be the sole arbitrator of who gets to keep the money.

“I’ll determine whether or not the person is deserving, and I will be very generous believe me. We are not looking to save on that,” Trump said. “I promise you I will be fair.”

Trump said the money will be handed out “expeditiously and fairly.”

“I promise there is nothing in this for me,” he said.

The White House referred comment about the decision to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The federal agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

WASHINGTON — Republicans are entering the final month of the midterm campaign increasingly anxious that the $1 billion at their disposal may not be enough to fend off sweeping losses as the party reckons with President Trump’s unpopularity, persistent cost concerns and the fallout from the war in Iran.

The cash advantage, spread out across a half-dozen groups, is driven largely by the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc., which had nearly $416 million in cash on hand at the end of August and began stepping up its spending on critical races in September.

But that money may have come too late, forcing the president’s group to pay much higher rates because of the shrinking availability of air time. Four Republican Senate campaign officials said groups that reserved advertising time last spring paid much lower rates than MAGA Inc. and its affiliated groups.

Instead, by waiting until September, Trump-connected organizations are sometimes paying more than five times what they would have spent if they acted earlier.

A representative of MAGA Inc. familiar with the group’s strategy said its spending has allowed Republicans to keep races more competitive than they would have been otherwise. In some cases, the group has been the only one on the air criticizing Democratic candidates.

The MAGA Inc. representative and the Republican Senate campaign officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

The challenge is acute in places like Texas, where Trump will travel on Wednesday for the second time in a week to stump for Republican Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign. The state hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988, yet MAGA Inc. has spent more than $22 million in the past month, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.

Another group, Texas PAC, which is aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has spent more than $83 million on advertising in the past month, an extraordinary amount to protect what’s normally a safe Republican seat.

One of those advertisements, which featured Paxton’s estranged wife saying she’s supporting the full Republican ticket, aired across the United States last weekend during a football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Texans.

Candidates are charged a lower advertising rate than outside groups, so the late infusion of super PAC cash has come at a steep price.

MAGA Inc., which is running ads primarily on streaming services, has been charged roughly $894 per airing, according to AdImpact, while Texas PAC has been charged roughly $809 for a mix of broadcast and streaming. That compares with about $290 for Democratic nominee James Talarico’s campaign, also on broadcast and streaming.

Those averages mask some of the more glaring disparities. For example, during a football game last month, Texas PAC was charged $450,000 to air a single spot in the Austin market. Talarico’s campaign paid $50,000 for a spot during the same game in the same market, according to AdImpact.

Elections are a referendum on the power of money

The 2026 campaign is shaping up as a referendum on the power of money in American politics. Democrats freely acknowledge their disadvantage, relying instead on anti-Trump sentiment among voters and targeted messaging on issues like corruption. Some Republicans, meanwhile, are open about the challenge of trying to spend their way out of a tough campaign at this late stage.

Neil Newhouse, a longtime Republican pollster, echoed concerns that his party was deploying its cash too late.

“After the votes are counted, I think we’re going to find the most effective advertising in terms of communicating message and moving voters and poll numbers, the most effective time was advertising that happened well before Labor Day, not after it,” he said. “A million dollars of advertising in October is a drop in the bucket.”

Thune’s group began pulling back in North Carolina last week, a sign of the party’s challenge in the Senate race there. The state’s outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis has been increasingly vocal about his party’s vulnerabilities and recently said that, even with a strong cash advantage, “in the last month, you pretty much have to place your bets.”

“If we have endless resources, then we should spend endlessly in every state,” he said. “Absent endless resources, you’ve got to make data-driven decisions about where you can win.”

The midterms mark the first national election since the Supreme Court in June erased limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and president, injecting even more money into a political system already awash in cash.

Money alone doesn’t translate into victory

There’s plenty of evidence that money alone doesn’t translate into victory.

Democrat Kamala Harris entered the final stretch of the 2024 campaign with significantly more money than Trump but went on to lose every critical swing state and the White House. Elon Musk’s $25 million didn’t lift his preferred candidate to a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat last year. And Tom Steyer didn’t advance to the general election in the California governor’s race despite pumping $216 million of his own money into the campaign.

The $1 billion that Republicans have amassed compares with roughly $579 million held by a comparable collection of major Democratic groups.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said his party is facing an “obscene” amount of spending that could swamp them in the midterms.

“We’re never going to have as much money as them,” he said in an interview. “I sum up the election in this sentence: Can a massive Republican advantage in money beat a massive Democratic advantage in better candidates and political climate? I bet it can’t.”

In addition to Texas, Democrats have mounted competitive Senate campaigns in states like Ohio, Maine, Iowa and Michigan. A similar dynamic has emerged in governors’ races from Florida and Georgia to Wisconsin, Ohio and Nevada.

Former President Barack Obama is stepping up his involvement in the midterms and will headline a fundraiser for Senate candidates on Wednesday.

In the House, Democrats are growing so confident they can retake the majority that they’re expanding their targets deeper into traditionally Republican districts in Arkansas and Tennessee. But a lack of money could limit their gains.

“We absolutely need to spend enough to get our message out,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “And district by district, we are.”

Trump turns to his bond with supporters

From his earliest days as an unlikely political figure, Trump has consistently overcome expectations. Facing daunting prospects heading into the final weeks of his last midterm, he’s betting he can again outwit political gravity, relying in large part on the deep bond he’s built with supporters.

He has stepped up his campaign rallies in recent weeks, traveling to deep red territory to galvanize the party faithful. At events like the one this past weekend in Vandalia, Ohio, the crowd was enthusiastic and cheered at the lines that have become Trump staples over the years, particularly when he dips into profanity. The high school gymnasium that held the event was packed, though crowds began emptying out about halfway through the 90-minute rally.

In the closing minutes of a speech Monday in Grand Island, Nebraska, the president revived his plea that supporters who have stood so fervently by him pretend as if he is on the ballot one more time.

“In a true way, I am running,” he said. “We have to keep it going.”

Sloan and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. AP writers Seung Min Kim in Vandalia, Ohio, and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

When Brandon Hurst first decided to sell his plants on TikTok Live in 2023, the 32-year-old Sylmar resident didn’t know what to expect. He said he thought he could sell at least 30 plants, but instead sold 250.

Now, three years later, the internet creator, who goes by Brandon the Plant Guy, sells up to 5,000 plants a week, works out of a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse in Sylmar and has a staff of 13. He credits much of this success to the exposure he’s received on TikTok.

“I’d be out of business if it wasn’t for TikTok,” said Hurst. “I would have ended the business and gone back to working the desk job that I was working prior. I was already on that path, that was where we were headed. And then TikTok really did turn that around.”

Hurst is one of the 920,000 California-based businesses using the social media platform to reach new customers and grow their brands, according to new data from consulting firm PF Global.

In 2025, TikTok helped generate $12 billion in advertising and merchandise sales for those businesses and supported 52,000 jobs in the state, said the PF Global report, which was commissioned by TikTok.

Nationwide, economic activity on TikTok last year helped contribute $81 billion to some 8.5 million U.S. businesses, the report said.

The surge in activity reflects a growing trend toward online commerce, as more small businesses and consumers turn to social media platforms like TikTok to buy and sell goods.

“We enable American culture, American creators, American businesses, to reach an audience around the world,” said Nicole Mason, TikTok’s head of U.S. public policy, said during a presentation on Wednesday morning.

The new report comes as TikTok is increasingly eager to tout its economic impact as a newly formed U.S. joint venture. In January, the company was taken over by three managing investors: Silver Lake, Oracle and Emirati investment firm MGX, each holding 15%, with ByteDance retaining 19.9% of investments. This transition came after TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, was under pressure to divest its ownership in the app’s U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban, due to security concerns.

Last month, TikTok also settled a $400-million lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice, ending a 2024 lawsuit alleging the company violated federal children’s privacy laws.

TikTok, which operates its U.S. headquarters in Culver City, where it employs several hundred workers, is mostly known for its viral, short-form vertical videos. But, over the years, the platform has become a hub of curated viral content and a central part of many businesses’ marketing strategies.

The app also has features like TikTok Live, where businesses can host live shopping events, and TikTok Shop, which serves as a direct-to-consumer online marketplace.

For its study, PF Global surveyed more than 11,000 adults in the U.S. and 5,000 businesses. The firm also conducted five case studies with U.S. small businesses and TikTok creators and interviewed over 600 people around the country. The data set combined that survey data with government statistics, industry research and TikTok’s own internal data.

PF Global recently published a similar economic report for the U.K. and is working on reports for 10 other European countries with TikTok.

Neil Ross, a partner at PF Global, said a common global theme is that TikTok users are more likely to see something on the platform and go out and do it.

“People around the world are using it as a kind of digital front door to work out where to go, what to shop, what experiences to have,” Ross said.

The U.S. report states that 27 million Americans “visited an independent shop, cafe or restaurant for the first time after seeing it on the platform.”

The app’s roots date to 2014, when an app called Musical.ly was launched in Shanghai. In 2016, Chinese tech company ByteDance launched a similar platform in China called Douyin.

As the apps grew in popularity, ByteDance picked up on their potential. It purchased Musical.ly in 2017 and combined all these platforms into one, named TikTok. Over the next few years, the app began its rapid ascent, hooking in users with a curated algorithm and viral trends. Today, 200 million Americans use TikTok every month, according to PF Global.

“On a daily basis, TikTok powers real economic impact across the United States, helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses, reach new customers, and create jobs across the country,” said Adam Presser, TikTok’s chief executive in a statement.