July 1, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — July 1, 2025
LA City Council approves $424.8M in ULA funds — more than double the amount of previous years — to build housing and prevent homelessness
LOS ANGELES, CA — At a time when federal, state and local budgets are being cut, the City of LA’s affordable housing efforts got a massive boost today, thanks to the “mansion tax.” The Los Angeles City Council approved a pair of plans to put hundreds of millions of dollars raised through Measure ULA to work building and preserving affordable housing and keeping Angelenos in their homes.
The $424.8 million in expenditures approved for ULA’s housing programs in fiscal year 2025-26 is by far the biggest in the program’s history since it was approved by voters in November of 2022 — in fact, it is more than all ULA spending to date, combined. The spending plan includes $288.2 million for affordable housing programs, as well as another $102.6 million for homelessness prevention.
The Council also approved a $376 million Notice of Funding Availability (or NOFA) for affordable housing, the city’s first NOFA in two years and one of the biggest in Los Angeles history. Of that amount, fully $316 million, or 84%, was raised through ULA’s transfer tax on real estate sales of $5 million and over.
These programs bring vital dollars into Los Angeles’s housing programs at a time when budgetary belt-tightening has seemingly become the norm.
“Don’t believe the hate from big-money real estate or their lies appearing all over the media,” said Joe Donlin, Director of United to House LA. “Measure ULA is doing the steady work to create stable homes and good jobs for Angelenos, and this expenditure plan and NOFA are huge steps forward for our city.”
As of February 2025, ULA has already kept 11,000 Angelenos in their homes through rental assistance, funded the start of construction on 795 affordable homes, and accelerated the creation of 10,000 union construction jobs. Its revenues are raised via a real estate transfer tax on the top 4% of real estate sales in the city of Los Angeles and are expected to total roughly $4 billion over ULA’s first decade.
Today’s approvals also mean that Measure ULA’s 11 program areas are now fully funded for the first time since its passage, following a two-year ramp-up period. Some of those programs include $87.9 million for alternative models for affordable housing, $15.6 million for homeownership opportunities, $42.6 million for income support for seniors and people with disabilities, $39.1 million for eviction defense and prevention, and $9.3 million for protections from tenant harassment, among others.
The new ULA expenditures, along with the projects that come out of the NOFA, will likely boost those figures considerably, adding thousands more to the ranks of Angelenos aided by Measure ULA.
“Budgets at the local, state and federal levels are seeing major cuts, but with ULA we are seeing the largest expenditure plan to date,” said SEIU 2015 President Arnulfo de la Cruz. “These critical dollars are funding affordable housing and income support for seniors at a time Angelenos need it most.”
“We need to protect tenants from ongoing harassment from landlords,” said Maria Briones, a tenant and member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE. “Measure ULA provides the critical source of funding for the City to defend renters from harm.”
“ULA is funding new affordable housing production that’s being built by hard-working union construction workers”, said Ernesto Medrano, Executive Secretary of the LA/OC Building and Construction Trades Council. “To have $376M of new funding going towards affordable housing — that’s a game changer for renters and workers in Los Angeles. Best of all, ULA is just getting started.”
These new successes for ULA come even as it has withstood multiple attempts by billionaires and millionaires to block, overturn, or weaken the measure through failed lawsuits, a withdrawn ballot measure, and a recent legislative push in Sacramento.
However, as the federal budgeting process threatens to yield massive cuts to housing dollars, the revenues from the voter-supported, locally funded Measure ULA is proving ever more critical to sustaining Los Angeles’s spending on affordable housing and tenant protections to address the housing crisis.
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About United to House LA
United to House LA brings together a unique coalition from the labor movement, affordable housing developers, and social justice and community-based organizations to work on the common goals of affordable housing, homelessness prevention, tenant protection, and good-paying jobs in the city of Los Angeles. The Coalition consists of over 240 organizations that worked to pass Measure ULA on the November 2022 ballot and which continue to advocate for the implementation of one of the most progressive and transformative affordable housing measures in the United States.