September 9, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — September 9, 2025
As the budget deadline approaches, L.A. state legislators warn leadership not to overturn the will of L.A. voters and slash L.A.’s affordable housing and homelessness resources
Los Angeles’s representatives in Sacramento wrote to legislative leaders Monday to express “strong opposition to any policy or budgetary action… that would undermine or weaken the voter-approved Measure ULA in the City of Los Angeles.”
The legislative session has already seen strong opposition to one proposal to weaken Measure ULA. As introduced, AB698 would have imposed new barriers on communities’ ability to support new real estate transfer taxes like the one that has already raised $830 million for affordable housing and homelessness prevention, and legislators were prepared to amend it to slash Measure ULA’s revenue by tens of millions of dollars. It has been parked for this year’s legislative session, but opponents of Measure ULA still have time to introduce a budget trailer bill that would accomplish the same thing.
“Real estate interests who don’t want to pay taxes have been telling us all session long that the sky is falling, but the research they shared doesn’t hold up, and Los Angeles is starting to show that you can have both affordable housing revenue and development,” said Asm Tina McKinnor.
A report issued Thursday by the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College critiqued claims made earlier this year that Measure ULA was responsible for a development slowdown in the city of Los Angeles. The critique found that those claims were methodologically unsound and used inadequate data. At the same time, key leading indicators suggest that Los Angeles’s development lag has been short-lived; following the passage of the Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP), Los Angeles’s planning department received more than 17,000 pre-applications.
“The move to slash Measure ULA is a rush job based on poor evidence,” said Senator Maria Elena Durazo. “That evidence has been reviewed and found wanting, and it would be irresponsible for the Legislature to use it to justify slashing Los Angeles’s single biggest source of revenue for affordable housing and homelessness prevention.”
The letter stresses that any attempt on the part of state legislatures to undo a measure passed by Los Angeles voters would be an unwelcome assault on local voters’ autonomy.
“This is a local issue, made possible by local efforts – and these outcomes matter to our constituents. Angelenos stepped up and took bold action, and any contrary action taken in Sacramento would undermine their will,” it reads.
The letter comes just one week after the City of Los Angeles released a $387-million Notice of Funding Availability, five times larger than any previous NOFA. With 80% of the funds coming from Measure ULA, developers can compete to build affordable housing, preserve existing affordable housing, and construct social housing.
As of August 2025, ULA has already kept 10,000 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.
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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.