ULA Updates

NEWSLETTER: Policymaker special issue

December 10, 2025

Everything You Need to Know About Measure ULA

Since LA City voters approved it with 58% of the vote in November of 2022, and since it went into effect on April 1, 2023, Measure ULA has made a powerful impact on the lives of tens of thousands of Angelenos.

It’s also been the target of numerous well-funded attempts to repeal or overturn it and of media reports and scholarship that don’t always tell the whole story.

So, with its fate once again up for debate, here’s what every policymaker should know about ULA.

How ULA Works

Funding: Measure ULA is funded by a real estate transfer tax on high-value property sales — a 4% tax on transactions above $5,300,000 but under $10,600,000, and a 5.5% tax on transactions $10,600,000 and above, with the thresholds periodically resetting based on inflation.

Through October 2025, Measure ULA has raised $991 million, and reported sales indicate that it will soon hit the billion dollar threshold.

Spending: These funds support 11 different housing and homelessness prevention programs, according to a strict formula set out in the original ballot measure, under the supervision of a Citizens Oversight Committee.

The LA City Council approved the largest ULA budget to date for the 2025-26 fiscal year, totaling $424.8 million, all raised through the transfer tax.

What ULA Does

Since it went into effect, Measure ULA funds have supported Angelenos with their housing needs through a variety of programs.

ULA has:

kept 10,000 Angelenos in their homes through rental assistance
supported the development of 795 affordable homes, with more on the way
accelerated the creation of 10,000 union construction jobs
reached and educated over 140,000 Angelenos on their rights as tenants, helping prevent “self evictions”
provided eviction defense, legal assistance, or tenant navigation for 35,370 tenants

Combating Homelessness

The types of programs that ULA has been funding — direct financial assistance, combating illegal evictions, building and preserving affordable housing, and more — are precisely the type of programs that have proven to be effective in preventing Angelenos from falling into homelessness in the first place.

The Point in Time census from the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count revealed that street homelessness in LA City fell for the second straight year — the same two years that ULA’s homelessness prevention programs have been in place. This is the first time that has happened since the Homeless Count began in 2005. In total, unsheltered homelessness has declined 17.5% in the City of LA over the last two years.

Affordable Housing

The City of Los Angeles recently closed applications for its largest-ever offering of affordable housing funds — 80% of it raised through Measure ULA. This Notice of Funding Availability (or NOFA) makes $387 million available to developers for building, preserving, and operating affordable housing, five times larger than any previous NOFA in LA history. $316 million of those funds are Measure ULA dollars.

This money will be used to build new homes for families, seniors, and people exiting homelessness. It will fund the preservation of existing affordable homes. And it will fund innovative new models of homeownership, like social housing. The results of this round of funding will be announced by LAHD in early 2026 and will fuel affordable housing development expected to surpass 13,000 units over ten years.

This will all come on top of ULA’s initial round of affordable housing, which helped fund 795 affordable homes in 10 different buildings across LA. As of November 2025, 187 are open at Santa Monica & Vermont, 177 are about to open at the three Enlightenment Plaza apartment buildings, and ground has broken at Peak Plaza (104 units) and Grace Villas (48 units). On the way are Alveare Family (105 units), The Main (64 units) and Chavez Gardens (110 units).

Debunking the Criticisms of ULA

Rich property owners and realtors have complained about Measure ULA since even before it passed. In recent months, the most persistent criticism of the program has been that it is hurting LA City’s residential construction market.

But it turns out that these claims don’t stand up to close inspection.

Recent reports argue that Measure ULA is hurting residential construction — but the claims don’t stand up to close inspection.

Scholars reviewed a report making such a claim, by Jason Ward and Shane Phillips. Their resulting study — Major Research Flaws Undermine Authors’ Bold Claims: Unpacking the Debate on Measure ULA — found significant flaws with its data, methodology, assumptions, and analysis.

As the authors put it, the Ward-Phillips report fails “to deliver either on rigor or quality of evaluation,” instead relying on “questionable methodology, limited data, and flawed analysis to draw broad, premature conclusions and call for massive changes to Measure ULA.”

They found that the report relied on too-short and abnormal time frames when real estate development was grappling with high interest rates, tariffs and post-COVID uncertainty; that its focus on parcel sales was not a direct enough indicator of activity; that its use of permit data did not control for confounding variables; and that its treatment of ED1 affordable housing data biased its analysis, among multiple other issues summarized here.

In short, the data simply didn’t support the conclusions drawn by the Ward-Phillips report.

LA City Development and Real Estate Sales: On the Upswing

Contra ULA’s critics, LA’s real estate market has been strong and getting stronger.

ULA transactions keeps going up. Real estate transactions that pay ULA’s real estate transfer tax have been rising steadily since ULA went into effect in the second quarter of 2023, save for a dip following the destructive wildfires of January 2025.
Since LA passed its rezoning, developers have been racing to build. The City of LA just passed a rezoning in February 2025, which includes the new Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP). This brings in major new opportunities and incentives for developers to build more housing and make more money while doing it. The Planning Department received applications or pre-applications for 16,659 new housing units in the six months after the rezoning plan went into effect on February 11th.
Despite national real estate headwinds, the LA City housing market has been showing signs of growth. Data from the Planning Department shows that housing entitlements increased 52% from 2022 to 2024, which includes the period while ULA has been in place.
Permits are on the rise. The most recent Hilgard report showed that residential construction permits in Q3 of 2025 were 60% higher than the same period a year before, and also showed quarter-over-quarter rises throughout 2025.

What’s Coming Next From ULA — The HUB

ULA is preparing to launch the Los Angeles Housing Training Hub, nicknamed The HUB, which will serve as an information and training resource hub for social housing. This will be an important component in the effort to grow alternative forms of homeownership in the City of Los Angeles.

In accordance with the original intent of Measure ULA, The HUB will support new models for collective homeownership for non-wealthy households. These models will empower tenants to ensure greater protection against displacement, more control over maintenance and upkeep of the buildings where they live, and a greater say in decisions about the fate of their buildings.

To make that possible, The HUB will serve residents, developers, community based organizations, and property managers. It will provide resources such as training materials and support for things such as governance structures, resident councils, budgeting, operations and more. It will support buildings from pre-development through lease-up, and during on-going operations.

Get the latest news on ULA and ULA-related actions on our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unitedtohousela/

ULA Resources

This newsletter is produced by the United to House LA (UHLA) Coalition that includes over 240 local nonprofit social service providers, community and tenant organizations, labor unions, affordable housing developers, faith-based organizations, and other groups that came together to craft Measure ULA and who have stayed together to make sure that its implementation is carried out effectively and efficiently by the City government.

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