December 29, 2025
Measure ULA Raises Its First $1 Billion — and Counting
Though the City of Los Angeles will not make its official announcement until January, but the United to House LA initiative has now hit a historic landmark: it has surpassed $1 billion in revenues to address the housing and homelessness crises in the City of Los Angeles.
As the LA Daily News (no paywall) reported, the city’s Housing Department has already calculated ULA’s revenues as surpassing $991 million. There have since been enough publicly reported large sales to calculate that the resulting revenues from ULA’s transfer tax would have pushed that figure well past $1 billion.
LA City voters approved the ballot measure in 2022 to levy a transfer tax on high-value real estate sales and use the funds to address the city’s housing and homelessness crisis. Since it went into effect on April 1, 2023, Measure ULA has applied that one-time charge to sales over $5 million (now adjusted upwards to $5.3 million).
The money it has raised, in turn, has changed thousands of lives across Los Angeles by providing new housing, renter protections and good-paying jobs.
In that time, ULA has:
- funded outreach to 154,669 tenants through texts, calls, and in-person events to inform them of their rights and how to exercise them
- accelerated the development of nearly 800 affordable homes, with thousands more expected following a recent record-setting funding round of $387 million (some 80% of it from ULA)
- helped over 11,000 renters stay in their homes
- accelerated the creation of 10,000 union construction jobs
- provided eviction defense, legal assistance, or tenant navigation for 35,370 tenants
ULA’s initial “Accelerator Plus” round funded 795 affordable homes in ten 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 in East Hollywood, 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).
The future looks bright — ULA-eligible real estate transactions are growing, ULA revenues are rising, and building permit applications are up 60% since last year in LA.
In addition, the California Courts of Appeals affirmed in mid-December a Los Angeles County Superior Court decision to dismiss yet another legal challenge to Measure ULA, leaving the measure intact and continuing to provide for Angelenos.
ULA’s $1 billion in revenue is the People’s Billion — a vital resource to ensure that Angelenos have the housing they need to live in dignity, safety, and security.
And this is just the beginning.
As the LA Times wrote in August of this year, “By 2050, Measure ULA will likely have raised tens of billions of dollars — an unprecedented amount of cash that, if used effectively, has the potential to solve many of the cities housing woes.”
Get the latest news on ULA and ULA-related actions on our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unitedtohousela/
ULA Resources
- LA Housing Department’s ULA Dashboards
- ULA Citizens Oversight Committee (COC)
- United to House LA Coalition
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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