January 23, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — January 23, 2025
ULA is working—why do Mayor Bass and Councilmember Raman want to give away #ThePeople’sBillion to developers and billionaires?
Members of the United to House LA Coalition responded to a motion introduced by Councilmember Nithya Raman submitted Friday, January 23rd that would make severe changes to voter-approved Measure ULA, including waiving collection of the transfer tax for developers and reassigning funds from voter-approved programs.
Joe Donlin, director of the coalition, said:
“Measure ULA is working. Hundreds of affordable homes are rising across the city and we’re about to learn the results of the biggest affordable housing funding round in our city’s history—by a factor of five, and a standard for the future. More than 150,000 renters have gotten help staying housed, with direct financial assistance for more than 10,000 at risk of homelessness including many seniors and people with disabilities. It’s irresponsible to propose changes without even an analysis of how much it would cost. Why would we give ‘The People’s Billion’ to the billionaires who already have so much? ”
“Measure ULA is LA’s biggest tool to address our housing crisis, and is responsible for the largest release of public money for permanent affordable housing production in the City’s history — nearly $400 million,” said Alan Greenlee, executive director of SCANPH. The federal government is threatening to pull millions of dollars away and both the state and the county are slashing homelessness budgets. If we’re serious about building the affordable housing we need and protecting thousands of people living on the edge of homelessness, protecting Measure ULA is the only way forward.”
“LA’s real estate markets are adapting to Measure ULA, as we thought they would,” said Antonio Sanchez, political director of Local 11 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “Headlines show that sales are booming. Multiple metrics show that the sky-is-falling talk about Measure ULA from last year, as experts said, is all washed up. Why give tax breaks to developers who are already getting back to work?”
“The proposers of the measure drafted it in secret, without consulting the housing experts, union members and community organizations who passed and won Measure ULA,” said Alexandra Suh, executive director of Koreatown Immigrant Worker Advocates (KIWA). “Now they’re rushing to put it on the ballot and locking out the public, skipping ULA’s voter-created Citizen Oversight Committee as well as their own council committees. Our coalition has welcomed a discussion that would stop anti-tax extremists and real estate billionaires from overturning the votes of Californians to fund critical public services, but this ballot measure is silent on that effort.”
“Our coalition is all in to save ULA—it’s our biggest source of revenue to address Los Angeles’s housing and homelessness crisis,” said Carla de Paz of Community Power Collective. “As budget crunches are endangering the programs that keep us housed and safe, I’m proud that Angelenos voted for Measure ULA, and I know they won’t support anything that fails to protect it.”
As of November 2025, Measure ULA had raised a total of $1.032 billion. It has funded the start of 795 affordable homes (with hundreds open at Santa Monica and Vermont and Enlightenment Plaza, and multiple sites under construction), kept 10,000 Angelenos in their homes through rental assistance and income support, and accelerated the creation of 10,000 union construction jobs. The results of a $387 million affordable housing funding availability supported 80% by Measure ULA funds will be announced in early 2026.
The real estate industry has attacked Measure ULA repeatedly at court and at the ballot box but it has withstood multiple challenges. A sky-is-falling narrative about its economic impact has steadily unraveled over the last year with the steady increase of residential construction and real estate activity: transactions subject to Measure ULA have increased almost every quarter, the Department of City Planning received more than 16,000 new project applications or pre-applications in the first six months of the passage of the CHIP zoning update, entitlements rose over 50% from 2022-2024, and Hilgard reports show that residential construction permits rose 60% year over year in Q3 and 30% in Q4 from 2024 to 2025. In the words of Joan Ling (ret.) of the UCLA Urban Planning Department and the Ziman Center for Real Estate “It’s always more important to watch what developers do than to listen to what they say.”
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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.