Mayor Bass Asks City Council To Pause Measure ULA For Palisades Fire Victims

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass asked the city council to allow a temporary exemption from Measure ULA for homeowners affected by the Palisades Fire. 

In a letter sent to the city council and shared with media on Thursday, Bass proposed a one-time, three-year exemption for fire-affected homeowners. Bloomberg was first to report Bass' effort. 

Bass said Measure ULA is an important generator of revenue for affordable housing in the city, but she wrote that "the measure as written is silent on an issue now affecting our Palisades community: how to exempt natural disaster survivors who are impacted by Measure ULA’s costs as they attempt to rebuild their families’ lives."

The revitalization and recovery of the Palisades depends on new homes quickly being built on vacant residential lots in combination with the speedy sale of lots whose owners can't or don't want to rebuild, Bass wrote. 

This process is being hampered because potential buyers are lowering their offers to account for Measure ULA, and sellers "may be unable or unwilling to accept these low offers," according to the letter. 

The exemption will speed up the sales process and facilitate rebuilding, Bass said.

If approved by the city council, an ordinance would be drafted that would allow the Department of Finance to create the exemption, which Bass would then sign into law. 

It is unclear when the council would discuss the mayor's request. The city council is in recess but will return on Tuesday. 

Bass said in remarks at a March press conference that she was considering pausing Measure ULA in some way to help with the rebuilding effort, but in later private conversations, she said she wasn't looking into it further. 

When questioned by Bisnow in March, a spokesperson for the mayor's office didn't directly address pausing the measure. 

"We are going to look at every possible option to support fire survivors and accelerate recovery while also confronting the humanitarian crisis of homelessness," Deputy Mayor of Communications Zach Seidl said in a Friday email to Bisnow. 

One of those options turned out to be a state bill that would have altered the rate at which many properties subject to Measure ULA are taxed. The bill was opposed by several commercial real estate organizations, even though the bill as written could have been beneficial to the industry, because it was so quickly written that there were concerns it contained "legal vulnerabilities and technical flaws." 

The bill was pulled before it could be considered in committee. Bass vowed to return with a more refined bill in January.