Measure ULA Tax Receipts Hit $1B In Revenue
Measure ULA just crossed the $1B threshold. An update to the city’s revenue tracker for the real estate transfer tax shows that, through the end of November 2025, ULA has generated $1.03B.
That money goes to city coffers for use in a variety of housing-focused programs, including funding for new deed-restricted affordable housing and rental assistance to keep vulnerable Angelenos in their homes.
“No city in the country has a permanent source of funding as big as this and as comprehensive in its approach,” said Joe Donlin, the director of United to House LA, the coalition that mobilized to pass Measure ULA.
It’s a funding source that's essential in light of proposed federal cuts that stand to affect affordable housing funds and ever-tightening budgets at the state level for these types of projects and programs, Donlin said.
Over the summer, the city council approved a plan to spend roughly $425M from Measure ULA, with the money going to affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs including eviction defense, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“All this means that LA is in a strong position to make significant gains to address our housing affordability crisis, thanks to ULA,” Donlin said.
Early projections of how much money ULA would raise per year were between $672M and $1.1B, but those proved to be ambitious and were revised to the lower figure right before it went into effect in April 2023.
ULA adds a 4% tax on transactions of more than $5M and a 5.5% tax on transactions over $10M.
But Shane Phillips, the co-author of a 2025 report that argued ULA was kneecapping multifamily production, said the slow start to the measure was “entirely predictable,” citing, among other things, the rush to sell by many property owners prior to the measure’s start date.
Phillips, who is the housing initiative project manager with the University of California, Los Angeles’ Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, added that while the revenue has grown over time and has become a good funding source for housing-focused city programs, he doesn’t imagine that the high annual projections proponents imagined will be reached “any time soon.”
The $1B milestone comes after a year rife with tests for the measure as well as challenges to its existence.
Spurred by the Eaton and Palisades fires in January, Mayor Karen Bass asked the city council to explore pausing the transfer tax in the Palisades for a period of time to speed up recovery and remove barriers for property owners looking to sell damaged or destroyed homes. The proposal is working its way through the approval process, which includes a vetting from the city attorney to see if it is feasible.
Bass has also sought to tweak property eligibility, exempting commercial properties, not just housing, that are 15 years and younger by going to state legislators. The proposal was withdrawn, but Bass vowed to amend the legislation and reintroduce it.
Two studies in the spring came out that indicated that ULA had throttled commercial real estate deals and stifled the production of new multifamily housing since its inception.
A ballot measure to invalidate Measure ULA and prevent other ballot measures from being approved by the same margins has been gathering signatures to appear on the November 2026 ballot.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which is backing the measure, has to collect at least 874,641 valid signatures by Feb. 25 to get it on the ballot. So far, it has only certified that 25% of the signatures it needs to have by next month have been collected.
