{"id":78815,"date":"2026-01-27T15:52:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=78815"},"modified":"2026-01-27T15:52:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:52:21","slug":"ula-giveaway-fails-council-sends-tax-break-ballot-measure-to-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=78815","title":{"rendered":"ULA GIVEAWAY FAILS: COUNCIL SENDS TAX BREAK BALLOT MEASURE TO COMMITTEE"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES, CA<\/strong> \u2014 After multiple days of mobilization by the United to House LA coalition, the Los Angeles City Council declined to hear a rushed motion (Raman\u2013Harris-Dawson) to place a measure on the June 2026 Los Angeles City ballot that would give away housing and homelessness funds to for-profit developers. Instead, the measure was sent to legislative committees for further review.<\/p>\n

\u201cULA is working, and the rest of LA\u2019s real estate market is rapidly adjusting to it,\u201d said Joe Donlin, director of the United to House LA coalition. \u201cFor the people who need it most, affordable homes are filling up and ULA funds are protecting people from homelessness. In the rest of the market, permits and applications are surging after a dip. It would be catastrophic to give away LA\u2019s best tool in the fight against the housing crisis as a developer tax break because of sloppy math and a rush to judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s remember why we are here,\u201d said Yvonne Wheeler, President of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. \u201cUnited to House LA was not written in a back room. It was written out of lived experience \u2013 by housing advocates, policy experts, and working people who see the human cost of this crisis every single day. And then it was overwhelmingly approved by the voters of this city. Construction workers voted for it. Homecare workers voted for it. Teachers voted for it. Nurses, janitors, grocery workers \u2013 the very people who keep Los Angeles running \u2013 voted for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor too long our city has relied on so-called market solutions that have failed working families in LA,\u201d said Carla De Paz of Community Power Collective. \u201cBut Los Angeles now has a dedicated source of revenue for affordable housing and homelessness prevention. The real estate industry and corporate interests that never supported ULA to begin with are trying to weaken ULA, so we need our city leaders to fully implement ULA and to give it time to deliver on its promise. Because that funding is transforming lives and it’s creating stability for the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they make cuts, it will greatly harm the tenant protection programs that prevent people from ending up on the streets of Los Angeles,\u201d said Sofia Mendoza, a tenant who has received assistance from Measure ULA. \u201cI’ve been threatened with eviction twice from my home for no reason. We are a low-income family, so we don’t have enough income to pay for a lawyer. I turned to Stay Housed LA, funded by Measure ULA, and they assigned me legal representation, if it weren’t for this assistance, I would be on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMeasure ULA funds built a vibrant low-income community that includes seniors, families, and people who previously experienced homelessness,\u201d said Grant Sunoo, director of community building and engagement at Little Tokyo Service Center, the developer of the ULA-funded apartment building at Santa Monica & Vermont. \u201cWith 187 units, it was the first affordable housing development to open using measured ULA funds. It must be the first of many. Los Angeles is in the midst of a housing and homelessness crisis, and the only proven way to move people off the streets and into stability is to build and preserve deeply affordable housing. With federal support uncertain and unstable, local funding like measure ULA is more important than ever. Gutting Measure ULA and offering tax breaks to developers? Trickle down economics didn’t work in the 80s, and in 2025, trickle down housing will not solve this crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 thousands of 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cIt\u2019s always more important to watch what developers do than to listen to what they say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES, CA \u2014 After multiple...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78816,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78815\/revisions\/78816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}