Los Angeles is preparing to make nearly half a billion dollars available for affordable housing in a single funding round. The City Council voted 13-0 Tuesday to authorize the $466.6 million solicitation, the largest of its kind in city history. This vote marks a new scale of public investment in housing, and about $324.1 million, nearly 70% of the total, comes from Measure ULA.
Before the city began combining funding sources through Homes for LA, its annual affordable housing solicitations typically offered $50 million to $75 million, according to the United to House LA coalition. Last year’s first round made $393.9 million available. The new round is larger still, with ULA supplying more than two-thirds of the money. It is a massive transfer of wealth, with money collected when the city’s most expensive properties change hands being directed toward affordable homes and the people most threatened by the housing crisis.
Councilmember Ysabel Jurado told colleagues the round was “one of the clearest ways we continue to see Measure ULA in action.”
The Council vote is not yet an award to any developer or a promise that those homes will be built immediately, but it authorizes the Housing Department to invite applications. The department will score proposals and bring recommended awards back to the Council and mayor. Applications are scheduled to open from October 13 to December 4.
The city’s plan directs money to new construction, preservation of existing affordable homes and operating assistance for developments in financial trouble. It includes $104.1 million in ULA funding for alternative models of new construction, a program designed to support lasting affordability and forms of resident ownership. Other funding comes from state housing dollars, the city’s affordable housing linkage fee and the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency.
This massive citywide investment has a direct connection to the Westside. In the previous Homes for LA round, the Council approved about $360.9 million for 80 projects. The award recommendations included $28.3 million in ULA funding for Vista Del Rey, a proposed 122-unit affordable development on Culver Boulevard, and a $12.1 million commitment to Venice Community Housing to preserve and rehabilitate the 26-unit Slauson Preservation property near the Mar Vista Family Center.
In addition to construction of new homes, ULA funds stem the tide of homelessness by supporting rental assistance, eviction defense and income support for seniors and people with disabilities at risk of losing their homes. Overall, the measure dedicates 70% of program funds to affordable housing and 30% to homelessness prevention. United to House LA reports that ULA had raised $1.37 billion through August. A tax paid when the city’s most valuable properties change hands has become its largest dedicated source of funding for housing and tenant protections.
That scale helps explain the intensity of the fight over ULA. Real estate developers and anti-tax advocates, together with elected officials at the city and state level who take money from those special interests, have challenged the measure in court and pressed for exemptions that would shrink its revenue. The Housing Department estimated that one broad package of proposed carveouts could have cut collections by about $177 million a year, with corresponding losses to affordable housing, rental assistance and eviction defense. City leaders ultimately chose a narrower change to the tax this summer, leaving its core intact.
The fight now extends to what other California communities will be able to do. Proposition 43 would require two-thirds voter approval for future citizen-proposed local special taxes beginning in 2027. Although it would leave ULA in place, it would make it nearly impossible for voters elsewhere to create a comparable source of money for housing and public services, by raising the threshold for approval to 2/3 of the vote.