L.A. Approves $425M Measure ULA Expenditure Plan

The Los Angeles City Council approved the largest expenditure plan yet for funds collected via the city’s Measure ULA tax. 

The council gave its stamp earlier this week to a nearly $425 million spending plan for fiscal year 2025, with most of the funds targeting affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs. The L.A. Times first reported the news. 

The controversial ULA tax, colloquially known as L.A.’s mansion tax, mandates a 4 percent tax on all property sales of at least $5.15 million, and a 5.5 percent tax on deals of over $10.3 million (parameters which recently changed from $5 million and $10 million, respectively, on June 30). The tax, which took effect in April 2023, has so far collected about $703 million, according to city data.

ULA was designed specifically to draw in funds for affordable housing and homelessness prevention, and the city-approved plan follows that guidance. About $288.2 million of the $425 million total will go toward a myriad of affordable housing programs, including creating “alternative models for permanent affordable housing,” and the acquisition and rehab of affordable properties. 

About $103 million will go toward addressing the city’s homelessness crisis, including short-term emergency assistance, eviction defense and protection, and income support for certain seniors and disabled persons. The remaining dollars will go toward administrative costs. 

The L.A. Housing Department, which drafted the plan, also included spending proposals for FY 2026 and 2027. Those plans clock in at about $421.3 million apiece. 

Representatives for the L.A. City Clerk’s office and for United to House L.A., a coalition of community groups, labor unions and housing developers that advocate for Measure ULA, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The city’s new expenditure plan comes about seven months after the City Council approved guidelines for how ULA funds could be used, along with a FY 2024 expenditure plan. That plan totaled $168 million, less than half of the allotment for FY 2025. 

The amount of revenue collected by the tax has steadily increased over time, as investors have come to grips with the fact that the measure is here to stay. Yet the amount of money collected by ULA (via roughly 1,000 transactions so far), over more than two years, is still a far cry from the $600 million to $1.1 billion annually that proponents initially projected. 

Nearly 60 percent of the funds collected by ULA come from single-family residential sales. And the amount of commercial deals in L.A. has dropped significantly since the tax was adopted, according to a recent report by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. 

The study found a 30 to 50 percent decline in the amount of commercial real estate deals since April 2023, while a separate price analysis found that the odds a deal would occur above the tax’s price threshold fell by 50 percent in the same time period.

Nick Trombola can be reached at [email protected].