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Catalyst California Endorses LA City's Measure ULA to Help Solve the Housing Crisis

10.25.22

Catalyst California is proud to endorse L.A. City’s Measure ULA, which would create significant new revenues, governed by strong accountability mechanisms, to positively transform our city’s entrenched and deeply inequitable affordable housing and homelessness crises.  

It is no secret that Los Angeles’ shortage of affordable housing is one of the nation’s most severe, and has been made significantly worse by the long-term health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The city’s most housing insecure includes low-income Black, Indigenous residents, and residents of color, especially those experiencing or at risk of homelessness, displacement, or eviction. 

Studies show that Black and Latinx renters in California are twice as likely as white renters to be unable to pay rent on time and almost half of all Black, Latinx, and Pacific Islander Californians pay over 30 percent of their household income on housing. And despite temporary rental protections in Los Angeles, a recent analysis of city police records found that landlords disproportionately used illegal methods to target, intimidate, and evict families in predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods.

Measure ULA takes aim at this inequitable status quo by raising funds for below-market-rate housing, renter assistance, and homelessness prevention, through an increase in the real estate transfer tax for properties worth more than $5 million. The funds collected would be used to create and operate supportive and permanent affordable housing programs, and provide critical financial and educational resources to low-income tenants, including those at risk of homelessness, displacement, or eviction.  

The coalition of affordable housing and homelessness experts behind the proposal estimates that Measure ULA would generate over $900 million a year, and over the next decade could bring 26,000 affordable housing units online and provide 43,000 new construction jobs. (Source) Strong expert and stakeholder-led oversight and third-party evaluation will ensure community accountability over how the funds will be used. 

Measure ULA will generate an infusion of critically-needed resources for lasting, structural change. If passed, it will permanently reshape the housing landscape and aid hundreds of thousands of low-income Angelenos immediately and for years to come.