The Council spent the week clearing a ballot path to rewrite Measure ULA — and the coalition that wrote the implementation manual is now reading along, trying to figure out what survives. If you're just joining us: Measure ULA is L.A.'s transfer tax for affordable housing and tenant aid, but the rollout has split the housing coalition. The city has authorized major tenant-aid money, but it still has to get through contracts, while researchers and builders argue the tax chills multifamily deals and new construction. So ULA's stuck in a familiar bind — raising the revenue L.A. needs while maybe slowing the building L.A. also needs. This is L.A. Politics and Urbanism Daily — today, the amendment fight, a $177 million chokepoint with a name, and a crowded November ballot. Let's stop circling and land it. By ANDREW KHOURI writes:
An effort to exempt new apartment buildings in Los Angeles from the so-called mansion tax moved forward this week, amid concerns that the tax is suppressing housing construction and making the affordability crisis worse. In a 9-5 vote Wednesday, the City Council directed the city attorney to draft a ballot measure that would ask voters to change Measure ULA, which funds subsidized housing construction and homeless prevention efforts by taxing nearly all property sales over $5.3 million.
ULA update: that 9-5 vote Wednesday sent the apartment-sale exemption to the city attorney, who now has to draft it for a possible November ballot. McOsker and Yaroslavsky introduced it, and Wednesday was the hard deadline to make the fall ballot. What's new today is the paperwork underneath it. The ULA Coalition's own program guidelines were drafted in June 2023 by SAJE, SCANPH, and labor and renters' groups — basically, the same people wrote the implementation manual for the structure the Council is now trying to amend around them. Right, and here's the thing about that manual — over 140 groups drew it up, and 200-plus signed on to ULA in the first place. Now the Council's redrafting the tax over the top of it. Those guidelines have exactly zero legal standing the second the ballot language flips. Yaroslavsky says protect what's working, fix what's not. Fine. A ten-year exemption on new construction is a big swing against a measure 58% of voters passed — so somebody on that dais should say out loud whether the $177 million pipeline survives the math. And it still has to come back to Council for final approval before voters see it. Plenty can still change. This one's from CCSA:
I am running to protect and build on the academic gains LAUSD students have achieved, including two consecutive years of progress in reading, math, and science across grade levels. At a time of federal uncertainty, budget challenges, and enrollment changes, our school communities need steady, experienced leadership focused on stability and student-centered results.
CCSA's out with their LAUSD voter guide — Districts 2, 4, and 6. Rivas versus Zamora, Melvoin versus Patel, Gonez running in 6. School board races, this November. Same November ballot we just spent a segment on with the ULA amendment fight. Two big civic asks, one crowded ballot, in a city where turnout's already a chronic problem. And that's the part nobody on the dais wants to sit with. You're asking voters to rewrite a voter-passed measure and decide three school board contests on the same low-turnout cycle. Rivas is out here touting two straight years of reading and math gains — fine. But the more the ballot fills up, the more those down-ballot races get decided by whoever still has the patience to read to the bottom. It's congestion, just on paper. Ballot fatigue hits voters the way a jammed 405 does — it stops them at the page break instead of the on-ramp. This one's from Los Angeles City Attorney:
On her first day in office, Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto joined Mayor Karen Bass as she declared a local emergency on homelessness. The City Attorney’s Office provided the legal framework for this declaration, which cuts red tape, facilitates additional resources, and streamlines efforts to bring people inside.
Same office, two speeds. On day one, Feldstein Soto's standing next to Mayor Bass, providing the legal framework for the homelessness emergency — red tape cut, declaration signed. Fast. Now flip to the ULA side of the mansion-tax story we just hit — that same office is the chokepoint on $177 million in contracts. Slow. The committee asked for a formal explanation back in mid-June, and I haven't seen one land. Right, and read what her own page leads with — emergency, Inside Safe, day-one urgency, 42,000 people sleeping on the street. That's the whole pitch. So tell me how the same lawyers who cut red tape for the emergency can't sign the contracts that fund the response to it. You built the legal scaffolding for the emergency. The Legal Aid Foundation's got a Council green light and no signed check. Pick a tempo and stick to it. And notice, the page restates the Inside Safe framework but doesn't add a single new pipeline number. So, 'bring people inside' — inside to what, exactly? We still don't have that figure. From Cameron Meredith at ADU West Coast:
Getting ADU permits in Los Angeles feels more like running a marathon than a sprint. Most permits take four to six months to arrive. Some cases move faster at two months, while complex ones can drag on for over a year. The permit process needs patience, but knowing what you need and how much it costs makes everything easier.
Four to six months for an ADU permit. Some take over a year. And this is the success story — the thing everybody points to as proof L.A. can actually build. Cameron Meredith at ADU West Coast puts numbers on it. You're looking at two to ten grand just in construction permit fees, another three to eleven in building and zoning, and up to twenty-five thousand more if you go over 750 square feet. That's before a shovel hits dirt. This piece is from last August — so it's nine months of people actually trying to work under the ordinance, not a press release. That's why it's useful. Right. The state made ADUs simple enough to permit that there wasn't much counter left to jam — and the counter still takes half a year. The code got tidier. The line stayed long. Keep that timeline in your back pocket when the City Attorney's office tells you signing $177 million in ULA contracts is complicated. A homeowner clears more paperwork in four months than that office has cleared since March. If you’re tracking L.A. politics, you might also like California Governor’s Race — daily 2026 coverage of the candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy, without the usual horse-race-only takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Next up: once the Measure ULA proposal is drafted, it still has to come back to the City Council for final approval before it can reach the November ballot.
You’ll find links to every story from today’s episode in the show notes, so if you want to take a closer look, start there. That’s Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.