Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor against incumbent Karen Bass, seized on significant decreases in street homelessness in her district Friday while blasting increases citywide.
Street homelessness — people living outdoors or in their vehicles — went down by 49% in Raman’s district compared to the previous year, she said at a press conference Friday.
Citywide, street homelessness increased nearly 8%, while overall homelessness, which includes those living in shelters and other temporary facilities, increased 3.4%, according to numbers from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s January point-in-time count that were released Friday.
The contrast between her district and the city overall offered Raman an angle to present herself as more effectively handling the homelessness crisis than Bass.
An estimated 45,194 homeless people live in the city, with about 36% of them in shelters, according to LAHSA.
“Far fewer people living outside. Far more people indoors,” Raman, who has served on the council since 2020 and is chair of the City Council’s housing and homelessness committee, said at the press conference. “As mayor, that is the approach, and the results, that I want to deliver citywide.”
The numbers across the city were a setback for Bass, who has made homelessness one of her signature issues and previously touted two straight years of drops in street homelessness.
Raman cited her office’s homelessness team and their “aggressive interventionist” approach as reasons her district — which extends from Los Feliz and Silver Lake into Studio City, Sherman Oaks and other parts of the San Fernando Valley — did not suffer the same increases as other parts of the city.
She said her team is very familiar with homeless individuals in the district and knows many by name. The team tracks homeless encampments on a map and makes sure that empty shelter beds are filled, she said.
Bass’ campaign said Raman was attacking the mayor’s Inside Safe program, which moves homeless people from the streets to shelter and motel beds, at the same time that it contributed to the decreases in her district.
Raman has critiqued Inside Safe as too costly and insufficiently transparent.
“Nithya Raman is taking credit for the results of Inside Safe while campaigning against it,” Alex Stack, a spokesperson for Bass’ campaign, said in a statement. “While Raman takes credit for the City’s work in her district, ignoring the fact that she’s the Chair of the Homelessness & Housing Committee for ALL of Los Angeles, Mayor Bass is working to move our city forward and address years of neglect.”
Raman responded to those critiques at her press conference, saying that her district only had three Inside Safe operations over the past four years — fewer than some other districts.
She deflected when asked Friday about her responsibility for citywide homelessness, as chair of the city’s housing and homelessness committee.
“Council can pass legislation … move motions forward, but it is the mayor that has charge of the implementation and outcomes,” she said.
Citywide, Inside Safe has moved more than 6,000 people into hotels, motels and other types of interim housing since Bass took office in December 2022. But by May 31, 41% of those people had returned to homelessness, according to LAHSA figures collected separately from this year’s homeless count.
Bass attributed the citywide homelessness increases in part to funding cuts by the state and federal government. She also said the county has not provided adequate mental health or substance counseling services.
“This crisis was ignored by city leaders for decades, it’s only now that we’ve seen a historic decline,” she said in a statement Thursday. “I will never stop fighting until we end street homelessness, because no Angeleno should be sleeping on the street.”
Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.