Nithya Raman has made Los Angeles’ struggle to combat homelessness a key plank in her mayoral campaign, yet her own record on the matter has itself become an issue with her ouster as head of the City Council committee seeking solutions to the crisis.
Mayor Karen Bass is at the helm of the city’s battle against homelessness, but since 2023 Raman has been the second-most powerful official as chair of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee. That changed this month, when council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, a key Bass ally, split the committee in two and removed Raman as its chair, effective Sept. 1.
Raman claims that politics were at play, casting her removal as a hit job for her decision to challenge Bass. Harris-Dawson disputes that, saying Raman failed to lead the committee with the urgency needed to combat L.A.’s enduring homelessness crisis.
“The committee is behind in excess of more than 100 issues,” said Harris-Dawson in an interview. “There are very serious decisions to make over what happens with homelessness. We needed someone who could focus on that and get it done and get it done quickly and show ability to build consensus.”
Beyond the dispute over Raman’s leadership of the committee, there are clear policy disagreements between the mayor and the council member over the best way to combat the crisis.
A Metro bus passes by a man sleeping on the sidewalk on North Spring Street in downtown Friday.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Raman contends that Bass’ signature program Inside Safe, which dismantles encampments and moves people living there into motels, hotels and interim housing, is overly expensive and unsustainable. On average, the cost of housing these individuals runs about $82,000 a year, according to city reports.
Raman has repeatedly signed off on funding for the program, but has become more critical of it in the last year.
Despite the city’s efforts, L.A.’s unsheltered homeless population — those living outdoors or in their vehicles — went up by 7.9% after two consecutive years of decreases, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported last month.
“The approach to homelessness that Mayor Bass has led and defended has brought us here,” Raman said after LAHSA’s report was released.
Raman has called for the use of time-limited subsidies, or rental vouchers, to house homeless Angelenos in private residences — at a city-estimated cost of $30,000, less than half the price of an average Inside Safe bed. Raman says she would “significantly expand” the city’s investment in the vouchers if she became mayor.
“For the same amount of money, we could rent three apartments using a short-term rental voucher and provide intensive services — housing more people in a program that has delivered much better outcomes,” Raman says in her mayoral policy platform on homelessness.
Even so, the more than $60-million voucher program Raman has already pushed through her committee has so far struggled to get off the ground under a tight timeline, and Raman’s critics have seized on the delay as evidence of the council member’s ineffectiveness.
Pedestrians pass by a homeless encampment along the 101 northbound offramp, at right, near City Hall Friday.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
A city consultant on the program set a goal of having 600 households moved into leases by July 1 of this year, and 2,000 households moved in by next April. But as of that July 1 date, only three households had moved into homes via the vouchers, housing officials said in a report.
By Aug. 13, however, the number had jumped to 54 households, “with new move ins happening nearly every day,” the housing department said in a report.
Bass’ campaign spokesperson, Alex Stack, cited the sluggish start to the program and said subsidies are only a small part of the fight against homelessness.
“It’s not the silver bullet Raman’s selling,” Stack said.
In an interview, Raman said that the contracting process slowed the start of the program, but that time-limited subsidies are a great way to free up space in city shelters by moving those people into private housing.
“This is a cost-effective program that has very good outcomes in the past in terms of percentage of people moving on to permanent housing,” she said.
Nithya Rama listens to a question at the mayoral debate hosted by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.
(David Butow / For The Times)
Raman added that the council will continue to monitor data from the program and make fixes as needed if it doesn’t move fast enough.
Homeless services providers working with the city on the program said part of the challenge has been getting a completely new program off the ground.
“It’s definitely been slower than I think most people anticipated,” said Sasha Morozov, the regional director of supportive services for PATH, a nonprofit contracting with the city for the program.
But Morozov said the program is speeding up now and she believed the 2,000 slots will be filled on time.
A key plank in Raman’s platform
Raman said she ran for council largely to take on the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. She says she is running for mayor for the same reason.
She’s cited a 49% drop in street homelessness in her district over the past year as a clear sign that she is equipped to bring down homelessness citywide. Bass counters it was her efforts through Inside Safe that brought homelessness down in Raman’s district.
People living on the street in downtown L.A. gather cardboard for shelter during a heat wave last month.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
While chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, Raman established monitoring of all the city’s spending on homelessness and tracking of 35 key performance metrics to see how effective the city’s investments are. She also stewarded the creation of a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight within the city’s Housing Department that is responsible for coordinating and overseeing the city’s homelessness system.
Her critics say that Raman’s tenure atop the committee hasn’t adequately met the moment facing the city of Los Angeles — with the Trump administration and county both moving to cut funding from LAHSA, the joint city-county authority responsible for homeless services. Meanwhile, the city is still managing a landmark federal lawsuit settlement, which requires it to invest in thousands of new shelter beds in its response to homelessness.
“She’s been in this building … longer than Karen Bass,” said Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who served on the committee under Raman. “It’s convenient now for her to saddle all blame on the mayor when she rubber-stamped Inside Safe and stood in lockstep with the mayor.”
Mayor Karen Bass, left, and City Council member Monica Rodriguez at City Hall.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Rodriguez has specifically accused Raman — as chair of the committee — of slow-walking Rodriguez’s proposal from 2024 for the city to study a plan to separate itself from LAHSA and form its own department that would directly contract with homeless services providers.
Rodriguez said it took Raman months to schedule her motion in committee and that, while it was pending, the county removed most of its funding from LAHSA.
“The city has been left flatfooted because she wouldn’t lead our conversation. She wouldn’t schedule our items. She set us up for failure,” Rodriguez said.
While Rodriguez’s motion was waiting on a report, Raman made her own proposal to create a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight within the Los Angeles Housing Department to keep track of the city’s more than $1-billion annual investment in homelessness response.
The council moved that bureau forward last year, and a spokesperson for the Housing Department said that seven positions have been hired within the bureau handling contracts and data oversight.
Harris-Dawson said a seven-person bureau isn’t adequate.
Raman said the bureau was a starting point that could one day lead to a department, which she said would be expensive and take a long time to stand up.
“This was not precluding [the creation of a department],” Raman told The Times. “This was trying to speed up that staffing faster than the departmental process normally takes in this city.”
Raman said she talked to Bass about creating a department for homelessness in late 2023 or early 2024, but the mayor told her to move ahead with the bureau instead. Bass representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Paige Sterling, a spokesperson for the mayor, said that Bass and Raman discussed the bureau in 2025, during the budget process. The mayor opposed a standalone department at the time because it “would add to the bureaucracy,” and the bureau was a compromise, Sterling said.
“The mayor signed a budget with funding and positions for the bureau, which begins to give the city the capacity it needs to start overseeing homelessness as we evaluate what the future governance of this issue looks like,” Sterling said.
Raman has touted the bureau as a success that provides clear oversight of how the city spends its money, but has also claimed that the mayor’s office has moved too slowly to staff the bureau. The Housing Department still hasn’t hired an assistant general manager to oversee it.
The rotunda at L.A. City Hall.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Canceled meetings and frustrated colleagues
Raman hasn’t been endorsed for mayor by any of her colleagues on the council, and some of those who served on her homelessness and housing panel say she did a shoddy job as its chair. They complain that she frequently canceled meetings and allowed hundreds of motions to pile up without getting moved through council.
“It had started to feel less like a policymaking body and more like a scholastic seminar — a lot of philosophizing, a lot of talk about feelings, but not enough substantive questions or direction on policy to present to staff,” Councilmember Imelda Padilla said in a statement to The Times.
In response, Raman said her committee focused on data to make sure the city’s investment in fighting homelessness is paying off.
“That doesn’t feel scholarly to me, that feels like oversight and accountability — exactly what the public is asking for for one of our largest investments as a city,” she said.
The full council, meanwhile, has agreed to review its relationship with LAHSA and the county, and to study creating a new department to centralize homelessness oversight.
“This conversation that we’re having about this … is long overdue,” said Councilmember John Lee.
Raman will have a seat on the new homelessness committee, but it will be chaired by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado. Padilla was named chair of the new Housing Committee.
Raman’s final meeting as committee chair was supposed to be Wednesday.
Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman is expected to lose her leadership role on the L.A. City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, which she has chaired since 2023, according to people familiar with the situation.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson is planning to announce this week that the committee will be split into a housing committee and a homelessness committee — neither of which will be led by Raman, the people said.
Harris-Dawson is a close ally of Mayor Karen Bass, whom Raman is challenging for re-election. He declined to comment.
“It’s hard to imagine that it’s not related to politics. The timing of it would be too much of a coincidence,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former Los Angeles City Councilmember and Los Angeles County supervisor who now serves as chair of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Raman’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the impending shakeup, which was reported earlier by the California Post.
The move comes at a pivotal moment in the mayor’s race on homelessness.
The city’s unsheltered homeless population increased this year after two straight years of decreases, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported last month.
While the citywide number has increased, the number of homeless people living on the street in Raman’s district decreased by 49%, a fact she has touted as she challenges Bass.
Raman and Bass have presented starkly different takes regarding the situation citywide and in Raman’s district.
The mayor has posited that her signature program, Inside Safe, which addresses homeless encampments by moving homeless individuals into temporary housing, was largely responsible for the drop in Raman’s district and that federal and state budget cuts partially led to the increase citywide.
She also attacked Raman’s performance as the chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee.
“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,” said Bass’ campaign spokesperson Alex Stack in a statement last month about the homeless numbers.
Raman claimed that there have only been three Inside Safe operations in her district and that her committee has been stifled by inaction from the mayor.
“Council can pass legislation… move motions forward, but it is the mayor that has charge of the implementation and outcomes, she said at a press conference last month.
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.
The embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority sued the Trump administration on Monday to stop it from depriving the region of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, saying the effort is unwarranted and violates federal laws.
The authority, better known as LAHSA, said in its Monday filing that cutting off the funds would put more than 11,000 people — 1,900 of them children — at risk of losing housing or other services.
LAHSA, a joint city-county agency overseen by political appointees, is seeking a temporary restraining order to bar the federal Housing and Urban Development Department from suspending the funds.
“The people who will be harmed by this decision are not bureaucrats,” said Gita O’Neill, LAHSA’s interim chief executive officer, in a statement Monday. “They are families, veterans, seniors, and formerly homeless Angelenos who rely on these resources to remain housed.”
The filing in federal court comes nearly three weeks after HUD officials said they were suspending LAHSA from applying for or receiving federal funds, citing financial mismanagement, fraud and a lack of safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest.
In its 46-page lawsuit, LAHSA pushed back on HUD’s allegations, saying they were not supported by the evidence. Lawyers for LAHSA portrayed HUD’s actions as part of a larger political agenda — elimination of the federally approved “Continuum of Care” system, which makes LAHSA the overarching applicant for most federal homelessness funding across Los Angeles County.
The Trump administration “has made clear it wants to scrap the program entirely in favor of a homelessness policy favoring criminal enforcement, drug treatment, institutionalization and civil commitment of the mentally ill,” the lawsuit states.
HUD officials have said they are barring LAHSA from applying for funds on behalf of the Continuum of Care, which covers 85 cities, including Los Angeles. LAHSA secured $220 million in federal funds for various agencies in 2024 and $944 million since 2021, according to the June 11 letter from HUD Deputy Secretary Andrew D. Hughes.
HUD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the letter, Hughes said his agency had received information that LAHSA “may have committed violations of federal law” while carrying out its obligations as part of its HUD grant agreements.
“HUD has evidence that LAHSA’s repeated false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures, including its lack of financial management, internal controls, and safeguards against conflicts of interest, pose a threat to HUD, the public, and those living on the streets of Los Angeles,” he wrote.
In the letter, Hughes said that HUD’s inspector general had opened an investigation. Depending on the outcome, the money could be restored or LAHSA could be permanently barred from receiving funds.
LAHSA, in its lawsuit, said HUD has not provided any investigative findings to show violations of the funding agreements. Instead, agency lawyers said, federal officials relied on “a mash-up of old news articles, comments from public officials taken out of context, and findings from routine public audits that included recommendations that were all appropriately actioned.”
Lawyers for LAHSA contend that HUD’s actions violate the U.S. Constitution and override the dictates of Congress, which established many of the processes for distributing federal homeless funds.
The vast majority of the federal funds secured by LAHSA as a grant applicant goes toward permanent housing, agency officials said.
LAHSA, created in 1993, is overseen by a 10-member commission, half from the city and half from the county. Among those commissioners is L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who has made homelessness a central part of her agenda. Each of the five county supervisors has an appointee.
At stake in the battle between HUD and LAHSA is an array of services affecting some of the region’s most vulnerable residents.
LAHSA oversees the Homeless Management Information System, the federally-mandated software that tracks homeless people across the county. It has 8,000 individual users and is used by more than 300 agencies, according to the lawsuit.
HUD’s plan to suspend the funding would prevent LAHSA from using the system to match Angelenos — those on the street and in shelters — with housing and services, the lawsuit said.
LAHSA also oversees the annual “point in time” homelessness count across the county. Agency officials have pointed to the results from those counts as evidence that they have been making steady headway, with homelessness decreasing 4.3% countywide and 5.5% within Los Angeles between 2023 and 2025.
Unsheltered homelessness, which tallies the people living outside or in their vehicles, fell by a larger margin, declining 14% across the county and 17.5% within L.A. during that period.
Despite those numbers, LAHSA’s reputation has been battered by some highly critical assessments.
Last year, a global consulting firm retained as part of a federal lawsuit over the city of L.A.’s response to homelessness found that homeless services provided by LAHSA and the city lacked adequate financial controls, leaving the system vulnerable to waste and fraud.
Several months earlier, county auditors identified lax accounting procedures that resulted in LAHSA’s failure to pay its contractors on time. Even after that report was issued, nonprofit groups with LAHSA contracts continued to report that payments were behind schedule.
Last year, the county Board of Supervisors reached a breaking point, pulling more than $300 million — the vast majority of its funds — out of LAHSA and creating its own homelessness department. City officials have been weighing a similar move in recent months.
Big Brother star Lily Benson drunkenly booked herself into The Savoy days after she spoke of how she was about to be made “homeless” and was to be evicted from her flat
Lily Benson has treated herself to a night in The Savoy(Image: INSTAGRAM)
Big Brother star Lily Benson has treated herself to a night in The Savoy – just days after she claimed she was being made homeless. The The reality star, 21, has carved out a career as an influencer since she shot to fame as a housemate on the 2024 series of the ITV2 reality show, and has kept fans up to date with her day-to-day life since.
Earlier this week, Lily told her followers that she was about to be evicted from her flat and Sunday was her moving out day, but left her packing to the the last minute after getting tickets to a Harry Styles gig.
In her first update on the hectic day, Lily posted a video on Instagram where she looked panicked as she wheeled her belongings out of the flat and wrote: “Note to self. Don’t leave moving to the last day.”
In the next update, Lily wrote: “My temporary housing accommodation,” and could be heard thanking a doorman who helped her with her luggage as she revealed she was staying in the luxury hotel. She added: “I booked this drunk last night.”
In the next slide, Lily had donned the complimentary robe and slippers with the hotel’s branding on them and Kerry Riches, who found fame on the first series of the ITV version of Big Brother and has since appeared on Good Morning Britain as a disability campaigner, commented: “I’m hpwling but you’re gonna absolutely love it. It’s my favourite hotel ever! Xx”
It comes after Warrington-born Lily, who famously spoke about working in a Chinese takeaway whilst in the house and, since moving to London for her showbiz career, has documented long-running sagas such as getting her broken Louboutins fixed, took took to TikTok on Tuesday with a far more bleak update for her followers.
But Lily didn’t seem too bothered about her living arrangement, and was more concerned about getting a tan in the coming days as she expressed her confusion over the “retirement” of the Prime Minister.
She said: “So I’m probably just gonna have to get an Airbnb or summat. Or I could go back to Warrington but the UV here is so high. Why would I go back to Warrington when I can’t get a tan there? My Stranded in London content is coming soon.”
“But my main priority right now is I have the Maybelline summer party, and the UV is eight degrees, I’m gonna get a killer tan and listen to heartbreak music. That’s my life update. It’s very solemn. I found out today that Keir Starmer has retired – what the f*** is going on?”
Lily has amassed almost half a million followers across both Instagram and TikTok since rising to fame but admitted that at the time she applied for the reality show, which has launched the careers of This Morning stars Alison Hammond and Josie Gibson as well as fellow presenters like Brian Dowling and Kate Lawler, she only did it as an act of revenge against an ex-boyfriend.
At the time, she told ITV: “I originally applied because it was my ex’s favourite TV show because we broke up. I thought ‘I’m going to go on his favourite TV show.’ I’d never heard of it.
“When I dated him, he was obsessed with it and I was like ‘What is it?’ because he was older. When we broke up, I saw the advert and I thought I’m going to apply for his favourite TV show and get on it – I didn’t think I would!”
Ron, a West L.A. resident, thinks he knows why former reality TV star and political newcomer Spencer Pratt won so much support in his run for mayor.
People are frustrated, frightened and angry about homelessness “and the crime associated with it,” Ron said in an email. He added that he voted for Mayor Karen Bass, but “almost everything Pratt said about the homeless resonated with me. … The homeless run wild here, without consequence.”
“Many of us support him not because we think he’s perfect,” said Kathy, “but because we are deeply dissatisfied with the direction of Los Angeles and feel that traditional politicians have not delivered the results we were promised.”
Bob, “a left-leaning Palisades resident,” said the issue is not Pratt’s lack of credentials, but the failures of incumbents. “There was a columnist … who documented in depth the situation at MacArthur Park,” Bob wrote in reference to me. “What was his name and what happened to him? Did he change his tune?”
These are all fair points, and if Pratt holds onto one of the top two spots and makes it to the Nov. 3 general election, or he’s overtaken by late-charging Councilmember Nithya Raman, we’re going to hear a lot more about homelessness in coming months.
So whether we’re looking at a Bass-Raman contest or a Bass-Pratt showdown, here are some random musings, and I’ll begin by responding to Bob’s question about whether I have changed my tune.
Not in the least.
The situation in MacArthur Park — targeted Thursday in a crackdown that involved multiple arrests — has long been a disgrace, and the same is true of many other places I’ve written about for the past quarter of a century. Last month, I visited a Hollywood neighborhood where one frustrated resident hired her housekeeper to document chronic problems related to homelessness, illegal dumping and criminal activity.
Residents have good reason to ask why they haven’t gotten better results after responding to politicians’ pleas for more money over the years.
It’s no surprise that Bass had high unfavorability ratings and why, despite leading in the primary vote count, she’ll fall far short of the 50% needed to avoid a second election phase. I still can’t believe that when I first asked her about the sad state of MacArthur Park, she told me she was fully aware, because she often drove through the area on her way to work.
Then why hadn’t she led the charge to address the problems and return the park to the community?
It shouldn’t take months, let alone years, to take back control of public spaces, and Pratt’s criticism is warranted, no doubt. And my main issue is not the hypocrisy of him saying God wants him to be mayor while calling his opponents demonic entities and villainizing homeless people he intends to shoo away to Seattle. It’s that his “fixes” demonstrate a lack of understanding.
Let me make a confession. From one angle or another, I’ve been writing about the intersection of homelessness, mental illness and addiction for a couple of decades, and I still have a lot to learn.
And on a personal note, I lost my son to a drug overdose. He had a job and wasn’t homeless, but like a lot of people who struggle with depression and other demons, he was resistant to help, and even to the idea that he needed help.
There are a lot more substance users like him, living out of public view, than there are on the street. We notice only those who don’t have the means to pay the rent or the mortgage as housing prices rise. So when Pratt says we don’t have a homelessness problem, but a drug problem, he’s missing a critical component in understanding why L.A. has tens of thousands of unsheltered people.
Pratt said on his website that his “treatment first” approach would direct resources into mental health and drug treatment care, which sounds good except that those responsibilities are primarily under county jurisdiction, not city control.
He and others have attacked harm reduction practices, such as distribution of needles and other paraphernalia. And I have to admit that it seems counterintuitive to enable further drug use. But the idea is to prevent death, engage clients and start a relationship that might lead to transformative care.
The county reports that in 2024, fentanyl-related deaths decreased by 37% and meth-related deaths by 20%. Harm reduction can be “absolutely invaluable,” addiction specialist Rick Rawson told me when I was working in MacArthur Park, but we need much more than that.
“When you have someone who becomes so incapacitated that they can’t stand up,” Rawson said, “to say that you’re just going to provide them with harm reduction and hope they don’t die, I think that falls short of the responsibility we have to each other and to the sickest people.”
I’ll add here that I firmly believe we should intervene more aggressively with people who are gravely ill, or are a threat to themselves or others. I recently profiled two San Diegans who are advocating for use of an existing law to allow for deeper evaluations and longer-term treatment plans for people with chronic drug and mental health issues.
It’s worth noting that drug and alcohol rehab is seldom a quick or surefire remedy. As for mental illness, it took me one year, along with the help of trained professionals, to convince my friend Nathaniel to seek help after he’d spent decades on the street following a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
What I’ve found over the years is that many of those living in tents and cars and alleys and parks are damaged in numerous ways.
I’m less inclined to judge people from a distance after having met a man on Skid Row who said he fell apart after his young daughter drowned. I’ve met women who are victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault. People in the grip of killer drugs like meth or fentanyl don’t think as clearly as we’d like them to, and they repeatedly sabotage their own self-interest.
To see people take over public spaces, openly sell or use drugs, lash out and scare those around them is disturbing and sometimes scary. But to say they choose to live on the street, as Pratt has, is to miss the point, to excuse our own complicity, to overlook historic policy failures, and to choose contempt over compassion.
Homelessness can cause mental illness, and mental illness can cause addiction, and vice versa. One condition alone can be difficult to address, but intertwined maladies further complicate matters.
I recently checked in with a guy I wrote about who had been addicted and homeless in Koreatown, and he said his recovery took more than half a year. He was in residential treatment for a few months, then in intensive outpatient treatment. There are no shortcuts, he said.
I’m not here to defend Bass, or Raman and the rest of the City Council, which shares responsibility for the current state of the city. Limited progress has been made in the last 3½ years, with a marginally lower number of homeless people.
But there’s a long way to go in moving people indoors and restoring a sense of order and public safety. The many needs include smarter enforcement of existing laws, faster development of low-cost interim and permanent housing, better coordination of outreach and follow-up services and more people willing to do all of this work.
Let’s hope that in the coming months we’ll get an honest conversation about what’s working, what isn’t, and how to do better.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass made what sounded like a victory speech Tuesday night.
Councilmember Nithya Raman made what sounded almost like a concession speech.
And former reality TV star Spencer Pratt relayed a message from the heavens.
“Well, obviously God wanted five more months of me exposing all the failures of our mayor, so it’s gonna be a fun ride,” Pratt said. “I hope she’s ready.”
Assuming Pratt holds on to one of the two spots in the Nov. 3 general election as the final votes are tallied in the next few days, the smart money will be on Bass, for reasons I’ll get into in a moment.
But the supreme being and patron of all pontiffs has to be considered a wild card. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that an incumbent mayor in the City of Angels would be running against a challenger whose campaign manager is God Almighty.
So here we go. We could be in for one of the more remarkable electoral adventures in city history, with a complete novice and MAGA conservative going up against a liberal career politician in a deep-blue city and state full of people who are tired of hearing excuses from Democrats. (If Raman ends up ousting Pratt, my apologies for jumping to conclusions. But it’s not my fault. The devil made me do it.)
If you intend to follow closely, as of course you should, maybe you can help me count the number of times Pratt plays the faith card. I went to St. Peter Martyr School and attended the church by the same name, and I don’t recall ever hearing a nun or a priest drop God’s name as often as Pratt does.
In fact, I just watched a clip of Pratt talking to Fox News TV host and Donald Trump disciple Kayleigh McEnany, and over the course of 1 minute and 52 seconds, he mentioned God or Jesus 10 times.
“Thankfully, I married an angel who was very connected with Jesus and has brought me to the light,” Pratt said of his wife and former reality TV co-star Heidi Montag. “It’s been very empowering to just pray and just be on his path and just say, ‘God, if you want me to save these animals, save these humans and protect my city, just keep putting me in the place where I can do that.’”
Is he running for mayor or cardinal?
Look, I totally respect your average true believer. But I’m not entirely comfortable with a mayor who might be sitting around City Hall waiting for signs and smoke signals rather than knowing what to do on his own.
God has a lot on his plate. He might be busy multiplying fishes and loaves so people don’t go hungry thanks to the president’s tariffs and warmongering. Is he going to rush to answer a prayer for guidance about underfunded parks or broken sidewalks in Los Angeles?
How did we get here, you ask?
Well, Pratt is an AI creation, in a way. A composite of sorts. You combine the forces of social media, political rebellion, second-rate celebrity obsession and the Peter Principle, and here’s a little Trump puppet walking around L.A. like he’s the chosen one.
Add to that the very real essence of his appeal to some voters:
Los Angeles has problems. Big problems that don’t get fixed quickly enough or at all, and Pratt represents the angry voter who wants to know why City Hall can’t do better and where all the money went. He’s absolutely right when he says we shouldn’t have people living on the streets, using drugs on the streets and dying on the streets.
But if Pratt is in the general election rather than Raman, we’re in for a national media circus rather than a summit on solutions. Raman is well-versed on matters of relevance and could have pushed back against Bass in substantive, detailed ways. On the other hand, as Pratt has fairly argued, Raman headed City Council’s homelessness committee, so isn’t she partly to blame for the failures she tried to pin on Bass?
As for Pratt’s policy chops, he has not responded to my offers of a get-together. Absent that, and given his careful avoidance of local reporters who know their stuff, I read his platform on his campaign website and I can tell you that while he touches on many of the right issues — public safety, fiscal integrity, homelessness — attention to detail and depth of knowledge are not God-given strengths.
Maybe Pratt can actually deliver on his promise of a “treatment-led recovery model that addresses mental illness and addiction as the primary drivers of chronic homelessness.” But that would require an act of God (which I suppose is possible given their relationship), because those matters are primarily under the direction of the county, not the city.
This is the main problem here. Bass was beatable, and could have been pushed by a serious challenger to do better.
In the last election, Rick Caruso gave her a scare. That was partly because he had some depth on the issues, he was a successful businessman and philanthropist, he had served on the police commission and the water and power board, he had built relationships across the city and, along with his family, he had poured time and millions of dollars into underserved communities.
In this election, it looks as though Bass could get lucky and face off against a guy who lost his house in the Palisades fire, saw a few homeless encampments through his car window, and decided he wanted to be mayor. Some might have questioned his hubris, but only before learning that he was on a mission from God.
If you’re keeping count, that’s nine mentions of God so far in this column.
One more for the tie, with an eye toward five more months of campaign fodder.
As the voters deliver their ballots to neighborhood drop-off sites and others wait to vote in person Tuesday, Times reporters fanned out across the city to ask residents whom they planned to support for mayor.
Here is a sample of what voters said about their preferred candidate.
‘The other choices were not worth my vote’
Steven Travers 57 Glassell Park Self-employed
Voter Steven Travers told The Times that he didn’t feel like there were many options for him in the mayoral election this year, except for the incumbent Karen Bass.
Shopping at Vons in Echo Park, Travers said, “Just what I’ve seen of her, and you know, the way she speaks, she seems to be OK.”
“I guess she’s done an OK job since she’s been the mayor,” Travers said. “The people she’s running against, I mean, there’s really nobody else that I think I would want to be in that position.”
This decision to vote for Bass, despite the wide field of options, came down to how she had handled homelessness in the city and Travers’ neighborhood of Glassell Park, where there had been homelessness issues “for a period of time.”
The issue, Travers said, has been lessened and “certain areas things are getting a little bit cleaned up. And I’m assuming that she’s, you know, part of that whole thing.”
Travers also said that “anybody involved in politics in Los Angeles” seems to always talk about homelessness “more than anything else” and that Bass “seems to be trying to maybe do something about it.”
Simply put, “The other choices were not worth my vote,” Travers said.
Looking for a more humane L.A.
Zorah Archie-Winston 22 View Park Recent USC graduate
Zorah Archie-Winston said that she’s probably voting for Nithya Raman for mayor.
“If I had to choose, like, right now, I think I’m leaning more towards Raman,” Archie-Winston said.
One of the main reasons for that, she said, is Raman’s personality and the humanity she brings to the table.
The 22-year-old View Park resident said that the unhoused population is something she feels very passionately about, and she believes Raman shares that.
“We could have, like, a lot more of a compassionate view on the unhoused population and those adjacent,” Archie-Winston said.
She said she’s been following along with Raman’s journey on the L.A. City Council and looks forward to seeing what the candidate could do as mayor, especially for tenancy rights.
“I think there are a lot of resources and things that are really inaccessible to those who are struggling to live in L.A. for one reason or another, and I think that’s something Raman will be able to help with,” Archie-Winston said.
‘He might be our only saving grace’
Ann Raljevich 66 Westchester Medical biller
Ann Raljevich, a 66-year-old medical biller, says Spencer Pratt could be the city’s hero in the mayoral race.
“I think he might be our only saving grace,” said Raljevich, of Westchester.
Under the city’s current leadership, Raljevich tells The Times, she said she hasn’t seen change in the city. She said she still sees the same unkempt streets, drug addicts around town and high sales taxes.
“Being in the medical field — the drugs bring on the schizophrenia and bring on all the other things, and I mean, I see it when I drive in and out of town,” Raljevich said. “I see it everywhere.”
Raljevich said she also admired that Pratt was from Southern California and graduated from USC.
She said the fact that he hasn’t directly declared a political party affiliation shows that he doesn’t care what people think and is just here to do the job.
“He never really came out to say whether he’s a Republican or a Democrat,” Raljevich said. “He’s just for the people.”
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I was willing to give the young novice a primer on what a mayor can and can’t do, and let him know City Hall is a reality show like no other he’s been on. But Spencer Pratt didn’t call me in response to my column last week.
I did, however, hear from a slew of his most ardent supporters.
Steven C. had this to say: “You’re a left-wing idiot, and … it’s time for you to retire. You’re a joke!!! You always have been!!! God bless Spencer Pratt and the 45th and 47th President of the United States Donald Trump!!!!!”
You may be onto something, Steven!!! I’ve been thinking about retiring!!!! But then a former reality TV star like Pratt comes along and tells Vanity Fair he had a chat with God, who told him He wants Pratt to be mayor of L.A!!!!! With people like this running for office, how can I retire?!!!!!
R.W. wrote to say: “You say Spencer has never done anything in his life…What credentials do you have? From what I’ve read about you, you are a lousy commie journalist who has never accomplished anything in your life!!”
Just recently, R.W., I replaced a broken toilet tank flush valve and I learned two Willie Nelson songs on the guitar. That’s not nothing.
Peter did not mince words: “Your piece on Pratt is a hit piece filled with bull— . You should go f— yourself before someone takes you out, which is the appropriate response to a s—bag like yourself. So please f— off and drop dead, which is exactly what you deserve.”
Peter, I did drop dead once. Cardiac arrest. While on the other side, I saw God, who told me to snap out of it because He was going to tell Spencer Pratt to run for mayor. Who knew God had a defibrillator?
All of these, by the way, were actual emails, and there were many more just like them. But it’s only fair to note that despite the fulminating knucklehead wing of Pratt’s posse, he’s tapped into a justifiable sense of frustration with City Hall, given homelessness, the Palisades inferno and budget issues that squeeze all manner of basic city services.
That’s why Mayor Karen Bass is paddling furiously, trying to keep her political career afloat. In the latest UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll, Bass is at 26%, Nithya Raman at 25% and Pratt at 22%. That’s so tight, it appears that no one will get the 50% needed to win outright, and if we get a top-two runoff, it’s not clear who will go to the dance.
So as we close out the primary, with the election on Tuesday, five talking points come to mind.
Which candidate knows the city best?
Los Angeles has 114 distinct neighborhoods spread across 470 square miles (that’s 10 times the size of San Francisco), with an estimated 220 languages spoken. Diversity is a defining characteristic, and roughly half the population is Latino, which makes it a shame there’s no Latino candidate for mayor, especially given the raids and roundups by President Trump.
A mayor doesn’t have to speak six languages and know every corner of the city, but residents want to be seen and heard, and feel like they’re understood and represented.
Raman is well-versed on homelessness policy, and she’s spot-on about the need for greater urgency in problem-solving, but as my colleague Noah Goldberg reported, constituents in her district complain that they haven’t seen enough of her.
As I said, Pratt has wisely targeted municipal failure. But in the realm of outsider candidates with Republican credentials, Rick Caruso, who ran against Bass last time, was comfortable whether he was in the Valley, South L.A. or anywhere in between. And he easily connected with people. Would Pratt be a tourist in his own city?
By virtue of her job the last four years, Bass — who raised a blended Black and Latino family — knows the city best, although her unfavorability rating is a big problem.
What about the other candidates?
In the aforementioned poll, minister and housing activist Rae Huang had 9% and former educational technology businessman Adam Miller had 5%. Virtual unknowns, neither had a legit chance of winning, but they could be spoilers for one of the top three candidates.
If only I had a nickel for every time a reader suggested that.
By 101 measures, Los Angeles is one of the great cities of the world and California has built the world’s fourth-largest economy while leading on climate change, so apocalyptic diagnoses are a bit off the mark.
Also, local elections are nonpartisan. You don’t run for mayor as a D or an R.
And yet it’s true that Democrats and their policies and sensibilities rule the day, and they have a lot to answer for in Los Angeles and in California.
But would the same critics suggest that in conservative cities like Fresno and Bakersfield, which have their own homelessness and other problems, Republicans are to blame?
When it comes to housing, poverty, healthcare and streets occupied by people who are addicted or mentally ill, the failures go back decades, touch all levels of government, and cross party lines.
Have I given up on Los Angeles?
When I pointed out that Pratt seemed unaware of these complexities, and of the structural limits of mayoral power, readers suggested he was rising to the challenge while I was giving up on L.A.
Not at all. I care about L.A. enough to hold its leaders to a higher accountability, and to scrutinize posers and pretenders who think they can do a better job.
My advice for the next mayor.
Fix what’s broken, celebrate what works and take responsibility for what doesn’t.
Now let me try one more time:
Spencer, give me a call.
You can’t tell us you had a conversation with God about running for mayor and not share more details.
Did God scold you for referring to the mayor as Karen “Basura,” which means trash in Spanish?
Did He say we should pull out of the ‘28 Olympics, or have any advice on how to fill potholes and fix sidewalks?
If you’re having regular conversations about City Hall with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we’re dying to know:
Democratic and Republican candidates vying to replace Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom have been sparring on televised debates and exchanging campaign attacks since April to garner the attention of voters statewide.
The candidates include a Riverside County sheriff, a former senior advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, a former Los Angeles mayor, a billionaire hedge fund founder and two former members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Recent polls showed that the leading Democratic candidate is Xavier Becerra, a former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services whose campaign is focusing on affordability and housing for what he calls “working Californians.” Vying for one of the top two spots in the June 2 primary are Republican contender Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator who was endorsed by President Trump, and Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer, a hedge fund founder turned environmental warrior.
Here is what the top candidates have said on important topics such as immigration, housing and homelessness, affordability and the entertainment industry.
Immigration and ICE
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that began in California last summer have been hotly debated by Democratic and Republican candidates.
Here is what the candidates said during a debate in May or stated on their websites, as well as some criticism they have faced during the campaign.
Xavier Becerra vowed to protect and lead the state against the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants and marginalized communities. Becerra’s rivals have accused him of failing to protect migrant children when he served as Health and Human Services secretary under the Biden administration.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco opposes “sanctuary city” laws that block local law enforcement from assisting federal immigration agents, calls for the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and says the border must be secured. But he has also faced criticism from fellow Republicans for supporting a pathway to citizenship for lawful, working undocumented people and telling his constituents that his deputies were not taking part in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
Former Fox News host Steve Hilton, who legally immigrated to the United States from the United Kingdom, opposes California’s state and local sanctuary policies, and said the state must cooperate with the federal government because the governor’s job is to enforce laws, whether the governor agrees with immigration enforcement activity or not.
San José Mayor Matt Mahan plans to demand ICE officers be unmasked, vows to go after agents and immigration agency leadership when they violate the constitution and shield communities from unwarranted harassment.
Former Congresswoman Katie Porter said California should enforce its sanctuary laws statewide, “so we don’t have crazy cowboys taking the law into their own hands.”
Billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer wants to strengthen California’s laws to ensure law enforcement agents can’t profile Californians based on their race, ethnicity, language, occupation or location. He also wants legislation that will grant the state attorney general the authority to hold ICE agents accountable for violent and illegal acts on the job. He supports abolishing ICE. But he has faced heat on the campaign trail for his former hedge fund’s investment in the Corrections Corp. of America, now known as CoreCivic, which operates private prisons around the nation that are housing people picked up by federal immigration agents. Steyer has repeatedly expressed remorse about his former firm’s ties with the company and said he personally ordered the divestment from private prisons before he sold his stake in the hedge fund.
State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond says he plans to levy a new tax on companies that operate ICE detention centers, fight to abolish ICE, protect California’s sanctuary laws and work with Congress to establish a pathway to citizenship.
Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa supports helping law-abiding immigrants and said violent criminals have been deported under the state’s sanctuary laws, despite claims to the contrary by Republican candidates.
Housing and homelessness
Here’s what each candidate said about the need to address the state’s housing shortage and its stubborn homeless problem:
Becerra said he plans to cut “unnecessary red tape” and speed up “approvals for projects that meet affordability and environmental standards.” On homelessness, Becerra said he wants to establish a $150-million annual homelessness prevention fund to pay rents and fight eviction or foreclosure.
Bianco said he wants to end “overregulation of our building industry” and eliminate the California Environmental Quality Act, the California Coastal Commission and the California Air Resources Board. On homelessness, he wants cities to clear encampments and prioritize mental health and substance abuse treatment. He wants to force people to accept drug treatment “when necessary.”
Hilton proposes to reform the California Environmental Quality Act so that only government prosecutors can sue, preventing private individuals and organizations from stopping or delaying new housing projects. He also said he believes rent control measures reduce the incentive to build housing and wants to restructure or eliminate them. On homelessness, Hilton wants to build more low-cost group shelters instead of permanent housing.
Mahan said he wants to lower developer fees and taxes for infill housing. Mahan also said more homes should be built off-site in California-based factories, making them cheaper than building them on site. On homelessness, Mahan wants to make the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant permanent and fund it at $1 billion a year.
Porter said she would “greenlight innovative building strategies, shred unnecessary red tape and create incentives” to build needed housing. On homelessness, Porter wants more interim housing, emergency rental assistance and rapid rehousing programs.
Steyer is pledging to make it harder for large corporations to buy up the state’s housing stock and wants to encourage cheaper methods of home construction. On homelessness, Steyer wants to expand interim housing options and homeless services.
Thurmond said he wants to build 2 million new homes for “working Californians,” on 75,000 acres of surplus land that local school districts own. On homelessness, Thurmond wants to increase the number of housing units that include mental health and substance abuse services.
Villaraigosa said he wants to cut development fees and reform CEQA to speed housing development, particularly for infill housing. On homelessness, Villaraigosa wants to double the state’s investment in Newsom’s Homekey program to build an additional 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing over five years.
A comprehensive guide on the candidate’s full views on housing and homelessness is here.
What the candidates have said about affordability
The candidates offered their ideas for making California more affordable during debates in April and May as well as on their websites.
Becerra said he will stand up to price gouging and unjustified rate hikes and use the power of the state to lower prices “where the market has failed.”
Bianco says he wants to cut taxes for working families and businesses, stop the “over-regulation on California’s economy,” support job growth and unleash the state’s energy resources to lower the price of gas and utilities.
Hilton said he wants to eliminate income taxes on people who earn less than $100,000 and on the first $100,000 for Californians who earn more than that. He also wants to end California’s current tax on tips to ensure tipped workers keep more of their earnings.
Mahan said he wants to enact a “Gas Tax Holiday” that ends or reduces the tax on gas. He also wants to remove barriers to building affordable housing by putting a cap on fees charged for new housing construction.
Portersupports single-payer healthcare, providing free child care and college tuition and making wealthy corporations pay their “fair share” in taxes. To pay for it, Porter would impose a progressive corporate tax, meaning more profitable businesses and corporations would pay a higher rate. She also supports ending income taxes for those who earn less than $100,000.
Steyer called himself the only candidate who is “willing to take on the corporate special interests” that drive up the cost of living in the state. He said he would like to lower gas prices as well as streamline permitting, reform zoning and enforce laws to build affordable homes faster. He also supports single-payer healthcare.
Thurmond wants to provide a tax credit to make it easier for Californians to pay for the rising cost of gas, groceries and housing. He plans to establish a universal childcare program and provide low-cost loans to help small businesses make improvements at their firms.
Villaraigosa plans to support a California Fuel Affordability Guarantee to cap gas prices for working families.
The entertainment industry
Here’s what some candidates have listed on their campaign websites about their ideas to support California’s entertainment industry.
Becerrasupports state requirements that mandate productions disclose how AI is being used, cutting the “bureaucratic friction” of getting a filming location permit and vows to uphold the state requirement that ensures digital platforms share meaningful performance data with the cast, writers and directors.
Hilton wants to restore California’s competitive edge as a place for productions by creating financial incentives for film productions, cover the initial and technical costs associated with the development of a film or television project and reserve funding for independent and mid-budget projects.
Mahan said he plans to expand and modernize production incentives, make them more competitive and ensure the protections are for everyone who works on a film or television project from the technical crew to writers, directors and actors.
Steyer said he would like to block corporate mergers in entertainment, defend and expand film tax credits and eliminate the regulations and hurdles for permitting and logistics that “slow down productions.”
Times staff writers Seema Mehta, Nicole Nixon and Andrew Khouri contributed to this report.
