Municipal law attorney Traci Park says she has a plan to alleviate homelessness and cut back on what she calls arbitrary outreach programs in her bid to represent Los Angeles City Council District 11, which encompasses the westside communities of Brentwood, Del Rey, Mar Vista, Marina del Rey, Pacific Palisades, Palms, Playa del Rey, Playa Vista, Sawtelle, Venice, West Los Angeles, and Westchester.
Her opponent, civil rights attorney Erin Darling says he plans, if elected, to expand permanent supportive housing pledging to create 26,000 new housing units, make protections permanent for renters beyond COVID-19, and streamline rapid rehousing for those who have recently fallen into homelessness with reusable properties.
Both candidates earned the top votes in the June primary—after current Councilman Mike Bonin chose to not seek re-election—and will face off Nov. 8.
Park has collected more than three times as much as Darling in donations, raising just over $820,000, according to the most recent campaign funding disclosures.
According to Park, a Democrat, the sprawling homelessness is due, in part, to “failure” from local officials and Bonin, who does not support the city’s ordinance to ban encampments near sensitive areas, like schools and daycare centers. Another concern, she said, is the city’s current emphasis on permanent housing rather than short-term, emergency solutions.
“Choosing to remain on the streets simply can’t be the option,” Park told The Epoch Times. “I am not willing to allow people to continue dying and living in encampments for another decade, while we wring our hands about how to get brick-and-mortar new buildings online. This is a public health crisis.”
She added she supports Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court Plan, the state’s first court-mandated mental health and substance abuse treatment program for those with severe mental illness or drug addiction, which LA County is expected to implement by the end of 2024.
Darling, also a Democrat, said housing and homelessness are the biggest issues facing Angeleno voters.
“But too often we talk about the symptoms, not the causes,” Darling wrote on Twitter March 17. “It’s what we’ve been doing for decades, and it hasn’t worked. I’m the only candidate with experience keeping people housed.”
Darling’s campaign did not respond to a request for an interview.
According to Darling’s Twitter post, the city’s “failure” to produce affordable housing is the leading cause of homelessness.
“Enforcement won’t end homelessness, only housing can. We cannot play whack-a-mole with people’s lives, pushing the unhoused from one park to the other. I will push for an end to the fragmented patchwork approach to homelessness, where approaches differ by council district,” he said.
While Darling says, if elected, he won’t enforce the city’s current anti-camping ordinance—following in the footsteps of Bonin—Park said this is what sets them apart.
“I am of the view that we need to have some reasonable guardrails in place to protect public spaces like parks and libraries,” Park said. “And my opponent has been very clear from the outset of his campaign that he will not do that. And that is a huge distinction between us.”
Darling wrote on Twitter he will instead advocate for “stronger tenant protections” and a right to counsel “for those facing eviction.”
“I have represented hundreds of low-income tenants facing eviction, fighting to keep people in their homes and in their communities,” he wrote in March. “I’m the only candidate with experience protecting vulnerable renters. When tenants aren’t represented in court they lose their cases and homes.”
Regarding permanent supportive housing, Park said it takes too long to build and costs too much.
An audit from the LA City Controller in February found that Proposition HHH—a $1.2 billion bond measure passed in 2016 by LA voters to create 10,000 permanent supportive housing units—has significantly fallen short of its promises as the average costs for the construction of one unit has risen to almost $600,000, and only 1,142 have been completed.
Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin also found at least one HHH development would cost $837,000 per unit.
“We are not going to build our way out of this problem,” Park said. “We are going to have to pivot in the short term to some less ideal temporary solutions.”
Some of those, she said, include more tiny home villages and so-called safe camping sites.
Park additionally said she wants to reevaluate nonprofit partnerships the district is already working with and create clearer measurements to determine what’s working and what isn’t through regular meetings between the council and service providers.
“I am more than happy to double, triple that [and] quadruple down on good projects and good programs that are actually achieving results that we want to see,” Park said. “I have zero heartburn about canceling programs and contracts that aren’t getting us results.”
Much of the district’s homeless congregate in the Venice neighborhood—which has the most homeless people in the city after downtown’s Skid Row—according to the Los Angeles Services and Housing Authority (LAHSA) 2020 point-in-time count which showed nearly 1,000 homeless people both sheltered and unsheltered.
After the 2021 count was canceled due to COVID, the most recent count conducted in February, however, showed a 39 percent decrease in the district and a 50 percent decrease in Venice, which former Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez challenged in September and has been criticized by some Venice residents. LAHSA has cited lack of volunteer training and poor internet connection as reasons for the errors.
Park is endorsed by Lt. Gov. of California Eleni Kounalakis, as well as such organizations as the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs.
Darling’s endorsements include the Los Angeles Democratic Party, the Los Angeles Times, the Westchester-Playa Democratic Club, the Los Angeles County Public Defenders Union, a handful of progressive activists, and former U.S. presidential candidate Marianne Williamson.
