What’s happening today?
Raman holds a massive lead in new LA Times poll, but opponent Bass’s team calls it an ‘outlier’
A new, rather eye-popping, poll by Berkeley IGS and the LA Times shows a massive lead for Nithya Raman in the mayor’s race ahead of the incumbent, Mayor Karen Bass. This poll was done in essentially the last few days, from last Tuesday, Sept. 15 until this past Sunday, Sept. 20. It showed 39% of survey respondents saying they would vote for Raman, and 28% would vote for Bass.
The 33% that were undecided is actually unusual for this many days before an election (and ballots start being mailed out on Oct. 5), pollster Mark DiCamillo told the Times. The poll might help answer a big question around who Pratt voters prefer, and it seems they like Bass a bit more than Raman. Still, those voters aren’t the be all and end all of the undecided respondents. Some of those undecided people didn’t vote in the primary, and those queried in the survey were a group that preferred Raman more than Bass.
Bass’s campaign diagnosed this latest polling as an “outlier,” though, and even pointed out how an earlier poll during the primary wasn’t exactly spot-on. The campaign argued that a poll that’s done online can “struggle” to get things right. Alex Stack, spokesperson for the Bass campaign, stated that “one outlier poll which got the June primary wrong isn’t reflective of the energy we see when talking to voters every day and what every other poll indicates – this is going to be a close race. Our campaign is continuing to do our job: contrasting Mayor Bass’ record of delivering results on housing, public safety, and neighborhood investment with Nithya Raman’s out-of-step views on allowing encampments near schools and failing to show up for her constituents.”
What just happened?
On Tuesday, UCLA academics hosted a panel conversation on “the intersections of transportation and homelessness.” Yes, I know. Quite the hot topic. But the encouraging thing about this conversation is that the panelists included “Ruth,” a journalist who lived outside and in public for a number of years, at a spot in Studio City near a bike path. You might know Ruth better by her longtime moniker, “Rooflesser.”
Given that it’s rare for these types of conversations to include the perspective of someone who is personally unhoused, someone took the opportunity to directly ask Ruth to share with the listeners (many of whom work at transportation agencies) the reason she chose to live next to the bike path. It turns out it had not been so much of a choice, as it was the result of a series of events, many of them touched off by the actions of government entities.
Ruth explained that a “bureaucratic” lapse in funds several years ago led to her needing to find a place to live. She had been in “bridge” housing, one that she was sharing with more than a dozen other people. On the day she lost the housing, Ruth said she needed to go to work, and naturally she wanted to have a place to return to after clocking out. She did find such a spot. It was under a bridge behind Campbell Hall High School in Studio City. “I went from living in a ‘bridge’ home to an actual bridge,” Ruth remarked.
Ruth further explained that the location “had three walls and a roof, which felt more like housing than anything else that I could find. And there were people that were nice and it was in a good neighborhood.”
But Caltrans, which had jurisdiction over that spot, began conducting sweeps – and then, those sweeps began happening every day, Ruth said.
“The sweeps… chased us along the freeway corridor, and when I got where I stayed for many years, it was a bike path that was not really open and wasn’t connected to anything, and I was on a useless hillside,” she said.
So Ruth lived for many years on the hillside, which was between that bike path and a parking lot. She painted the picture in the style that she often uses, which was jurisdictionally: “It was a county easement, and it had a steep incline, but part of it was flat.”
Ruth said she wasn’t intending to live there for a long time, “but that was one of the only places that the police didn’t – the sanitation workers and Caltrans – didn’t seem to interfere with us.” She also explained she developed an abscess following a stint at a shelter – one that, she explained, was “traumatizing” to live in.
Ruth closed her response by referencing some legal provisions she’d consulted to figure out whether she could live next to that bike path. “I felt like I had a right to be there,” she said. “It was constitutionally protected because it was on the LA River, which is supposed to be a shared, public natural resource, because it’s a navigable body of water.
“The public is supposed to be able to access it at any time,” she explained. “So, I felt like if I had a right to be anywhere in public, it would be there. I was on the tree line, which should be part of the frontage or title lands or whatever the constitutional language is.”
Ruth then said she hoped that helped clarify things for listeners. She also apologized for the length of her response.
A quick note, also. It is rare for Ruth to be open to sharing so much detail about the “outside” spot where she lives. And that might be a reflection of the fact that she recently shared she is “roofless no more.” She says she has worked out a way to get housed in the last couple of weeks, ever since she became fed up by continued sweeps. She had rented a U-Haul and set up a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight and Accountability (clearly “mock” and satirical for those who need to be sure) outside of the district office of her City Council member, Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor. Raman’s staffer came out that day with water and some sunscreen and spent a few hours getting grilled by Ruth, who told me at the time that it almost seemed like some progress was being made as they began to talk through some misunderstandings.
LA city leaders worried about losing control of homeless services, but staffers say the city is “uniquely positioned” to understand the crisis
There was handwringing by LA city leaders on Tuesday about losing control over how homeless services are delivered, after the joint powers authority, through which the city and county have long ruled the roost, is dismantled. The city and the county, and potentially others, are expected to compete to hold lead roles on service delivery. Some City Council members on Tuesday raised fears they would lose control of the city’s “beds,” which many council members have helped to set up in their districts, and lamented losing further access to mental health services, if LA County obtains a lead role on homeless services. But Council member Bob Blumenfield wagered that the county is likely to win the contest, and says the only thing they can do now is to be more engaged with the county, if that entity is indeed taking up the mantle. Meanwhile, Council member Eunisses Hernandez raised some doubts that the city could handle homeless service delivery when it already struggles to provide basic city services in a timely manner. The city is nevertheless expected to forge ahead with its application. Meg Barclay, the deputy CAO (formerly the city’s “homelessness czar” who went off to Seattle for a few years where she led their homeless services department), assured Hernandez that she believed the city was putting together a strong application. “The city as a municipality is uniquely positioned to understand the needs of the other municipalities in the continuum,” Barclay said, referencing the “continuum of care” moniker that is given to any entity that holds the leadership roles. While the roles could be rather expansive for a single city to hold – they could potentially have control of the case management system, HMIS, that contains information about the cases of people living in another city – LA city’s population of homeless constituents typically make up around 60% of those throughout the county.
A few more things…
The Los Angeles Fire Department announced the results of their investigation into the Lineage cold storage fire, and while they say the cause remains undetermined, they learned that the fire originated on the roof next to a section of the solar panels. Council member Ysabel Jurado, who authored a motion that calls for withholding Lineage’s rebuild permit while the investigation was ongoing, quickly put out a statement on Tuesday saying that the results of the probe is unsatisfactory, especially for residents of Boyle Heights, which means she still opposes letting the company’s permit through the gate. Lineage, which has long contended that the solar panel caused the fire, seized on the investigation’s findings though, putting out a statement on Tuesday saying they proved what they had been saying all along. The company recently sued the solar panel company, Altus Power, which hit back at Lineage by pointing to the findings as hardly settling the matter, since the cause is undetermined.
Nithya Raman’s mayoral campaign hit the maximum in matching funds that they can possibly receive in the general election, which is $1.5 million. She beat Bass to the punch, which recently hauled in a few hundred thousand dollars to get to just under $1 million. Matching funds are provided to campaigns for the small dollar donations they receive from people who live within the city or the district – and Raman has pointed to this as an edge that’s needed for someone like herself who hasn’t been part of the traditional politics world in Los Angeles.
You can catch up on Karen Bass’s portion of the mayoral forum put on by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, here. It was held Tuesday night. Nithya Raman’s conversation with MPACPresident Salam Al-Marayati, from Sunday, Aug. 30, can be viewed here.