Bass, Raman Trade Blows Over Homelessness Post

Los Angeles politics took another sharp turn Monday as the Karen Bass and Nithya Raman fight over homelessness spilled into public view. Raman, who is challenging Bass in November, accused the mayor of working through a political ally to remove her as chair of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee.

Raman made the charge in a video posted to X after news broke that she would be stripped of the committee post. She said Bass’ top City Council ally removed her from the chair position and argued the move was meant to punish her for entering the mayor’s race. Raman said Angelenos would be the ones hurt by what she called political games. She also said Bass had blocked the city controller from auditing the mayor’s Inside Safe homelessness program, which she said had spent hundreds of millions of dollars while homelessness continued to rise across the city.

Raman used the video to contrast Bass’ citywide record with what she described as progress in Council District Four. She said street homelessness there had fallen by almost 50% and credited that drop to outreach, matches to beds and efforts to move people indoors. Her message was aimed not only at Bass but at City Hall more broadly, where homelessness policy remains one of the most politically charged issues in Los Angeles.

The dispute comes as Bass faces scrutiny over the city’s handling of homelessness and the results of her signature programs. Raman said she had pushed for stronger oversight by creating a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight so the city could track every dollar. She added that the mayor’s office had still not hired a person to lead it 16 months later. Raman also criticized a system she says pushes encampments from one district to another instead of solving the problem.