April 7, 2026 • 43 mins
LA City Council Member Nithya Raman is running for mayor. On this episode, she joins Kal for a candid conversation. She opens up about how she got into politics, LA's homelessness crisis, and being compared to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. What does being a democratic socialist mean to her? And, what does it take to implement real change in her city?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The elected representative for the area that I lived in
didn't meet with us, and I got really frustrated. And
I knew that there was a lot that the city
could do. I felt a real sense of urgency around
this issue, and I couldn't understand why he didn't feel
the same sense of urgency around it. And so I
ran against him for city council. Her city council.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, and you won.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I want that's right.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Something a little different today. I'm going to talk with
Nitya Rahman, who's a progressive city council member here in
Los Angeles. She's also running for mayor of LA So
I want to talk to her about the homeless crisis, affordability,
and what the deal is with all of these robots
who bring you your food and drive you places.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Here we Go again again Again.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hey, I'm cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Here?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Please? So, I was excited to talk to you for
a number of reasons, but especially because you've announced your
run for mayor. Yes, I've known you for quite some time.
(01:22):
We have mutual friends, heavily biased all of that, but
our politics tend to align as well, and so voting
takes place very soon. June second is the primary, and
it's a bit of a non traditional primary in LA
because the top two go on to the general election
regardless of party affiliation.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
That's how a lot of our elections work in California.
That's why in the gubernatoriler race, there's a threat now
that the top two could be both Republicans. So they're
pressuring some of the Democrats to drop out.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Oh my gosh, how can that happen in California.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
If you don't have popular enough Democrats, then that can happen.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
And I guess first, neither of us grew up in LA.
I lived here for fourteen years. I want to say,
when did you first move here?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
I moved here in twenty thirteen because my husband Vali
was here and I was working abroad. I was working
in India, in Chennai and in Delhi. I was working
with people who lived in slums and informal settlements, doing
an urban planner by training. So I was doing work
related to slum evictions and getting access to basic services.
(02:33):
But we had been a part after marriage and so
finally I came here to join him. And I didn't
fall in love with the city right away, but I
did soon and have since been one of LA's biggest fans.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Wouldn't you say? Not right away? Were the what were
the hurdles for you? Adjusting to life in La and
then loving it?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Driving took me a minute to get used to. Yeah,
that was interesting. And I had been a cyclist in
college and in my master's program and in India got
into a pretty gnarly.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Crash geese cycling into India in Chennai. Yeah, oh dude.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I was bold. I was bold, but then I stopped.
You know what was interesting is when I came here,
I started talking to people about doing work in La,
like meeting up with different people being like, oh, I'm
here and I want to get involved with the city,
or I want to learn more about opportunities for me here.
And it was this really interesting difference that I felt
here from what I had felt on the East Coast,
(03:39):
where when you said you were interested in doing something,
people weren't like, Okay, what's your pedigree, what's your background?
You know, who did you know? What did you do?
They were just like, great, you want to do this,
Come meet me at my office. I'll talk to you
about opportunities. And it was kind of this openness to
like people wanting to pursue their ambitions that I saw
(04:00):
in my husband's work. My husband is a writer. He
worked with so many people who just showed up here
with a dream. He himself did that, and if you
wrote a good script, you could just get staff. You know.
Now it's harder because there's less less work. But it
was like this incredible openness to opportunity and openness to
people's ambition, whether it be starting a business or doing
(04:24):
something creative or like me, wanting to get involved with
the city. People are just accepting here in a way
that I just didn't feel on the East Coast and
didn't feel in India, And that was really new for me.
I was like, Oh, this place is really open, it's
really open minded. It's a very diverse city and there's
(04:45):
a kind of open mindedness to its energy and an
acceptance of people that made me really excited about what
I saw here.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's a very cool way of putting it. I had
the for me. It was also the car culture took
a lot of getting used to. I grew up in
the suburbs. I grew up outside of New York City,
but even the suburbs on these coasts, you know, basically
between Boston and DC, even the suburbs have great mass transit,
and as kids, we would take you know, New Jersey
(05:13):
Transit into into New York City and all of that.
So it took it took a minute to get used to.
But I didn't really fall in love with LA until
after college, because I loved UCLA and I loved the campus,
but it did feel kind of like, yeah, it was
in this little bubble, and a quite privileged bubble if
you look at the neighborhood surrounding UCLA. So so it
wasn't until after that I really kind of fell in
(05:34):
love with with living in LA. And I agree with you.
I mean, my sliver, my tiny sliver, is entertainment, and
I think when you move here for entertainment, you think
that that's the whole city. And I definitely fell victim
to that for the first couple of years, until I
started following my college friends, most of whom have nothing
to do with entertainment and many of whom are originally
from LA and seeing this whole other side to these
(05:55):
vibrant communities that I was so isolated from because of
where I was living. So hearing you kind of like,
I'm almost envious that you had that experience right when
you moved here, because it took me a little while
to kind of figure that out. Is the reason that
you came back to the US from India just because
you and Bally were apart from Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
We'd been married and had been He came to India
for a year to be with me, and then yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Is he writing from there?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, he like sold two scripts and was writing developing
them and had to come back for you know, for
at points, but was mostly able to be there for
the year. But yeah, you know, it was we were
apart for a long time, and you know, we just
wanted to be together.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
So you started a nonprofit shortly after you moved here a.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Couple of years afterwards.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Actually make sure I get the timeline.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well, yeah, so I came here. I worked for the
city for a year actually working on homelessness and looking
at how much the city was spending on homelessness, and
did this report that found that the city was spending
one hundred million dollars a year on responding to homelessness,
and most of that money was going into arresting people
(07:04):
who were experiencing homelessness, which then led to some changes
at the city. The city soon announced that they were
going to start spending one hundred million dollars on actually
providing services and housing for people who were experiencing homelessness,
which was an incredible change, and that was directly came
out of the report that I wrote, in the analysis
that I did across city departments. But after I did
(07:25):
that report, I became pregnant with twins, so thank you,
and so I left the workforce for a little bit,
and then after my kids were a little older, I
returned to the workforce and then started this neighborhood nonprofit
called SILA, which was working on homelessness in my own neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
And what made you focus on that, obviously your background,
I know you said, is.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, I'd been interested in urban poverty, had been interested
in urban planning issues. I had a degree in it,
and I thought about it all the time. And then
I saw that there were just a lot more tents
in my neighborhood than there were before. And that was
the years of sometimes double digit growth in homelessness in
LA because there was a real break when things started
(08:07):
growing so much, because the affordability crisis was spiraling. This
was also a time of rapid economic growth in LA.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And this was like way pre COVID, right, this was.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, twenty twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, those were the years
when there was a lot of increase, sometimes double digit
increases in homelessness a year on year. And in LA
because unlike New York, we have very few shelter beds
compared to the size of our homeless population, and so
as homelessness started growing, it was very visible on our streets.
(08:40):
There were just there were tents everywhere, and you still
see I mean, there's still a significant homeless population today,
but it just was a stark change from what had
been there before.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I think I officially moved to New York and I
want to say twenty thirteen ish, something like that, And
so there was a ap and I come here often
for work, and there was a gap of like four
or five months, and then I would come semi regularly.
And you know, when you're not in a place every day,
(09:11):
you notice.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
You can see the changing.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So I noticed exactly what you're describing huge. I mean
I would call them almost ten cities and people seeking
refuge under overpasses that I had never seen anybody living
under before in Los Angeles, in one of the wealthiest
cities in the in the world, and it was really
really jarring. So when you started this nonprofit, I guess
what were the what were the biggest challenges to your work?
(09:34):
And then what did you achieve too?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Ultimately that you're yeah, So we were just kind of
we were neighbors who all saw this happening and wanted
to do something to help, and so we just met
up on weekend mornings and walked from tent to tent.
We were getting to know people in our neighborhoods who
were on the streets offering food and a cup of coffee,
but also saying, have you talked to some of a
(09:56):
service provider? Is there something somebody that we can connect
you with? Is the where you know? And we would
seek out shelter beds and try and see whether we
could actually get someone in a shelter bed. And we
were doing the work of kind of stitching together support
for individuals. And I know from my kind of my
understanding of LA and how it operated. I knew that
(10:18):
the city could do more if it wanted to, and
so then we started to advocate with our local elected representatives, saying, hey,
can you bring more services? Can you open a shelter here?
Can you We want your help, and that elected representative,
the elected representative for the area that I lived in,
didn't meet with us, and I got really frustrated. And
(10:42):
I knew that there was a lot that the city
could do. I felt a real sense of urgency around
this issue, and I couldn't understand why he didn't feel
the same sense of urgency around it. Why the city machine.
I ran against this guy named David rue we Go, Yeah,
And I just didn't feel our urgency reflected in the city, right,
And so I ran against him.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
For city council for city council, Yeah, and I won.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
That's right. Yeah, I won a tough race against a
sitting incumbent, and that hadn't happened in the city of
la for almost two decades before that. And I didn't
have any political background, really, no political backing, and so
it was a very exciting moment. But it was also
a very powerful moment because all of us were so
(11:30):
frustrated with what was going on. And what we did
was we channeled that into kind of thinking about how
the city could do more to serve Angelinos. And then
so many volunteers and I went and knocked on doors,
and then during COVID wrote postcards telling people what the
city could do for them. And that vision of the
city as a positive presence in people's lives as something
(11:55):
that they could rely on as a proactive problem solving
entity that I think resonated with a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, so can you walk through Like I was so
impressed when I was following your campaign. Yeah, and you
did something that Obama did, that Trump did, that Zoron did,
and that was expanding the electorate. You included people in
the political process at the local level. Yeah, who had
never thought about why it mattered to vote for city council.
(12:25):
And you didn't just get them to show up for you.
You had like didn't you knock on like eighty thousand
doors or something like? You had a huge How did
you build this team of people for a local race?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It was partly the political moment that we were in.
It was during the first Trump administration. People were looking
for a place to get involved in California, your federal
votes don't matter that much, and so they wanted to
be involved locally. They wanted to kind of put their
energy somewhere, and we gave them a place to put
it into a campaign that was about bettering the city
(12:55):
and helping the most vulnerable, and it was really perfect.
We also were able to to take advantage of a
change in election timing, so for the first time in
the City of La local elections coincided with federal elections,
and so we knew we'd get more voters.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, turnout was going to be yah.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
We knew it was going to be higher, and so
we knew we had an opportunity to educate new voters
and just get them to turn over their ballot and
also vote for city council, even if they'd never done
it in the past. We actually increased voter turnout in
the district five times.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, and I still hold the record for the most
votes ever received by a city council candidate. So that's
exactly the number. I can't remember, it's over I think
something like seventy thousand.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
That's your tattoo right there. Yes, do you have any tattoos? Now, okay,
that's the tattoo to get. It's just the number, the
margin by which or the number the number that broke
the record. Yeah, besides homelessness, what were the other issues?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
The cost of housing, you know, and and how challenged
renters were and how difficult it was to be a tenant,
to be a renter here in this city where costs
had gone up so much. I mean, this city is
really really unaffordable, and I think we are one of
(14:06):
the most rent burdened populations in the country. Still levels
of overcrowding. We are the one of the most overcrowded cities,
which means more than one person to a room in
a home.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And can you talk about that a little bit because
I think that for a lot of people when they
think of Los Angeles, it's everything they see on a
reality show, on a sitcom. There is that reality in
LA that's part of the city, but the majority of
people don't live like that. And so when you're saying
massively crowded housing, can you just can you kind of
(14:41):
describe what that means? Where who these communities are, how
vibrant are they all?
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, So we have a city which is really defined
by land use regulations and this city's history, right, So
we have a city where large parts of it people
weren't allowed to billed apartments because wealthier communities limited in
how much new apartment construction could happen in sometimes very
(15:09):
explicit ways. And so there are neighborhoods where all of
the density ended up, right. And so there's neighborhoods that
are as dense as cities that you think of as
much more dense, like the city of New York here
in La and these are places which are often very
(15:29):
poor and are some of the most overcrowded places in
the entire city. And this is a poor city, you know,
it is a place where there's a huge amount of poverty.
It's a very divers city. There's a lot of recent
immigrants here. Ten percent of La County is undocumented. So
there's just there's a huge number of people who are
(15:52):
living paycheck to paycheck and for whom the affordability crisis
isn't just a term. It is a reality of their
lives that they're struggling with every single day, and it
plays out in our housing so clearly. And so I
ran on this platform of we can protect struggling renters
(16:14):
so much more than we had in the city of
la And that message really resonated with people who were
facing harassment, increasing rents that were far beyond what they
could afford and that were potentially on the verge of
eviction when they missed a paycheck or had a sick kid.
It just was a very, very potent message, and once
(16:35):
I got elected, I was able to have a lot
of impact on renters, which was incredibly exciting, like.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
We, yeah, what kind of impact.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Well, over the past few years, we've passed the largest
expansion of tenant protections of renter protections here in the
city of Los Angeles in forty years. We passed universal
just cause eviction protections, which means you can't just get
evicted randomly so that your landlord can kick you out
and raise the rent. It can only be from a
specific list of reasons. We secured a floor of rent
(17:10):
debt under which you couldn't be evicted. Basically, you could
get a little grace period if you could if you
couldn't pay right, and you could only get evicted if
you owed more than the fair market rent for your unit,
So one month's rent and it just gave you a
little extra time to make up a rent payment and
allowed you again just a little time before you would
(17:31):
get that.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
So if you're eight hundred bucks and you could only
afford six hundred that month, you had an extra month
to come up with the other two hundred.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Yeah, And we also created this database
of eviction notices, so now every time a landlord sends
an eviction notice, they also have to send that notice
to the city, which we never got before. And so
we can now see when someone is receiving an eviction notice,
which means we have the ability to send them a letter,
which we do from the Housing Department that says, here
(18:00):
are your rights, here are resources that you can look at,
and here's how you can potentially challenge or get support
to stay in your home. Because most of these evictions
are related to unpaid rent, and so there's ability for
people to access you know, rent relief and things like that.
So all of these were things that we passed, and
(18:20):
for the first time last year we had we have
in La rent stabilization. We don't have rent control, we
have rent stabilization and which limits how much your rent
can be increased. But the rent here could be increased
anywhere from three to eight percent or more per year.
And we actually lowered allowable rent increases in rent stabilized units,
(18:40):
which are like seventy percent of units across the city,
impacting over a million renters, lowering rent increases these for
these renters for the first time again in forty years.
And I let all that work at the city and
so I like, I got elected talking to renters and
I have delivered for renters.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
What was the pushback to that and how did you
deal with that? I assume there were a lot of
wealthy corporations, LLC's humans who were not happy with you.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah. Well, yes, And when I was running for reelection
my council district, I actually had the most amount of
money ever spent against a sitting incumbent spent against me,
largely by landlords and the police union. Oh, it's kind
of an interesting and.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The police union.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yes, oh interesting, Okay, Yeah, so it was. Yeah, there's
definitely been a lot of pushback, and there's a lot
of questions around, you know, how do we ensure that
the housing market is still one that is able to
provide for people? How do we ensure that smaller landlords
can stay in the industry and operate under new rules
and regulations, and I want to make sure that they
(19:45):
can operate. I want to make sure that they can function.
But I did think that the rules earlier, the deck
was stacked against renters. And we've really, we've really made
a change on that.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
We've had democratic mayors who have talked about wanting to
solve some of these challenges and somehow have fallen short.
You ran as a Democratic Socialist, which is different than
a mainstream democrat. Can you talk us through what the
DSA means to you, why you ran under the DSA banner,
(20:24):
and how that maybe helped push an agenda that saw
the successes that you just described.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, you know, actually, so, I'll be honest. Before Bernie
and AOC, I didn't know that much about the DSA,
but I was really inspired by their campaigns and the
way that they spoke about issues. It felt so honest
and so real in a way that I had not
heard other politicians speak and it really meant something to me.
(20:51):
And in La, the local chapter of the DSA when
I was first running, was really the only political space
was centering the needs of renters, and it was you know,
it was not part of the local Democratic Party's focus,
it wasn't part of their organizing efforts, and so it
(21:12):
felt like a very natural place for me to go
because this was part of why I had wanted to run,
to have a city that really wrapped its arms around
its residents and really supported them, and that was inspiring
to me and for me, Like I have a vision.
I'm obviously very progressive, and I really believe in the
(21:36):
role of government in our lives. Like I think government
can be such a force for good and I wanted
La City government to be that for Angelino's and I
think that has shaped also the way in which I
go through my job today, because whether it's on renter's rights,
whether it's on responding to homelessness, whether it's on trying
(21:58):
to you know, make streets safer, make neighborhoods safer for people,
I want people to feel like the government is delivering
for them. And I've really tried in my district to
make sure that we're being responsive, that we're hearing people's concerns,
that we're actually getting people off the streets and indoors
and then sidewalks and parks and other places are clear
(22:20):
and free for you know, other people to use, and
really showing people that if they if government works with urgency,
if we work, we really work, that we can deliver
results for residents.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I totally get when you say, okay, just these issues
were not necessarily a priority for mainstream Democrats in the past.
But how did you make it a priority for you? Meaning?
Were there costs that you had to incur? How do
you make government work so well in your own office?
Are there you know, are there staff position positions that
they're just not spending on in you know, moderate dem
(22:55):
offices that you are spending on. How what's the inside
of how you're actually making it work well?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Part of it is that I came in with an
agenda that I wanted to deliver on. Right. It wasn't
just that I wanted to run for office because I thought, oh,
this is the next step from me, like I've never
even my first run was somewhat of an accident. Wasn't
something I had planned from the time that I was
you know, in college or in urban planning school or anything.
(23:23):
I didn't really think of myself as a politician. Somebody
pissed you off, someone pissed me off, and I thought
I can do it better, you know. And and also
I thought people deserved better, like we deserve better. We
wanted to have a city that responded with the urgency
that I felt around changes, and I was like, that's
(23:44):
what that's what it should be. That's what it should
feel like in the city that we're all working our
butts off to deliver for residents, you know, even if
it's hard. And I think for me that clarity of
having an agenda helped me when I got in to
try and focus my work into think about how I
could shape my work so that I could really deliver
(24:06):
for a residence.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
When I look at mainstream Democrats, Schumer hacame the complete
lack of fury around what we're doing in Iran, for example,
it's just such a bummer. And to me, just that
silence and complacency, which now we've you know, it's not
new to Iran. It just shows me a complete lack
(24:30):
of priorities from the Democratic Party. What do you see
as the challenges in LA that Democrats have not successfully
tackled that you're hoping to be able to tackle with
your vision.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, so you know, I think partly because I am
an urban planner, and partly because I've thought about the
way that this city has grown and been shaped for
a long time, and partly because the sense of opportunity
that is in Los Angeles is one of the reasons
(25:06):
I love it so much. To me, thinking about how
we actually lower the cost of housing here is like
the driving factor that brings me, you know, that kind
of wakes me up in the morning and takes me
to work. We have to make it cheaper to live
in LA if we're going to solve the homelessness crisis,
(25:27):
and if we're going to make this into a place
that still invites people here to build their dreams here,
we have to solve that. And that is a hard
issue to solve in LA. That's a hard issue to
solve because the powers that be don't you know, the
landlord lobby does not want you to protect renters right,
and so they've funded elections and there's tons of people
(25:49):
in city Hall who are supported by them and historically
have been supported by them, who don't want to change
anything about the status quo. And building new housing deed
restricted affordable housing, market rate housing. Building new housing also
encounter significant resistance. This is a city that has resisted
(26:09):
new housing for a long time. But for me, if
we don't build more, if we don't bring the costs
down in a material way for people, this city will
become one of those places which is just going to
have extraordinarily wealthy people who can afford to live here,
and then extraordinarily poor people who are crowded into homes
(26:29):
who basically can't afford to leave. You know, Like that
that's it. That's going to be the vision of Los Angeles.
And that vision of Los Angeles already to some extent,
is part of the reality here that can be changed.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So going back to like I keep coming in and
out of town, right, even my drive over to the
studio today, you know, there are a couple of blocks
where everything is pristine, and then all of a sudden,
there's trash everywhere. There are people sleeping on the street,
there are all these fucking way mos. Like, at what
point are we like, oh, we don't even want humans
(27:01):
to drive us? Like why be alive at that point? Right?
Like why do we want machines to do everything? Sorry,
this is obviously a pet peeve.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
The I mean, it is very I went to San
Francisco recently, and there's a lot more Waymos on the
street there. And there was a point when I was
at a street corner and there were four different Waymos
coming and then those delivery robots on the corner and
I and no other humans besides me, and I just
felt so dystopic. Oh yeah, you know, like all the
(27:30):
life of the city had been leached from that.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yes, and this is the I mean, this is the
actual question. Is like, A it creeps me out, and
B you know this because you're married to a writer.
But you know, SAG and the WGA were on a
very protracted strike because we were being forced into that
situation by these big media companies, and a big sticking
point was AI. So I just look at all this
(27:53):
and I go like, I don't envy the job you
have now, but certainly the job that you're that you're
gunning for, because how do you go up against something
like this where obviously we know technological changes are happening,
we should embrace them to some extent. It's not a binary.
There are going to be good things that come out
of it, but at what cost When it seems like
they're already replacing workers.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, and I think Los Angeles is set for some
real economic turbulence. I think we're already seeing it play
out locally. And I think the impact of AI job
losses not just in creative fields, but also technology. There
have been layoffs across the tech sector, programmers people who
(28:36):
I think thought by getting a programming degree they were
guaranteeing themselves a job for life, who are suddenly find
themselves without a job. And I think there's going to
be layoffs across the board. And so I do think
that we're in a moment of real economic turbulence. And
I don't think Los Angeles is unique in that I
think we're going to see this across the entire country.
(28:57):
And I don't know how. I don't know how to
respond to that. I don't know how to grapple with that.
But I do know that unless we have a government
that is really thinking about it, preparing for it, structuring
itself around resilience, structuring itself around bringing neighborhoods back to
life in some real way, we are not going to
(29:17):
be able to meet this moment with the energy and
thoughtfulness that it deserves. And I don't see that kind
of thinking happening right now here in the city of
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
For example, New York right, our current mayor, when he
was in the New York State Assembly, was pushing this
pilot bus program make buses free. And one of the
reasons he got moderate Dems and Republicans on board is
because of public safety. Right, you're spending less money on
making them free than you would be on having to
pay for cops. And so if you can make these
(29:56):
things free, more people take them, the crime rate goes down,
et cetera, et ce. The creative ideas for LA.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
One thing I'm really excited about is how we actually
do better homelessness response. And I think it's really important
to get this right because people here have such incredible generosity.
They've voted multiple times to tax themselves to provide housing
and services for people who are experiencing homelessness. They want
(30:22):
Angelino's the majority of them want to respond to the
crisis on our streets with care, and for me, honoring
that spirit means getting our homelessness response system right, which
we don't right now. It's not working, and to me,
that starts with making sure the city is doing better
(30:43):
at responding. We don't. As a city, we've increased our
spending on homelessness by five thousand percent over the last
few years, and we don't have any additional personnel that
are monitoring how that money is going out the.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Door, where's it going.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It's being contracted out to Homeless Services Authority, and then
we let them do all the oversight, which they don't do,
and we've known that they don't do it, and so
I've been really pushing for actually investing in performance data
and oversight and then using that information to actually do
better at serving people and getting more people indoors the work.
(31:20):
And I was able to develop these performance indicators and
to start monitoring them across the entire system, and I
found we're not focusing our money on the most effective
and the most cost effective efforts. We have to fix
the system and get it right because without that, and
you saw it, you saw it at the federal level,
(31:41):
people lose their trust and faith in government. And if
the city is not caring for them, and if the
city is not delivering on its obligations, people lose their
faith and trust in government and they will vote for
something else. They'll vote for a very different vision of
the city, and that you know that is scary to me.
(32:02):
So I want to make it work. I want to
make sure that we're building a system where we can
actually reduce homelessness a year after year, or we can
get people indoors.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
I'm still floored by the ten percent stat of undocumented Angelinos,
and I'm kind of wondering the mayor of any big city,
but especially a city like La, what do you do
differently than what the current mayor is doing in terms
of the Trump administration's attacks on immigrant communities, black and
(32:30):
brown communities, documented or undocumented ice Obviously, what do you
do in your role as mayor? How do you work
with the federal government, and how do you protect Angelinos
whether they're documented or not.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah, I think this is a really important question because
so many people are feeling so much fear right now,
and I think that there is much more that we
can do. Obviously, the federal government has powers that cities
cannot challenge in some ways, but I think we can
do more to ensure that we are protecting Angelino's to
the fullest extent that the city can. One is what
(33:06):
I already talked about about making sure that we're funding
immigration defense and immigration support at levels that reflect the
enormity of the crisis that we are facing right now.
The second is, I think we need to make sure
that the role that LAPD plays in responding to immigration
(33:28):
issues is reflective of the fact that they're supposed to
be here to protect Angelina's right and we had too
many instances where it appeared to many people that LAPD
was cooperating with ICE in raids and I think that
is atrocious. And I think making sure that LAPD, which
(33:50):
is really led by the mayor and the Chief of Police,
has an orientation towards protecting Angelina's whether during raids or
during protests, working to make sure that Angelinos are safe,
that should be the role of LAPD. A few weeks ago,
there was a state law that's been passed that said
(34:11):
that banned masks for ICE agents, and it was in
the courts and it was being it's being litigated still,
but the Chief of Police basically said he wasn't going
to enforce it because it was a poorly written law
and just said I'm not going to enforce this and
didn't I didn't hear a sharp rebuke from the mayor or,
(34:32):
a reorientation of this of that statement, because the chief
of police is like the embodiment of public safety here
and if Angelino's we are feeling so much fear at
this moment, don't feel like the police is here to
protect them. I think that is a very real problem,
and I think we have to be really oriented towards
protecting Angelino's at this moment, and the police is play
(34:56):
a big role in that and have to be I
think right now, have not been playing that role. And
really it is the mayor and the Police Commission that
have the responsibility for making sure that the police are
doing that, And so my response to that would be
very different from the one that we're seeing. The other
thing I would just say is that other cities have
actually prosecuted federal agencies when they've taken actions here that
(35:20):
have been illegal, and have done it both in response
to Ice, but also in response to other kinds of
federal actions the city of fighting back against kind of
taking away of federal funds for certain kinds of things.
Our city, we have an elected city attorney, but the
mayor and city attorney work closely together, and the mayor
(35:41):
can really push the city attorney to take action and
be more proactive in response to these issues. There are
other Our state Attorney General, Robanta has been very active
litigating against the federal administration and has won many cases.
We should be doing that here and again in a
city which is so many immigrants, where people want to
(36:02):
fight back, the city should be part of that fight,
and our mayor and our city leadership need to be
our city attorney need to be part of that fight
and really kind of pushing back at every moment when
dollars are at risk, but also when people safety are
at risk, to say, how can the city be oriented
around protecting Angelina's and messaging that to people, really saying
(36:23):
that over and over again to people. And the final
thing I'll just say is we have you know, we
have we have LA twenty eight. We have the Olympics coming, yes,
and federal law enforcement will be here. They're invited here, right,
So how is the mayor protecting us during this time?
How is the mayor making sure that federal law enforcement's
(36:45):
presence here is going to ensure that Angelinos are safe?
If I were mayor, I would be again working every
day with LA twenty eight and with the federal administration
to make sure that the presence of federal law enforcement
would be here to attacked Angelina's and not endanger them.
And I think that would be a very active and
robust effort and one that I get. I would be
(37:07):
messaging to the public. You know, I'm working and fighting
for you. That's what people need to hear. And that's
that's what I want to hear from my mayor. That's
what I would be doing if I'm mayor.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I want to ask you a quick perception question because
I've heard this a few times now. People are comparing
you as Aeron Mambani, mayor of New York. You're both
Democratic Socialists, you're both brown. Is that the only reason?
And if that's the only reason, is that not an unfair?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Is that not unfair? Like it's it's fine, but really
one of the ways because people know him now and
his campaign picked up a lot of steam very quickly,
he was obviously the underdog for quite some time. In
what ways might you be similar? Since you're both from
the same party, but in what ways might you be different?
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Yeah, I'm you know, he's like one of the most
well liked politicians in America right now. So I'm grateful
for the comparison. I will say that I think my
stepping into this race came from for me a moment
of feeling like we in LA are moving backwards and
(38:13):
not forwards that we are. You know, I talked to
you about the challenges of our essential services, you know,
just trash pickup and street lighting, are refocusing our budget
on kind of political goals as opposed to protecting Angelino's.
That felt really really frustrating to me. And again, this
(38:36):
idea of the city as designed around serving people as
opposed to serving the interests of the people in power.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah, I just didn't see that happening around me, and
I wanted and I didn't want to be in a
city that wasn't functioning that way. So my run was
it was really in response to the conditions I saw
around me in Los Angeles and the fact that I
wanted to fight for the robust, proactive, present, caring Los
(39:14):
Angeles that I know we can build here, but that
we are at risk of losing if we continue down
this path.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
I'll just say something that I don't think obviously people
won't know if you're listening to this on your way
to work or whatever is that you For the last
almost hour that we've been talking, you've smiled a lot
every time you've talked about solutions to challenges in Los Angeles,
and I don't typically see people in an elected office
(39:44):
have that level of visceral excitement when they talk about solutions.
You're two months away from the primary. How are you
feeling and how do you why are you smiling when
you talk about these solutions? Like it's a thing that
I think is inspiring to see. I mean, I don't
know if it's like I'm just asking you questions and
I'm feeling the feels hearing you talk about it, because
(40:07):
you seem to be talking about it with a certain
joy that's otherwise absent in our politics.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I mean, representing this city has been the privilege gosh,
I want to cry.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Ye see, this is one I wish we were a
video pod because this would be good for the clip.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, it's been such an incredible privilege to represent the city. Already,
just the five years that I've been here have been
so have been such a gift for me because the
work has been so rewarding, and it's hard, it's really hard,
and I've made mistakes and I've owned up to those mistakes,
(40:45):
and I've talked about those mistakes and tried to change
policy because I made mistakes. But it's there's like, yeah,
there's the work is is is just so rewarding and
so needed right now. And the thing that I'm the
most excited about is just getting to work for LA
(41:06):
and trying trying to work my hardest to fix these issues.
And in my council seat for the past few months,
I have felt like I've hit a wall, like I
had these you know, I did all this stuff that
I'm so proud of, and I was trying to do
more and I just I couldn't because the political forces
(41:29):
were just allied against that kind of change. And I
just feel like I would want to work for LA.
I would want to bring that work ethic to all
of LA, you know, I want to bring my work
ethic to kind of pushing the departments to deliver for
Angelina's in the way that they need to. And they can,
(41:49):
I know, they can't really believe in city workers. And
it is just the thing that makes me excited is
to get to work.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
That's super refreshing. Thanks thanks for being here at our conversation.
Thank you so much, Thank you. My guest today was
Nitthia Rahman. She's a city council member running for mayor.
You can learn more about her on her socials Nitthia
for the City or nitya Forthcity dot com. Here we
go again, as a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu
(42:19):
Media in association with New Metric Media. Our executive producers
are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino, Andy Kim,
Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan tan Is
our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor.
Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory Smith is our
associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly, logo by Matt Gosson,
(42:43):
Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson and Megan Halson.
Special thanks to Glenn Basner, Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane
Klein and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson,
Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks for listening. Everybody, tell
your friends write a review. All of this helps. I
appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm calpen
The elected representative for the area that I lived in
didn't meet with us, and I got really frustrated. And
I knew that there was a lot that the city
could do. I felt a real sense of urgency around
this issue, and I couldn't understand why he didn't feel
the same sense of urgency around it. And so I
ran against him for city council. Her city council.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, and you won.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I want that's right.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Something a little different today. I'm going to talk with
Nitya Rahman, who's a progressive city council member here in
Los Angeles. She's also running for mayor of LA So
I want to talk to her about the homeless crisis, affordability,
and what the deal is with all of these robots
who bring you your food and drive you places.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Here we Go again again Again.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hey, I'm cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Here?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Please? So, I was excited to talk to you for
a number of reasons, but especially because you've announced your
run for mayor. Yes, I've known you for quite some time.
(01:22):
We have mutual friends, heavily biased all of that, but
our politics tend to align as well, and so voting
takes place very soon. June second is the primary, and
it's a bit of a non traditional primary in LA
because the top two go on to the general election
regardless of party affiliation.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
That's how a lot of our elections work in California.
That's why in the gubernatoriler race, there's a threat now
that the top two could be both Republicans. So they're
pressuring some of the Democrats to drop out.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Oh my gosh, how can that happen in California.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
If you don't have popular enough Democrats, then that can happen.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
And I guess first, neither of us grew up in LA.
I lived here for fourteen years. I want to say,
when did you first move here?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
I moved here in twenty thirteen because my husband Vali
was here and I was working abroad. I was working
in India, in Chennai and in Delhi. I was working
with people who lived in slums and informal settlements, doing
an urban planner by training. So I was doing work
related to slum evictions and getting access to basic services.
(02:33):
But we had been a part after marriage and so
finally I came here to join him. And I didn't
fall in love with the city right away, but I
did soon and have since been one of LA's biggest fans.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Wouldn't you say? Not right away? Were the what were
the hurdles for you? Adjusting to life in La and
then loving it?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Driving took me a minute to get used to. Yeah,
that was interesting. And I had been a cyclist in
college and in my master's program and in India got
into a pretty gnarly.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Crash geese cycling into India in Chennai. Yeah, oh dude.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I was bold. I was bold, but then I stopped.
You know what was interesting is when I came here,
I started talking to people about doing work in La,
like meeting up with different people being like, oh, I'm
here and I want to get involved with the city,
or I want to learn more about opportunities for me here.
And it was this really interesting difference that I felt
here from what I had felt on the East Coast,
(03:39):
where when you said you were interested in doing something,
people weren't like, Okay, what's your pedigree, what's your background?
You know, who did you know? What did you do?
They were just like, great, you want to do this,
Come meet me at my office. I'll talk to you
about opportunities. And it was kind of this openness to
like people wanting to pursue their ambitions that I saw
(04:00):
in my husband's work. My husband is a writer. He
worked with so many people who just showed up here
with a dream. He himself did that, and if you
wrote a good script, you could just get staff. You know.
Now it's harder because there's less less work. But it
was like this incredible openness to opportunity and openness to
people's ambition, whether it be starting a business or doing
(04:24):
something creative or like me, wanting to get involved with
the city. People are just accepting here in a way
that I just didn't feel on the East Coast and
didn't feel in India, And that was really new for me.
I was like, Oh, this place is really open, it's
really open minded. It's a very diverse city and there's
(04:45):
a kind of open mindedness to its energy and an
acceptance of people that made me really excited about what
I saw here.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's a very cool way of putting it. I had
the for me. It was also the car culture took
a lot of getting used to. I grew up in
the suburbs. I grew up outside of New York City,
but even the suburbs on these coasts, you know, basically
between Boston and DC, even the suburbs have great mass transit,
and as kids, we would take you know, New Jersey
(05:13):
Transit into into New York City and all of that.
So it took it took a minute to get used to.
But I didn't really fall in love with LA until
after college, because I loved UCLA and I loved the campus,
but it did feel kind of like, yeah, it was
in this little bubble, and a quite privileged bubble if
you look at the neighborhood surrounding UCLA. So so it
wasn't until after that I really kind of fell in
(05:34):
love with with living in LA. And I agree with you.
I mean, my sliver, my tiny sliver, is entertainment, and
I think when you move here for entertainment, you think
that that's the whole city. And I definitely fell victim
to that for the first couple of years, until I
started following my college friends, most of whom have nothing
to do with entertainment and many of whom are originally
from LA and seeing this whole other side to these
(05:55):
vibrant communities that I was so isolated from because of
where I was living. So hearing you kind of like,
I'm almost envious that you had that experience right when
you moved here, because it took me a little while
to kind of figure that out. Is the reason that
you came back to the US from India just because
you and Bally were apart from Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
We'd been married and had been He came to India
for a year to be with me, and then yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Is he writing from there?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, he like sold two scripts and was writing developing
them and had to come back for you know, for
at points, but was mostly able to be there for
the year. But yeah, you know, it was we were
apart for a long time, and you know, we just
wanted to be together.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
So you started a nonprofit shortly after you moved here a.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Couple of years afterwards.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Actually make sure I get the timeline.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well, yeah, so I came here. I worked for the
city for a year actually working on homelessness and looking
at how much the city was spending on homelessness, and
did this report that found that the city was spending
one hundred million dollars a year on responding to homelessness,
and most of that money was going into arresting people
(07:04):
who were experiencing homelessness, which then led to some changes
at the city. The city soon announced that they were
going to start spending one hundred million dollars on actually
providing services and housing for people who were experiencing homelessness,
which was an incredible change, and that was directly came
out of the report that I wrote, in the analysis
that I did across city departments. But after I did
(07:25):
that report, I became pregnant with twins, so thank you,
and so I left the workforce for a little bit,
and then after my kids were a little older, I
returned to the workforce and then started this neighborhood nonprofit
called SILA, which was working on homelessness in my own neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
And what made you focus on that, obviously your background,
I know you said, is.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, I'd been interested in urban poverty, had been interested
in urban planning issues. I had a degree in it,
and I thought about it all the time. And then
I saw that there were just a lot more tents
in my neighborhood than there were before. And that was
the years of sometimes double digit growth in homelessness in
LA because there was a real break when things started
(08:07):
growing so much, because the affordability crisis was spiraling. This
was also a time of rapid economic growth in LA.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And this was like way pre COVID, right, this was.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, twenty twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, those were the years
when there was a lot of increase, sometimes double digit
increases in homelessness a year on year. And in LA
because unlike New York, we have very few shelter beds
compared to the size of our homeless population, and so
as homelessness started growing, it was very visible on our streets.
(08:40):
There were just there were tents everywhere, and you still
see I mean, there's still a significant homeless population today,
but it just was a stark change from what had
been there before.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I think I officially moved to New York and I
want to say twenty thirteen ish, something like that, And
so there was a ap and I come here often
for work, and there was a gap of like four
or five months, and then I would come semi regularly.
And you know, when you're not in a place every day,
(09:11):
you notice.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
You can see the changing.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So I noticed exactly what you're describing huge. I mean
I would call them almost ten cities and people seeking
refuge under overpasses that I had never seen anybody living
under before in Los Angeles, in one of the wealthiest
cities in the in the world, and it was really
really jarring. So when you started this nonprofit, I guess
what were the what were the biggest challenges to your work?
(09:34):
And then what did you achieve too?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Ultimately that you're yeah, So we were just kind of
we were neighbors who all saw this happening and wanted
to do something to help, and so we just met
up on weekend mornings and walked from tent to tent.
We were getting to know people in our neighborhoods who
were on the streets offering food and a cup of coffee,
but also saying, have you talked to some of a
(09:56):
service provider? Is there something somebody that we can connect
you with? Is the where you know? And we would
seek out shelter beds and try and see whether we
could actually get someone in a shelter bed. And we
were doing the work of kind of stitching together support
for individuals. And I know from my kind of my
understanding of LA and how it operated. I knew that
(10:18):
the city could do more if it wanted to, and
so then we started to advocate with our local elected representatives, saying, hey,
can you bring more services? Can you open a shelter here?
Can you We want your help, and that elected representative,
the elected representative for the area that I lived in,
didn't meet with us, and I got really frustrated. And
(10:42):
I knew that there was a lot that the city
could do. I felt a real sense of urgency around
this issue, and I couldn't understand why he didn't feel
the same sense of urgency around it. Why the city machine.
I ran against this guy named David rue we Go, Yeah,
And I just didn't feel our urgency reflected in the city, right,
And so I ran against him.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
For city council for city council, Yeah, and I won.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
That's right. Yeah, I won a tough race against a
sitting incumbent, and that hadn't happened in the city of
la for almost two decades before that. And I didn't
have any political background, really, no political backing, and so
it was a very exciting moment. But it was also
a very powerful moment because all of us were so
(11:30):
frustrated with what was going on. And what we did
was we channeled that into kind of thinking about how
the city could do more to serve Angelinos. And then
so many volunteers and I went and knocked on doors,
and then during COVID wrote postcards telling people what the
city could do for them. And that vision of the
city as a positive presence in people's lives as something
(11:55):
that they could rely on as a proactive problem solving
entity that I think resonated with a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, so can you walk through Like I was so
impressed when I was following your campaign. Yeah, and you
did something that Obama did, that Trump did, that Zoron did,
and that was expanding the electorate. You included people in
the political process at the local level. Yeah, who had
never thought about why it mattered to vote for city council.
(12:25):
And you didn't just get them to show up for you.
You had like didn't you knock on like eighty thousand
doors or something like? You had a huge How did
you build this team of people for a local race?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It was partly the political moment that we were in.
It was during the first Trump administration. People were looking
for a place to get involved in California, your federal
votes don't matter that much, and so they wanted to
be involved locally. They wanted to kind of put their
energy somewhere, and we gave them a place to put
it into a campaign that was about bettering the city
(12:55):
and helping the most vulnerable, and it was really perfect.
We also were able to to take advantage of a
change in election timing, so for the first time in
the City of La local elections coincided with federal elections,
and so we knew we'd get more voters.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, turnout was going to be yah.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
We knew it was going to be higher, and so
we knew we had an opportunity to educate new voters
and just get them to turn over their ballot and
also vote for city council, even if they'd never done
it in the past. We actually increased voter turnout in
the district five times.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, and I still hold the record for the most
votes ever received by a city council candidate. So that's
exactly the number. I can't remember, it's over I think
something like seventy thousand.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
That's your tattoo right there. Yes, do you have any tattoos? Now, okay,
that's the tattoo to get. It's just the number, the
margin by which or the number the number that broke
the record. Yeah, besides homelessness, what were the other issues?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
The cost of housing, you know, and and how challenged
renters were and how difficult it was to be a tenant,
to be a renter here in this city where costs
had gone up so much. I mean, this city is
really really unaffordable, and I think we are one of
(14:06):
the most rent burdened populations in the country. Still levels
of overcrowding. We are the one of the most overcrowded cities,
which means more than one person to a room in
a home.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And can you talk about that a little bit because
I think that for a lot of people when they
think of Los Angeles, it's everything they see on a
reality show, on a sitcom. There is that reality in
LA that's part of the city, but the majority of
people don't live like that. And so when you're saying
massively crowded housing, can you just can you kind of
(14:41):
describe what that means? Where who these communities are, how
vibrant are they all?
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, So we have a city which is really defined
by land use regulations and this city's history, right, So
we have a city where large parts of it people
weren't allowed to billed apartments because wealthier communities limited in
how much new apartment construction could happen in sometimes very
(15:09):
explicit ways. And so there are neighborhoods where all of
the density ended up, right. And so there's neighborhoods that
are as dense as cities that you think of as
much more dense, like the city of New York here
in La and these are places which are often very
(15:29):
poor and are some of the most overcrowded places in
the entire city. And this is a poor city, you know,
it is a place where there's a huge amount of poverty.
It's a very divers city. There's a lot of recent
immigrants here. Ten percent of La County is undocumented. So
there's just there's a huge number of people who are
(15:52):
living paycheck to paycheck and for whom the affordability crisis
isn't just a term. It is a reality of their
lives that they're struggling with every single day, and it
plays out in our housing so clearly. And so I
ran on this platform of we can protect struggling renters
(16:14):
so much more than we had in the city of
la And that message really resonated with people who were
facing harassment, increasing rents that were far beyond what they
could afford and that were potentially on the verge of
eviction when they missed a paycheck or had a sick kid.
It just was a very, very potent message, and once
(16:35):
I got elected, I was able to have a lot
of impact on renters, which was incredibly exciting, like.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
We, yeah, what kind of impact.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Well, over the past few years, we've passed the largest
expansion of tenant protections of renter protections here in the
city of Los Angeles in forty years. We passed universal
just cause eviction protections, which means you can't just get
evicted randomly so that your landlord can kick you out
and raise the rent. It can only be from a
specific list of reasons. We secured a floor of rent
(17:10):
debt under which you couldn't be evicted. Basically, you could
get a little grace period if you could if you
couldn't pay right, and you could only get evicted if
you owed more than the fair market rent for your unit,
So one month's rent and it just gave you a
little extra time to make up a rent payment and
allowed you again just a little time before you would
(17:31):
get that.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
So if you're eight hundred bucks and you could only
afford six hundred that month, you had an extra month
to come up with the other two hundred.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Yeah, And we also created this database
of eviction notices, so now every time a landlord sends
an eviction notice, they also have to send that notice
to the city, which we never got before. And so
we can now see when someone is receiving an eviction notice,
which means we have the ability to send them a letter,
which we do from the Housing Department that says, here
(18:00):
are your rights, here are resources that you can look at,
and here's how you can potentially challenge or get support
to stay in your home. Because most of these evictions
are related to unpaid rent, and so there's ability for
people to access you know, rent relief and things like that.
So all of these were things that we passed, and
(18:20):
for the first time last year we had we have
in La rent stabilization. We don't have rent control, we
have rent stabilization and which limits how much your rent
can be increased. But the rent here could be increased
anywhere from three to eight percent or more per year.
And we actually lowered allowable rent increases in rent stabilized units,
(18:40):
which are like seventy percent of units across the city,
impacting over a million renters, lowering rent increases these for
these renters for the first time again in forty years.
And I let all that work at the city and
so I like, I got elected talking to renters and
I have delivered for renters.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
What was the pushback to that and how did you
deal with that? I assume there were a lot of
wealthy corporations, LLC's humans who were not happy with you.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah. Well, yes, And when I was running for reelection
my council district, I actually had the most amount of
money ever spent against a sitting incumbent spent against me,
largely by landlords and the police union. Oh, it's kind
of an interesting and.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The police union.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yes, oh interesting, Okay, Yeah, so it was. Yeah, there's
definitely been a lot of pushback, and there's a lot
of questions around, you know, how do we ensure that
the housing market is still one that is able to
provide for people? How do we ensure that smaller landlords
can stay in the industry and operate under new rules
and regulations, and I want to make sure that they
(19:45):
can operate. I want to make sure that they can function.
But I did think that the rules earlier, the deck
was stacked against renters. And we've really, we've really made
a change on that.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
We've had democratic mayors who have talked about wanting to
solve some of these challenges and somehow have fallen short.
You ran as a Democratic Socialist, which is different than
a mainstream democrat. Can you talk us through what the
DSA means to you, why you ran under the DSA banner,
(20:24):
and how that maybe helped push an agenda that saw
the successes that you just described.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, you know, actually, so, I'll be honest. Before Bernie
and AOC, I didn't know that much about the DSA,
but I was really inspired by their campaigns and the
way that they spoke about issues. It felt so honest
and so real in a way that I had not
heard other politicians speak and it really meant something to me.
(20:51):
And in La, the local chapter of the DSA when
I was first running, was really the only political space
was centering the needs of renters, and it was you know,
it was not part of the local Democratic Party's focus,
it wasn't part of their organizing efforts, and so it
(21:12):
felt like a very natural place for me to go
because this was part of why I had wanted to run,
to have a city that really wrapped its arms around
its residents and really supported them, and that was inspiring
to me and for me, Like I have a vision.
I'm obviously very progressive, and I really believe in the
(21:36):
role of government in our lives. Like I think government
can be such a force for good and I wanted
La City government to be that for Angelino's and I
think that has shaped also the way in which I
go through my job today, because whether it's on renter's rights,
whether it's on responding to homelessness, whether it's on trying
(21:58):
to you know, make streets safer, make neighborhoods safer for people,
I want people to feel like the government is delivering
for them. And I've really tried in my district to
make sure that we're being responsive, that we're hearing people's concerns,
that we're actually getting people off the streets and indoors
and then sidewalks and parks and other places are clear
(22:20):
and free for you know, other people to use, and
really showing people that if they if government works with urgency,
if we work, we really work, that we can deliver
results for residents.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I totally get when you say, okay, just these issues
were not necessarily a priority for mainstream Democrats in the past.
But how did you make it a priority for you? Meaning?
Were there costs that you had to incur? How do
you make government work so well in your own office?
Are there you know, are there staff position positions that
they're just not spending on in you know, moderate dem
(22:55):
offices that you are spending on. How what's the inside
of how you're actually making it work well?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Part of it is that I came in with an
agenda that I wanted to deliver on. Right. It wasn't
just that I wanted to run for office because I thought, oh,
this is the next step from me, like I've never
even my first run was somewhat of an accident. Wasn't
something I had planned from the time that I was
you know, in college or in urban planning school or anything.
(23:23):
I didn't really think of myself as a politician. Somebody
pissed you off, someone pissed me off, and I thought
I can do it better, you know. And and also
I thought people deserved better, like we deserve better. We
wanted to have a city that responded with the urgency
that I felt around changes, and I was like, that's
(23:44):
what that's what it should be. That's what it should
feel like in the city that we're all working our
butts off to deliver for residents, you know, even if
it's hard. And I think for me that clarity of
having an agenda helped me when I got in to
try and focus my work into think about how I
could shape my work so that I could really deliver
(24:06):
for a residence.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
When I look at mainstream Democrats, Schumer hacame the complete
lack of fury around what we're doing in Iran, for example,
it's just such a bummer. And to me, just that
silence and complacency, which now we've you know, it's not
new to Iran. It just shows me a complete lack
(24:30):
of priorities from the Democratic Party. What do you see
as the challenges in LA that Democrats have not successfully
tackled that you're hoping to be able to tackle with
your vision.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, so you know, I think partly because I am
an urban planner, and partly because I've thought about the
way that this city has grown and been shaped for
a long time, and partly because the sense of opportunity
that is in Los Angeles is one of the reasons
(25:06):
I love it so much. To me, thinking about how
we actually lower the cost of housing here is like
the driving factor that brings me, you know, that kind
of wakes me up in the morning and takes me
to work. We have to make it cheaper to live
in LA if we're going to solve the homelessness crisis,
(25:27):
and if we're going to make this into a place
that still invites people here to build their dreams here,
we have to solve that. And that is a hard
issue to solve in LA. That's a hard issue to
solve because the powers that be don't you know, the
landlord lobby does not want you to protect renters right,
and so they've funded elections and there's tons of people
(25:49):
in city Hall who are supported by them and historically
have been supported by them, who don't want to change
anything about the status quo. And building new housing deed
restricted affordable housing, market rate housing. Building new housing also
encounter significant resistance. This is a city that has resisted
(26:09):
new housing for a long time. But for me, if
we don't build more, if we don't bring the costs
down in a material way for people, this city will
become one of those places which is just going to
have extraordinarily wealthy people who can afford to live here,
and then extraordinarily poor people who are crowded into homes
(26:29):
who basically can't afford to leave. You know, Like that
that's it. That's going to be the vision of Los Angeles.
And that vision of Los Angeles already to some extent,
is part of the reality here that can be changed.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So going back to like I keep coming in and
out of town, right, even my drive over to the
studio today, you know, there are a couple of blocks
where everything is pristine, and then all of a sudden,
there's trash everywhere. There are people sleeping on the street,
there are all these fucking way mos. Like, at what
point are we like, oh, we don't even want humans
(27:01):
to drive us? Like why be alive at that point? Right?
Like why do we want machines to do everything? Sorry,
this is obviously a pet peeve.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
The I mean, it is very I went to San
Francisco recently, and there's a lot more Waymos on the
street there. And there was a point when I was
at a street corner and there were four different Waymos
coming and then those delivery robots on the corner and
I and no other humans besides me, and I just
felt so dystopic. Oh yeah, you know, like all the
(27:30):
life of the city had been leached from that.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yes, and this is the I mean, this is the
actual question. Is like, A it creeps me out, and
B you know this because you're married to a writer.
But you know, SAG and the WGA were on a
very protracted strike because we were being forced into that
situation by these big media companies, and a big sticking
point was AI. So I just look at all this
(27:53):
and I go like, I don't envy the job you
have now, but certainly the job that you're that you're
gunning for, because how do you go up against something
like this where obviously we know technological changes are happening,
we should embrace them to some extent. It's not a binary.
There are going to be good things that come out
of it, but at what cost When it seems like
they're already replacing workers.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, and I think Los Angeles is set for some
real economic turbulence. I think we're already seeing it play
out locally. And I think the impact of AI job
losses not just in creative fields, but also technology. There
have been layoffs across the tech sector, programmers people who
(28:36):
I think thought by getting a programming degree they were
guaranteeing themselves a job for life, who are suddenly find
themselves without a job. And I think there's going to
be layoffs across the board. And so I do think
that we're in a moment of real economic turbulence. And
I don't think Los Angeles is unique in that I
think we're going to see this across the entire country.
(28:57):
And I don't know how. I don't know how to
respond to that. I don't know how to grapple with that.
But I do know that unless we have a government
that is really thinking about it, preparing for it, structuring
itself around resilience, structuring itself around bringing neighborhoods back to
life in some real way, we are not going to
(29:17):
be able to meet this moment with the energy and
thoughtfulness that it deserves. And I don't see that kind
of thinking happening right now here in the city of
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
For example, New York right, our current mayor, when he
was in the New York State Assembly, was pushing this
pilot bus program make buses free. And one of the
reasons he got moderate Dems and Republicans on board is
because of public safety. Right, you're spending less money on
making them free than you would be on having to
pay for cops. And so if you can make these
(29:56):
things free, more people take them, the crime rate goes down,
et cetera, et ce. The creative ideas for LA.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
One thing I'm really excited about is how we actually
do better homelessness response. And I think it's really important
to get this right because people here have such incredible generosity.
They've voted multiple times to tax themselves to provide housing
and services for people who are experiencing homelessness. They want
(30:22):
Angelino's the majority of them want to respond to the
crisis on our streets with care, and for me, honoring
that spirit means getting our homelessness response system right, which
we don't right now. It's not working, and to me,
that starts with making sure the city is doing better
(30:43):
at responding. We don't. As a city, we've increased our
spending on homelessness by five thousand percent over the last
few years, and we don't have any additional personnel that
are monitoring how that money is going out the.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Door, where's it going.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It's being contracted out to Homeless Services Authority, and then
we let them do all the oversight, which they don't do,
and we've known that they don't do it, and so
I've been really pushing for actually investing in performance data
and oversight and then using that information to actually do
better at serving people and getting more people indoors the work.
(31:20):
And I was able to develop these performance indicators and
to start monitoring them across the entire system, and I
found we're not focusing our money on the most effective
and the most cost effective efforts. We have to fix
the system and get it right because without that, and
you saw it, you saw it at the federal level,
(31:41):
people lose their trust and faith in government. And if
the city is not caring for them, and if the
city is not delivering on its obligations, people lose their
faith and trust in government and they will vote for
something else. They'll vote for a very different vision of
the city, and that you know that is scary to me.
(32:02):
So I want to make it work. I want to
make sure that we're building a system where we can
actually reduce homelessness a year after year, or we can
get people indoors.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
I'm still floored by the ten percent stat of undocumented Angelinos,
and I'm kind of wondering the mayor of any big city,
but especially a city like La, what do you do
differently than what the current mayor is doing in terms
of the Trump administration's attacks on immigrant communities, black and
(32:30):
brown communities, documented or undocumented ice Obviously, what do you
do in your role as mayor? How do you work
with the federal government, and how do you protect Angelinos
whether they're documented or not.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah, I think this is a really important question because
so many people are feeling so much fear right now,
and I think that there is much more that we
can do. Obviously, the federal government has powers that cities
cannot challenge in some ways, but I think we can
do more to ensure that we are protecting Angelino's to
the fullest extent that the city can. One is what
(33:06):
I already talked about about making sure that we're funding
immigration defense and immigration support at levels that reflect the
enormity of the crisis that we are facing right now.
The second is, I think we need to make sure
that the role that LAPD plays in responding to immigration
(33:28):
issues is reflective of the fact that they're supposed to
be here to protect Angelina's right and we had too
many instances where it appeared to many people that LAPD
was cooperating with ICE in raids and I think that
is atrocious. And I think making sure that LAPD, which
(33:50):
is really led by the mayor and the Chief of Police,
has an orientation towards protecting Angelina's whether during raids or
during protests, working to make sure that Angelinos are safe,
that should be the role of LAPD. A few weeks ago,
there was a state law that's been passed that said
(34:11):
that banned masks for ICE agents, and it was in
the courts and it was being it's being litigated still,
but the Chief of Police basically said he wasn't going
to enforce it because it was a poorly written law
and just said I'm not going to enforce this and
didn't I didn't hear a sharp rebuke from the mayor or,
(34:32):
a reorientation of this of that statement, because the chief
of police is like the embodiment of public safety here
and if Angelino's we are feeling so much fear at
this moment, don't feel like the police is here to
protect them. I think that is a very real problem,
and I think we have to be really oriented towards
protecting Angelino's at this moment, and the police is play
(34:56):
a big role in that and have to be I
think right now, have not been playing that role. And
really it is the mayor and the Police Commission that
have the responsibility for making sure that the police are
doing that, And so my response to that would be
very different from the one that we're seeing. The other
thing I would just say is that other cities have
actually prosecuted federal agencies when they've taken actions here that
(35:20):
have been illegal, and have done it both in response
to Ice, but also in response to other kinds of
federal actions the city of fighting back against kind of
taking away of federal funds for certain kinds of things.
Our city, we have an elected city attorney, but the
mayor and city attorney work closely together, and the mayor
(35:41):
can really push the city attorney to take action and
be more proactive in response to these issues. There are
other Our state Attorney General, Robanta has been very active
litigating against the federal administration and has won many cases.
We should be doing that here and again in a
city which is so many immigrants, where people want to
(36:02):
fight back, the city should be part of that fight,
and our mayor and our city leadership need to be
our city attorney need to be part of that fight
and really kind of pushing back at every moment when
dollars are at risk, but also when people safety are
at risk, to say, how can the city be oriented
around protecting Angelina's and messaging that to people, really saying
(36:23):
that over and over again to people. And the final
thing I'll just say is we have you know, we
have we have LA twenty eight. We have the Olympics coming, yes,
and federal law enforcement will be here. They're invited here, right,
So how is the mayor protecting us during this time?
How is the mayor making sure that federal law enforcement's
(36:45):
presence here is going to ensure that Angelinos are safe?
If I were mayor, I would be again working every
day with LA twenty eight and with the federal administration
to make sure that the presence of federal law enforcement
would be here to attacked Angelina's and not endanger them.
And I think that would be a very active and
robust effort and one that I get. I would be
(37:07):
messaging to the public. You know, I'm working and fighting
for you. That's what people need to hear. And that's
that's what I want to hear from my mayor. That's
what I would be doing if I'm mayor.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I want to ask you a quick perception question because
I've heard this a few times now. People are comparing
you as Aeron Mambani, mayor of New York. You're both
Democratic Socialists, you're both brown. Is that the only reason?
And if that's the only reason, is that not an unfair?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Is that not unfair? Like it's it's fine, but really
one of the ways because people know him now and
his campaign picked up a lot of steam very quickly,
he was obviously the underdog for quite some time. In
what ways might you be similar? Since you're both from
the same party, but in what ways might you be different?
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Yeah, I'm you know, he's like one of the most
well liked politicians in America right now. So I'm grateful
for the comparison. I will say that I think my
stepping into this race came from for me a moment
of feeling like we in LA are moving backwards and
(38:13):
not forwards that we are. You know, I talked to
you about the challenges of our essential services, you know,
just trash pickup and street lighting, are refocusing our budget
on kind of political goals as opposed to protecting Angelino's.
That felt really really frustrating to me. And again, this
(38:36):
idea of the city as designed around serving people as
opposed to serving the interests of the people in power.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah, I just didn't see that happening around me, and
I wanted and I didn't want to be in a
city that wasn't functioning that way. So my run was
it was really in response to the conditions I saw
around me in Los Angeles and the fact that I
wanted to fight for the robust, proactive, present, caring Los
(39:14):
Angeles that I know we can build here, but that
we are at risk of losing if we continue down
this path.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
I'll just say something that I don't think obviously people
won't know if you're listening to this on your way
to work or whatever is that you For the last
almost hour that we've been talking, you've smiled a lot
every time you've talked about solutions to challenges in Los Angeles,
and I don't typically see people in an elected office
(39:44):
have that level of visceral excitement when they talk about solutions.
You're two months away from the primary. How are you
feeling and how do you why are you smiling when
you talk about these solutions? Like it's a thing that
I think is inspiring to see. I mean, I don't
know if it's like I'm just asking you questions and
I'm feeling the feels hearing you talk about it, because
(40:07):
you seem to be talking about it with a certain
joy that's otherwise absent in our politics.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I mean, representing this city has been the privilege gosh,
I want to cry.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Ye see, this is one I wish we were a
video pod because this would be good for the clip.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, it's been such an incredible privilege to represent the city. Already,
just the five years that I've been here have been
so have been such a gift for me because the
work has been so rewarding, and it's hard, it's really hard,
and I've made mistakes and I've owned up to those mistakes,
(40:45):
and I've talked about those mistakes and tried to change
policy because I made mistakes. But it's there's like, yeah,
there's the work is is is just so rewarding and
so needed right now. And the thing that I'm the
most excited about is just getting to work for LA
(41:06):
and trying trying to work my hardest to fix these issues.
And in my council seat for the past few months,
I have felt like I've hit a wall, like I
had these you know, I did all this stuff that
I'm so proud of, and I was trying to do
more and I just I couldn't because the political forces
(41:29):
were just allied against that kind of change. And I
just feel like I would want to work for LA.
I would want to bring that work ethic to all
of LA, you know, I want to bring my work
ethic to kind of pushing the departments to deliver for
Angelina's in the way that they need to. And they can,
(41:49):
I know, they can't really believe in city workers. And
it is just the thing that makes me excited is
to get to work.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
That's super refreshing. Thanks thanks for being here at our conversation.
Thank you so much, Thank you. My guest today was
Nitthia Rahman. She's a city council member running for mayor.
You can learn more about her on her socials Nitthia
for the City or nitya Forthcity dot com. Here we
go again, as a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu
(42:19):
Media in association with New Metric Media. Our executive producers
are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino, Andy Kim,
Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan tan Is
our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor.
Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory Smith is our
associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly, logo by Matt Gosson,
(42:43):
Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson and Megan Halson.
Special thanks to Glenn Basner, Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane
Klein and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson,
Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks for listening. Everybody, tell
your friends write a review. All of this helps. I
appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm calpen
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