Raman’s not rolling on the River – Latest News
It’s uncommon that candidates get a trial run for an workplace they’ve by no means held. But Nithya Raman did — and he or she failed.
As The California Post reported this weekend, Raman used her place on the LA City Council to acquire $4 million in state funding to clear 90 homeless tents from the banks of the LA River.
That was nearly two years in the past. The homeless tents are nonetheless there. And Raman is blaming the forms.
Funny — forms didn’t stop Raman’s colleague, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, from utilizing a related grant in the similar timeframe to maneuver 90 people into steady housing and out of RVs parked on the streets in her district.
Nithya Raman speaks at a assembly. David Buchan for California Post
Raman’s failure is made worse by the proven fact that she chairs the homeless and housing committee in the metropolis council. She is in a place to make issues occur.
Why hasn’t she?
Or, to cite Rodriguez: “I don’t understand how everyone else is doing what Ms. Raman can’t.”
There is both a lack of political will, or a lack of competence, or each.
But the result’s the similar: nothing has modified in Raman’s stretch of the LA River, and the money from the state has but to be spent.
Nithya Raman makes a marketing campaign stop at an empty lot that’s the website of a home burned in the Palisades Fire on Wednesday, May 20, 2026 in Pacific Palisades. Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times by way of Getty Images
This is an early take a look at of Raman’s capacity to control. And the outcomes don’t look good.
Not that the incumbent, Karen Bass, is doing a lot better. She is performing as if she has solved the downside of homelessness as a result of of a decline in the final couple of years.
It’s true that homelessness is down barely in LA and in California as a complete. But the statewide decline is 2.8%, in accordance with new federal numbers.
Sign up for the California Morning Report e-newsletter
California’s high information, sports activities and leisure delivered to your inbox daily.
Thanks for signing up!
That sluggish charge of enchancment is beneath the national average of 3.3%. It can be unacceptable, given the billions of {dollars} that the state and metropolis have spent.
And different states — even Democrat-run “blue” states — have skilled a lot more dramatic decreases in homelessness.
California is much behind Illinois (44%), Hawaii (41%), Florida (11%), and New York (8%).
So whereas politicians like Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom attempt to boast about how a lot they’ve carried out, keep in mind that it’s simply not good enough.
And Raman isn’t serving to. Not when she’s sitting on hundreds of thousands of {dollars} that may make a distinction in the lives of these on the streets, and the lives of the residents who voted to put her into workplace.
Voters ought to take into consideration that on Tuesday.
