Los Angeles Councilwoman Nithya Raman, a Democratic Socialists of America member now running for mayor, cast one of just four votes against a motion to ban homeless camping along a troubled stretch of Venice, even as residents described violence, blocked sidewalks, and a fatal shooting near the site.
The motion, introduced by Councilwoman Traci Park, passed the Los Angeles City Council 11, 4. It would create an anti-camping zone under the city's Municipal Code Section 41.18, the same enforcement tool Raman has fought at nearly every turn since taking office.
For Venice residents who have spent the past year calling police about the encampment, 40 times, including for assaults, the vote was a reminder that the people who live with the consequences of failed homeless policy and the people who set that policy occupy different worlds entirely.
Park's motion, filed with the Los Angeles City Clerk as item 26-4118-S3, sought to designate a specific area in Venice as off-limits to camping. The Daily Caller reported that Raman was among the four council members who voted against it, while eleven colleagues voted yes.
The justification for the zone, as the New York Post detailed, rested on city findings that documented a year-long encampment, blocked pedestrian access, public safety risks, and repeated police and fire responses, including an encampment fire.
Park, the Democrat who represents the area, did not mince words about the people living in the encampment. She told KTTV:
"These are individuals that have been offered alternatives again and again and again and are choosing to remain encamped on our streets."
Raman's office offered a different view. A spokesperson said the ordinance simply shuffles the problem from block to block rather than solving it:
"This part of 41.18 duplicates laws we already have to regulate camping and, at best, succeeds in moving homelessness around a neighborhood."
That argument has a familiar ring. Raman has consistently opposed expanding Section 41.18, insisting the city should rely on outreach, interim housing, and services instead of enforcement. Her position has not changed even as California's homeless population has climbed 60 percent since 2015.
The gap between Raman's policy framework and what Venice residents actually experience came through sharply in local reporting. FoxLA.com reported that police responded to 40 calls about the encampment in the past year, with incidents including assaults.
One resident told KTTV reporter Matthew Seedorf something far worse: "I watched a guy get shot and killed across the street." That is the neighborhood Raman's vote would leave unprotected by the anti-camping designation.
The contrast is hard to miss. Eleven council members looked at the record, the fire calls, the assaults, the blocked sidewalks, the fatal violence, and voted to act. Four, including Raman, voted to leave the status quo in place. The people who live on those blocks did not get a vote.
Intra-party splits like this one are not unique to Los Angeles. Across the country, Democratic candidates have distanced themselves from their own leadership when the base demands it, but Raman's break runs in the opposite direction, pulling left of a party establishment that has already struggled to address homelessness.
Mayor Karen Bass, the Democrat Raman is trying to unseat, wasted no time using the vote against her challenger. Bass's office issued a statement to FoxLA.com that framed Raman's record as a pattern, not a one-off:
"This is who she is. Councilmember Raman opposes the law prohibiting encampments next to schools and has voted against hundreds of cleanups."
The statement continued: "This is just another example of her taking us backward." Coming from a fellow Democrat, the language was blunt, an indication of how politically toxic Raman's stance has become even inside her own party.
Raman first won her council seat in 2020 by defeating an incumbent. She announced her challenge to Bass on February 7 of this year, positioning herself as a change candidate. In explaining her run, she struck a tone that sounded less like a progressive insurgent and more like a city manager reading an audit report:
"Over the last few months in particular, I've really begun to feel like unless we have some big changes in how we do things in Los Angeles, that the things we count on are not going to function anymore."
The irony is thick. Raman says Los Angeles needs "big changes", then votes against the specific change her colleagues approved to address a documented public safety crisis in Venice.
Raman's vote fits a broader template visible across the Democratic Party. Progressive members stake out ideological positions on homelessness, policing, and public order that sound compassionate in theory but leave residents exposed in practice. When the consequences pile up, the assaults, the fires, the 40 police calls, those same progressives argue the real problem is that the city hasn't spent enough on alternatives.
Meanwhile, billions in federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development have flowed to cities like Los Angeles. The money arrives. The encampments remain. The calls to police keep coming.
The dynamic mirrors fractures elsewhere in the party. Senator John Fetterman has repeatedly broken with his caucus on principle, drawing fury from the progressive wing. But where Fetterman has moved toward pragmatism, Raman has moved away from it, opposing enforcement tools that even her fellow Democrats in Los Angeles support by wide margins.
Bass's office calling Raman's record "who she is" suggests the mayor's campaign sees an opening. In a city where homelessness ranks as a top voter concern, voting against clearing a camp tied to a shooting and dozens of police calls is not a minor footnote. It is a campaign ad waiting to happen.
And the fault lines are not limited to City Hall. National Democrats have watched their progressive flank clash publicly with moderates on issue after issue, from energy policy to government spending. Each time, the question is the same: does the party answer to its activist base or to the voters who have to live with the results?
The 11, 4 margin tells its own story. This was not a close call. The overwhelming majority of the council, all Democrats, looked at the evidence and sided with enforcement. Raman's position placed her in a small minority even within a solidly liberal body.
Her argument that Section 41.18 merely "moves homelessness around" may contain a kernel of truth. Anti-camping zones do not build housing. But the residents of Venice are not asking for a white paper on root causes. They are asking not to watch someone get shot across the street.
When lawmakers break with their own party on high-profile votes, the political fallout can be swift. For Raman, who needs to persuade a citywide electorate that she can manage Los Angeles better than Bass, this vote hands her opponent a concrete, documented example of what her leadership would look like: more process, less enforcement, and the same encampments in the same places.
The open questions remain. What specific alternatives were offered to the people camping in Venice, as Park claimed? What happened with the shooting the resident described? And if Raman's preferred approach, outreach, services, interim housing, has been the city's stated strategy for years, why are police still fielding 40 calls a year from the same location?
Those are not rhetorical questions. They are the questions Venice residents deserve answers to, from the councilwoman who voted to leave them waiting.
