It’s rare that candidates get a trial run for an office they’ve never held. But Nithya Raman did — and she failed.
As The California Post reported this weekend, Raman used her position on the LA City Council to obtain $4 million in state funding to clear 90 homeless tents from the banks of the LA River.
That was almost two years ago. The homeless tents are still there. And Raman is blaming the bureaucracy.
Funny — bureaucracy didn’t stop Raman’s colleague, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, from using a similar grant in the same timeframe to move 90 people into stable housing and out of RVs parked on the streets in her district.
Raman’s failure is made worse by the fact that she chairs the homeless and housing committee in the city council. She is in a position to make things happen.
Why hasn’t she?
Or, to quote Rodriguez: “I don’t understand how everyone else is doing what Ms. Raman can’t.”
There is either a lack of political will, or a lack of competence, or both.
But the result is the same: nothing has changed in Raman’s stretch of the LA River, and the money from the state has yet to be spent.
This is an early test of Raman’s ability to govern. And the results don’t look good.
Not that the incumbent, Karen Bass, is doing much better. She is acting as though she has solved the problem of homelessness because of a decline in the last couple of years.
It’s true that homelessness is down slightly in LA and in California as a whole. But the statewide decline is 2.8%, according to new federal numbers.
That slow rate of improvement is below the national average of 3.3%. It is also unacceptable, given the billions of dollars that the state and city have spent.
And other states — even Democrat-run “blue” states — have experienced much more dramatic decreases in homelessness.
California is far behind Illinois (44%), Hawaii (41%), Florida (11%), and New York (8%).
So while politicians like Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom try to boast about how much they’ve done, remember that it’s just not good enough.
And Raman isn’t helping. Not when she’s sitting on millions of dollars that might make a difference in the lives of those on the streets, and the lives of the residents who voted to put her into office.
Voters should think about that on Tuesday.
