Karen Bass lashes out at Nithya Raman over homeless issue

Los Angeles’ homeless crisis is exploding into an all-out political brawl.

Mayor Karen Bass fired back Friday after Councilmember Nithya Raman accused City Hall of failing to get a grip on street homelessness, setting the stage for a bruising showdown ahead of their Nov. 3 mayoral election.

Raman seized on the latest homeless count, arguing that despite hundreds of millions of dollars in spending, unsheltered homelessness in the City of Los Angeles climbed by nearly 8%.

“By now you’ve probably seen the reports: despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent—and repeated assurances that Los Angeles had turned a corner—unsheltered homelessness increased by nearly 8% in this city. That is a moral outrage. And it is a failure of leadership,” Raman wrote.

Bass didn’t dispute that the city still faces a major crisis but argued Raman ignored neighborhood-level successes, including in her own backyard.

“I’m the Mayor for all of LA — just like Nithya Raman has been the Homeless Committee Chair for all of LA — and no Angeleno should be completely satisfied with our City’s response to this crisis,” Bass wrote.

The mayor pointed to progress in council districts 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 13 and 15, saying those gains prove some strategies are working even if the city’s overall numbers remain troubling.

She also touted the city’s Inside Safe program, saying her administration responded after Raman sought assistance by housing 87 people in Council District 4 since the beginning of last year and clearing long-standing encampments, including the notorious 405 and Oxnard site.

“When Councilmembers like Nithya Raman asked for Inside Safe’s help, we answered — housing 87 people since the beginning of last year alone and clearing notorious encampments, like 405 & Oxnard that had been growing for years,” Bass wrote.

Bass also emphasized that unsheltered homelessness has fallen across Los Angeles over the past three years, while acknowledging the city still has a long way to go.

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“In the past three years, unsheltered homelessness has gone down in LA by 11% — while that’s progress, that’s not acceptable. We’re going to immediately change what’s not working and double down on what is working.”

The dueling claims stem from different parts of the same report.

Citywide, unsheltered street homelessness rose 7.9%, a figure that applies only to the City of Los Angeles, not Los Angeles County.

But Raman’s Council District 4 bucked that trend, posting a 49% drop in unsheltered street homelessness, according to data released by her office and local media tracking the 2026 homeless count.

The latest numbers also underscore the starkly different communities where some of the biggest gains were recorded.

Council District 4 is one of the city’s wealthiest districts, with a median household income of nearly $119,000 and average home prices around $1.5 million, well above the citywide median home value of roughly $1.05 million.

Council District 9, represented by Councilmember Curren D. Price Jr., by contrast, is among Los Angeles’ poorest districts, with a median household income of about $54,000 and average home values around $640,000, showing that significant declines in street homelessness were recorded in neighborhoods facing vastly different economic conditions.