Nithya Raman

That felt like an absurd situation to be in with my constituents.

And that is really what had

What pushed me into running?

And, you know, at this time, I had actually been so frustrated with the way that things were going that I had started to lose hope in how things could get better here in Los Angeles.

And I think in the context of a federal environment where I feel relatively helpless and hopeless as well.

feeling that locally has also been really, really frustrating.

But I will say that since I started the campaign and since I've been going out and talking to communities about these decisions and talking about how the city can do better, how we can achieve all of the goals that we wanna set out to achieve, if we're honest with our constituents, if we're open, if we're transparent, and if we really work towards good outcomes,

I really do feel like people are excited by that message.

People are getting enthusiastic.

People are organizing their own meetings so that I can meet their friends.

Like it is a message that is getting a lot of positive reception, which is really exciting.

Yeah.

I mean, I think I definitely had that same movement.

I was very focused on affordable housing when I first started my first race, building more affordable housing, building more shelter, making sure that we were building kind of what people talked about.

meeting here in LA.

But as I was in office and I started getting calls from constituents who were struggling with their rents, I realized these were often people who would never qualify for affordable housing, but they had no choice but to live in a unit with a terrible landlord in terrible conditions because there was simply nothing else available to them here in Los Angeles.

And LA is a city where there has been an active anti-housing movement that has shaped our local politics for decades.

In the 80s, there was an anti-Manhattanization movement that downzoned, that reduced the capacity to build more housing along every major boulevard and thoroughfare, that reduced capacity to build multifamily housing across the entire city, leading to what is an estimated shortfall of something like 500,000 units here in the city of Los Angeles right now.

But I think we can actually fix it.

duplexes and triplexes, even in some single family neighborhoods that can be more walkable that are near transit.