How Government Really Works - Venice, Homelessness, Olympics: Los Angeles Councilmember Traci Park

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Episode Summary

Los Angeles Councilmember Traci Park joins Evan Meyer to break down how local government actually works — from Venice's turnaround on encampments, public safety, and business activation, to the 2028 Olympics, AI in city permitting, the LA budget deficit, ULA, homelessness policy, and the realities of getting eight votes on City Council.

Key Topics: Traci Park, Los Angeles City Council, Venice, homelessness, RV interventions, 2028 Olympics, AI in government, Palisades fire, public-private partnerships, ULA, local government, Council District 11

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Conversation

Evan Meyer: 00:07.502 Thank you again, Tracy. It's great to have you here.

Traci Park: 00:10.466 Great to be back. Yes. It's not Venice in Santa Monica.

Evan Meyer: 00:17.262 Venice is a super interesting community, and it's super cool that you have the opportunity to take charge of the things that really need to be done here. And you've done a lot of that. So let's just start with the general Venice activation, making the livability here better for businesses. What are you dealing with this and what are you dealing with in this regard and and and what can people expect?

Traci Park: 00:44.364 Yeah, well, you know, economic development is going to start with a safe, clean community, right? You have to have a place that people want to live, work, and invest. And for many, many years, Venice, our city's number one tourist destination in Los Angeles, had basically been left to die on the vine. you all remember 2020, 2021, 2022, there were large

Widespread unregulated encampments everywhere. The public safety issues here in Venice had skyrocketed to levels that we had not seen in decades. Venice had become the epicenter of the homelessness crisis in the city of LA, outside of Skid Row. For those of us who live here.

You will remember that we were in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. And you know, I live here in Venice as well. And you know, for me during the pandemic in particular with those challenges, watching our local businesses boarding up and leaving.

Watching our city because of the tax and regulatory environment become generally redlined by the business and investment and development communities was incredibly frustrating. And you know, me just as a private citizen realized I can sit behind my computer complaining about this, or I can step up and do something about it. And a huge, huge component of my platform was getting Venice.

back to some form of livability and the turnaround has been dramatic. It is not perfect and the work is not done.

Traci Park: 02:45.858 But we have been very, very strategic and intentional with our housing and encampment interventions. And I am using the limited set of tools that I have available to me to manage those public spaces. But we are seeing the lowest levels of unsheltered homelessness out at Ocean Front Walk.

That we have seen in years and years. Yes, we have a couple of pockets, thank you, of very challenging areas. I've got a problem over at Hampton and Rose right now. And that is a group of people, and this is indicative of where we are generally on the West Side, not just including Venice, because we have now housed about a thousand people.

Who were previously intense in vehicles across our district. And the folks that are left on the streets, you all see what I see: widespread, high acuity behavioral, behavioral and mental health challenges. And the, you know, the problem at Hampton and Rose is a problem that has been in and around Venice for a very long time. Those are individuals that have been offered and offered and offered.

Interventions and alternatives and repeatedly decline. And because for years of bad policies and ballot measures and legislation, we no longer have a binary choice between accepting help and some form of consequences when for declining help when it's offered, we are going to continue to struggle with that population. the RVs have been a more difficult problem to solve.

For a lot of reasons, I won't bore you with all of the details, but ongoing class action, litigation, accusing the city of violating the rights of homeless people when we enforce our parking restrictions and manage our curb space. Part of it is a lack of leadership and direction out of city hall, and folks just not being able to figure out what to do, as well as limited policies with the police department and what they can do. They are not going to enter a vehicle and risk a use of force just to impound for accumulation of parking.

Traci Park: 04:57.52 Citations. And so despite those challenges here on the west side, we have been very aggressive with our interventions. We cite an impound when we have a lawful reason to do so, and the resources and capacity to take the vehicle. I don't just have a fleet of tow trucks and places to tow them and store them available to me. So we account here in CD 11 for about 30% of the vehicle impounds citywide. CD 11 is one of 15 council districts. So to give you an idea,

Of how aggressively I am enforcing over here compared to other parts of the city. But the turnaround story in Venice is really, really apparent. We are cutting the ribbons on new businesses virtually every week here in Venice. Three years ago, I could not have asked with a straight face to host major world events.

And now we have landed Baywatch. It is back to filming right here in Venice. And no, they didn't get booted off of the beach, and no, they aren't leaving. None of that was ever true. It is amazing how much misinformation one troll account online can spread. Baywatch was given 100% of what they asked for in their permits. I personally flew up to Northern California and testified at Coastal Commission to get them what they needed. The reality is their footprint.

has grown substantially and what they need is actually far more than what they asked for originally, which is a good and solvable problem to have.

So we are in the process of updating their permits and expanding their footprint. You are going to see them filming all over the Santa Monica Bay, inland, in the marina, in our restaurants, in our parks. Yes, they were filming down in Carrillo Beach the other day, not because they got booted off of Venice, but because they needed a cove.

Traci Park: 06:52.876 We don't have a cove in Venice. So it it's fine that they're out and doing this in other places. That is what we want and expect. But the fact that they are here and that that is 350 local production jobs and an iconic brand.

Frankly, I can't think of anything more apple pie to LA than Baywatch, as silly as that sounds. Right? It belongs here, and having it here is a great and exciting thing, and it creates economic opportunity that puts Venice in the homes of millions of people around the world and portrayed in an interesting and favorable way. The economic benefit of that to our community is immeasurable.

we've been doing a lot of large activations. I don't know if any of you got to participate in Venice Fest a few weeks ago. That was one of the larger activations that we've done. we have long wanted to test a pilot of closing Windward down and making it a pedestrian plaza. Let me know if you feel otherwise, but overwhelmingly, people seemed to really enjoy that. so we're hoping to do that again this summer when we activate for the World Cup. And you know, when I took office.

Venice was not part of the plan for the Olympics. And I went to war with LA 28 over it, and now we are. And so we are going to be hosting major competitive events: marathon, triathlon, street cycling, the Paralympic versions of those sports. I'm still working out details with IOC, but I'm gonna get this Paralympic weightlifting at Muscle Beach because obviously that's where it should be.

And then if as if all of that wasn't cool enough, we're gonna be hosting the NBC Broadcast Center right here in Venice, which means Venice is going to be the face of Los Angeles that the world sees when they watch the Olympics. They will zoom in and out all over the city and show different compet competitive events and landmarks, but they're gonna be based right out on the sand. And that is a nearly 24-hour-a-day live production.

Traci Park: 09:04.648 Good Day LA starts at four a.m. It runs until eight a.m. when things flip over to Olympics. That goes until eleven PM. All of the athletes and medalists that are coming to give their interviews, that's all gonna be happening right here in Venice. And so the footprint of how this was all going to work in Venice has been very, very complicated. And I have been adamant that this needs to be an economic opportunity for our local businesses. Cause I saw how hard everybody struggled. We barely survived the pandemic over here on the West Side.

And so the way the footprint is going to work out, ocean front walk businesses are not going to have to close. They are just outside of the national security footprint. The Marvin Browdy bike path is going to get to remain open the entire time, except during competition hours. And the footprint is out of the way of the skate park, which means we can run whatever side hustle we want over there and showcase some of the coolest assets that we have here.

In Venice. The other great thing about it is the events that we're getting mean that our streets and sidewalks are now competition venues. So unless we are switching to beach cruisers for street cycling, we're gonna have to repave the streets. And so we are working on the routing and the venues. and I am adamant that something go through the palisades as well. And I think that in a normal world, for example, the marathon route might leave Venice head east and showcase other.

Communities and neighborhoods around the city. I've worked really closely with NBC to focus them here on the west side as much as possible. Why? There's eye candy everywhere. The production value is already really good, and I have substantially cleaned the district up already, whereas other parts of the city, MacArthur Park, are completely inaccessible to the community. Thank you. Nor would I suggest that we route

The entire world's attention to that location in our city. So instead, I think what we are going to do is route it north up PCH and then have them head east down sunset to Griffith Park. And it's important to me that the world see the Palisades. whether it's good, bad, or stalled or moving quickly. I want the world to know as a reminder: this is what a community looks like when it burns down and you don't properly invest in.

Traci Park: 11:27.478 Modern infrastructure and public safety resources, these are the consequences. So that's really important to me as well. But if leveraged properly, the Olympics here on the West Side in particular, but for the city as a whole, are going to create economic opportunities for at least a decade in its wake. The portrayal of the West Side and of Venice Beach in a way that re repairs the reputational harm.

That was done for those years before I came into office is going to be part of the comeback story and the turnaround for Venice and the West Side that I've been working on for the last three years. And that foundation, making this community safe again, presentable, camera ready, livable, the investments in basic, I see what you guys see, the broken sidewalks and the streetlights that are out everywhere.

The opportunity to leverage these Olympics to fix those things really sets us up for success. And you know, it's gonna require the partnership of the business community to get us ready and you know to have an opportunity to benefit from this. So we have a ton of work to do, but these are really good, exciting things that are happening. Yeah. That was a really long answer, sorry.

Evan Meyer: 12:46.926 So okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna combine So two thoughts here. Yes, the Olympics are coming, tons of opportunity for businesses to support. but I'm gonna throw a little bit of another angle in here. The city is operating at a massive deficit, and this has been the word now for a while, with like a billion dollars or something, right? And you've done a remarkable job at figuring out how to do what you can even under those circumstances.

Traci Park: 12:48.63 I just gave my stump speech.

Evan Meyer: 13:13.698 How does this deficit play a role in what we can do for the Olympics? And how are you working against that? You can roll mix it a little bit about what you're doing to help fix that deficit problem. obviously that's not something you created, but what can be done to move that needle? But most importantly, when there is a deficit like that, that generally opens up the opportunity for businesses in ways that were not before.

Where are the gaps? Where can people play a role in public-private partnership or just solving, whether it's for-profit or NGO, whatever, solving those gaps that exist right now.

Traci Park: 13:54.464 Is so such a great question, and there are so many layers to it. But you hit on something that I think is really important, and that is this public-private partnerships that are really, really important. The city of Los Angeles is not operating in a modern century with the technology that we have. I am pretty sure that our our operating system in City Hall is still MS-DOS.

I'm not kidding you. And you should see the tech that some of our first responders are using. Our city's payroll system is literally run by one guy who's the only guy on planet Earth who knows what the system is and how it works. And it is literally held together with duct tape. When he retires out of City Hall, the entire place is probably just gonna collapse.

I am we have, has anyone ever tried to do a report at like a pothole with like the My311 app? It's terrible. Whatever that upgrade was that we did just made the thing virtually unusable. So talk about an unfriendly user experience. Anybody ever tried to navigate the city website and find something useful? I have. It's not there. Don't waste your time looking.

We this is this will blow your mind. Because our sidewalks and roads are in such poor condition, and we as a city do not have a capital improvement plan or a maintenance and inspection plan for our infrastructure. We get sued constantly for personal injuries that people suffer when they trip and fall, or their scooter hits a pothole, or you can imagine any number of injuries that can occur on our dangerous infrastructure.

We end up paying those settlements out. And almost always it's a Google Earth image that shows a pre-existing condition dating back to whenever Google Earth started taking pictures. And no matter what, we're always liable for it because we were on constructive notice, right? If Google Earth could find the pothole, how come the city of LA couldn't find it and fix it? So, how we start baking technology in and dragging

Traci Park: 16:17.858 The city of Los Angeles into a modern area is an opportunity where we have got to have stronger public-private partnerships. We're trying to model some of that, for example, in the Palisades. We have finally incorporated AI as part of our plan review process. Thank you to Rick Caruso and Steadfast and a private partnership with.

The tech companies who created what we needed to do. I'm getting mixed feedbacks on it, but this is a you know a beta rollout. We're we're learning and improving. You know, if Waymo can drive around our city and map every inch of it, can they share data with us, letting us know where we have potholes that need to be fixed? I saw some reporting on this. And so we're starting to learn.

And l lean in on some of those new strategies, but you can imagine all the ways and places as we are building out our drones as first responder programs across the city of Los Angeles and how we have a need for higher tech, higher security tech around the city, and how that all gets integrated. There are just endless, endless opportunities for that. So I'm trying to model new iterations of it.

in the places that I can and when we demonstrate success I wanna start taking those things citywide. So that's all my term two stuff coming up. Because I'm gonna win on June 2nd. Let's go.

Mm-hmm.

Evan Meyer: 17:52.46 So AI is a a an interesting place to I would say start, but we're already there. so and you have been using it for the permitting process, for some of the palisades, difficulties in getting things done, right? And just moving along through that bureaucracy. So let's talk a little bit about what that means, but also, you know, one of the things that's worth I think worth noting is that at the federal and state level, policies take

At at minimum one year from the time you think of a thing to the time you have to go through a number of committees and approvals and signings to finally get something done. That is not even close to a a timeline that makes sense for AI. So I would say we can stop expecting the feds or the state to fix that problem. Just an opinion. Locally, city meets all time.

Traci Park: 18:45.899 You're not wrong.

Evan Meyer: 18:51.34 Right. And LA is what weekly. Three days a week is are their meeting, and you can vote and make policy weekly, essentially, if you need to. Is this an opportunity for local local government to lead the way in AI policy? and also

Traci Park: 18:54.008 Three days a week.

Evan Meyer: 19:13.9 what can be done where you see again the the entrepreneurial community playing a role in that in the AI space and include a little bit about the Palisades AI permitting in there as well.

Traci Park: 19:29.038 So government and policy making always lags behind tech. Always. You remember when you remember the advent of social media. I had the best MySpace page back in the days. it took policymakers and the courts 15 years to catch up.

To begin establishing what were the parameters of free speech on social media? What kinds of conduct could elected officials, for example, engage in? What kinds of restrictions on unfair competition by businesses might need to be put in those sorts of places? And government doesn't usually get around to making laws until something is already a crisis.

Or there has been some kind of a disaster. the proactive policy making, as you know, is very, very difficult. And I do think you are onto something when you say, could local government lead on this? Because you're right, the feds in the state are even bigger and more bureaucratic than the city of LA, if you can imagine that. and things take an inordinate amount of time at any level.

I think that that is a great opportunity at the local level to do it, starting with an assessment of how and where do we bake these tools and technologies into our day-to-day practices across city platforms. One of the things that I think AI could do to help is quality control and vetting accuracy sometimes.

transparency around the decisions we make. I mean, you know, we we have our open public city council meetings. We have public comment. Have any of you ever been to a city council meeting?

Traci Park: 21:42.508 It's appalling what goes on in that room. And the theatrics and the screaming and yelling and the divisive language, that is predominantly what we see. It is very rare that, you know, real working people that are trying to raise families in the city even know who their city council member is, much less come to a meeting, much less share credible.

Life-based experiences about what the problems are. And if we could find a way to use AI to reach and engage people, bring transparency to the process, and if there was a way to use it to identify and call out the bullshit that is so much of what you hear in political circles and feeds and social media and in the news.

It could really help. And you know, we're in the middle of silly season now because we have elections looming. And the the the misinform disinformation, right? Misinformation applies implies a mistake. Disinformation to me implies lie. And that is the kind of stuff that I see swirling out there. And it just, you know, I I I think using it for good because the capacity for good is there.

But the capacity for trouble is real too. And I have seen AI generated stuff. Certainly I worry about it in the political sphere, but I worry about the impacts on the economy and jobs. I mean, think about all the disciplines that you know could very well become obsolete. Accountants, lawyers, architects, you name it. The Chat GPT is smarter than me sometimes.

So that that is really, really concerned, but it's not always right, you know, and and and that really concerns me. So I think opportunities, particularly to partner with the private sector, to create the tools that we need to streamline and create efficiency within government and then to bring transparency and truth to the extent verifiable factual information back to the public discourse would be two really important things.

Evan Meyer: 24:02.286 Great. I you know, it was interesting. The two people who raised their hands who have been to an LA City Council meeting was our vice president of the Venice Neighborhood Council and Natasha Case, who's here. Natasha, she's LA LA city arts commissioner. Thank you for joining us. Hi Natasha. so it's just interesting, we say like h w w with the level of involvement.

Traci Park: 24:19.886 So you know. My apologies that you have to sit through that.

Evan Meyer: 24:31.862 So it's worth at least watching and knowing when they are and what they're talking about, even if you're not going, so that you can realize the decisions that that you can make to get involved actually can be meaningful in in your community, because that's where people are meeting daily. That's where decisions are being made, where you're having these conversations with Tracy, and that input can encourage the type of change you want to see in your community instead of worrying about, say, what's on the news federally.

Traci Park: 24:59.852 And the most effective

Engagement all happens before we ever get into city council, right? The ideas and the policies that I move in City Hall all come from you directly. I didn't bring my own agenda. I am taking your agenda, what you all are asking me to do, and going to City Hall and figuring out what is the fix for that program or that problem. And so staying in touch with me and my team directly is the best way for direct problem solving, and it is the best way for direct advocacy, so that I am focusing on the right issues and the policy changes that take Evan as you decide.

Evan Meyer: 25:35.178 and you you you touched on something earlier that made me think, you know, internally local councils have their own politics, their own clicks and

Friendships are not fri you know, like weird weird things that go on internally across local councils. it happens at all levels of government, local, county, state, federal. this year, many of you know Nithya Raman is running for mayor. I'm wondering how does that affect

the type of decision making, the conversations that are happening, the ability to get things done, the conversation around the budget. Where does that when someone internally is running for the mayoral position, what's going on inside that you can share?

Traci Park: 26:26.542 I don't know. I'm not the Nithya Raman whisperer.

Evan Meyer: 26:31.456 It w high level high level, you know, just about decision making when something like that happens.

Traci Park: 26:38.774 I will say that the dynamics of the council are, from my perspective, very, very strange. But you know, I come into this role very differently than my colleagues. Traditionally, the path into these types of positions has been coming out of the activist or organizing world or coming out of some form of elected office. Either you've already served.

as an assembly member or some other form of elected official, or you've been, you know, a field deputy or chief of staff for an existing council member. That traditionally is where folks have come from. And, you know, I I I came in as an outsider, complete outsider. I had never stepped foot in City Hall until the day I was sworn in. My first council meeting was my first council meeting.

People forget that about me. I know you all think I've just been doing this forever, but I'm still a baby and learning because the city of LA is such a massive, complex institution in and of itself. But I think you all know this. There are 15 members of the LA City Council. And our 15 council districts could not be any more different. Our city is.

500 square miles of very diverse geographic landscape. And you go from San Pedro to Granada Hills and tell me how that is all one city. It it is really bonkers, the scale of it all. And the points of view of each of the council members are all very, very different. And when you look at the 15 of us, we are not a perfect representation of the diversity of Los Angeles, but we're pretty dang close.

In our own ways. And I think each one of us are reflective in many ways of the unique constituencies that we serve. But there is not a clear common sense caucus of eight. You know, we have to have eight votes to move any policy or legislation in city council. And you know, there are days when I'm driving to City Hall and I have to sit and count on my fingers.

Traci Park: 28:49.976 Do I have eight votes today? And there are some days when I have to continue my own work because I don't have a bench of teammates to work with. And so that balance is very, very fragile. You have a core group of council members that want to defund and abolish the police, who want to cancel the Olympics, and who think that our laws barring dangerous encampments outside of schools.

Is unconstitutional. That lady running against me wrote me a four-page letter of reasons why she wouldn't enforce that rule. And that will mean that encampments come back in all the places that we've worked so hard to secure and make safe and accessible again. And so there is already a strange dynamic on the council. And with so many seats, all of the odd number ones up for grabs currently.

At the same time that all of the citywide offices, the mayor, the city attorney, and the city controller are all in flux, creates a very volatile political landscape in Los Angeles. A politically volatile landscape is not good for business and the economy here in our city. And so I I think steady, determined leadership.

matters more than ever. I could only imagine that Ms. Raman has a very, very busy schedule trying to run a citywide campaign and manage her district, which has many, many, many challenges within it that need urgent attention. So you know her seat is available to her. If she does not win in the mayor's race, she will go back and continue her position.

As the council member for the 4th district. But you know, this is a woman who has repeatedly voted against my ability to clear encampments here in Venice to protect our parks and our libraries. She has consistently voted against getting us more patrol officers to keep our neighborhoods safe. And I I don't think that aligns with what a majority

Traci Park: 31:11.274 of Angelino's need, want, or expect out of City Hall or with what is responsible governance, given that the entire world is about to arrive here in Los Angeles. Vote wisely, folks.

Evan Meyer: 31:33.624 Where do you see that line w between when we're ho y y like the the the civil rights of homeless people versus okay, put them in a van and ship them to Lancaster?

Right? There's there's a sort of like, don't touch the homeless people, leave them alone, they have a right to be on the street, and then ship them out, right? Like these are the two extreme versions of this conversation that exist. Somewhere in the middle seems like the path you're trying to take. Responsible, let's get them in the right places, right? And but still protect our residents. Yeah. Yeah. How do you navigate that?

Traci Park: 32:13.282 My obligation is to meet and balance the needs of an entire community. And

We have a very small fraction of a percentage of individuals who are causing wide-scale impacts to the broader community, sucking up hundreds of millions of dollars of our city resources and impacting virtually every city department. Our fire department responds to thousands of homeless-related fires every year.

The number of calls that they get for overdoses and mental health crises are not sustainable. They are serving as primary care providers on the front lines of a widespread behavioral and mental health crisis. Our police officers have been asked to do more with less, and budget cut after budget cut that has reduced.

Their resources, things like their human trafficking task forces, their animal cruelty task forces, those are not sustainable approaches. We have got to, as I said earlier, restore a binary choice between accepting help when it's offered and consequences when it's refused.

Nobody is saying to put people in jail because they have a mental health condition or substance use disorder. But I am saying mandated rehab or court supervised rehab may need to be the consequence. And what that involves and what the right consequence is.

Traci Park: 34:19.83 Is going to depend on what the underlying circumstances and needs of that person are. And right now, the policies in place are enabling people who are not well enough to make good decisions on their own behalf, decline help. Think about the definition of addiction, right? It is the inability to stop doing the thing.

That is making them sick and addicted, right? And without an intervention that forces the issue, they're not going to get well on their own. Wishful thinking isn't going to fix this. And for many, many years, we have focused entirely on harm reduction and housing first approaches that exacerbate the continued use of drugs and that problem, and that do not require

People to even participate in the programming that you all taxpayers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on every year to provide. You know, in our first couple of years, as we were doing extensive outreach and engagement with the unhoused population here in CD11, people who were on the streets for economic reasons, who needed assistance, who needed a hand up, they said yes.

To help. Those were the folks that we already got. I'm not saying we got all of them, and new ones appear frequently, but we are dealing right now with a very entrenched chronic population of individuals who need a higher acuity level of care than I am able to provide or have the tools to insist that they get. And so

That is a policy change that I am going to continue pushing for. I am encouraged to see already starting to happen some freeing up of dollars that allow us to invest in long-term residential care facilities where people can get the supportive, supportive, sober-based settings that they need to be in. So here's here here's another part of the problem though. I think probably most people agree that we want to protect, you know.

Traci Park: 36:45.664 Civil rights and we want to be humane and compassionate about how we do this, but there is nothing compassionate or humane about leaving people sick and addicted to live and die in pile of garbage, piles of garbage on the side of the road. And that is essentially what we've done. And even if we had the tool to force the issue with someone who is not well enough to say yes when help is offered, we do not have.

Those facilities on the back end that we need. You know, professionals who treat methamphetamine addiction will tell you sustained abstinence in a supportive sober environment is the only way to get people stabilized. You know, just moving someone into an inside-safe motel room and sending in DMH a couple of times a week is not going to be enough. And so we have to have investments in both of those pieces in California.

Decoupled health care and housing over decades, we have to bring it back.

Evan Meyer: 37:47.682 You know, one of one of the interesting things when we voted the ballot on big propositions or whatever, and four billion dollar bond to fix homelessness. Does everyone remember that one? Yeah. That's probably the last one you remember because any of them before that you've probably forgotten because they just go away. Borrow a ton of money from the banks.

Traci Park: 38:01.078 What'd we do with that?

Evan Meyer: 38:10.484 And we say we're gonna solve a bunch of stuff. And there's a sort of classic state type, you know, big policies, big visions. What has anything happened with that four billion dollars for homelessness? At least at l from maybe from the LA standpoint, if you can expand on the state, you know, side as well. But how do you feel that was used? Has it been effective? Has there been tracking mechanisms that can even determine whether it was effective?

Traci Park: 38:39.094 No, none of it has been effective and nobody knows where the money is. How many audits have we failed? How many times does a federal court order us to figure out where the money is and to spend it responsibly and we can't do that right? $24 billion went missing at the state level. Nobody can account for it. What did we do with it? I don't know. I think we gave away a whole bunch of granola bars and water bottles of water, as far as I can tell.

we, I think, you know, tried some approaches that worked. I think we've tried a few approaches that absolutely didn't work. The Venice Bridge Home is a bright, shining example of one that became the poster child for failure when it comes to these kinds of efforts. a lot of the projects, for example, you know, triple H dollars, we were promised about 30,000 units of new housing. I think we ended up getting about a third.

Of what voters were promised. I have often expected voters would wake up and realize that sometimes these investments that they make are not always the best for return. and then you know, we have the problem of ballot measures in particular that are garbage. And I'll give you an example of one: ULA. That was billed from day one.

As a mansion tax. That was a lie. That was a lie to mislead people into thinking it was a tax on a commodity that only impacted ultra- wealthy people. And if you have to lie about something from the outset, you shouldn't trust what comes next. That was not a mansion tax. That is a tax on every piece of real property in the city of Los Angeles.

Commercial buildings, multifamily buildings, 100% affordable projects, strip malls, sound stages, literally everything. And it is one major reason that the investment and development community have pulled out of Los Angeles. Why would you build something that comes with a 5% rental housing tax baked into it when you could go build that project in Torrance or El Segundo or somewhere else?

Traci Park: 40:58.874 this has been, if you've been following along, a huge problem. We have seen new housing production fall off the cliff as a result. We have seen rents skyrocket as a result of ULA. And you know, one of the things that personally troubles me about it is that ULA funding was supposed to be available in part to help stabilize renters at risk of becoming homeless.

And yet in the aftermath of the Palisades fire, when hundreds and hundreds of renters actually lost their homes overnight and became homeless, not a penny of ULA money made available to help get them rehoused and stabilized. It is shameful and it was a lie from the start. But when something sounds nice like that, it has a really pretty title.

Evan Meyer: 41:36.974 Thank you.

Traci Park: 41:55.744 United to house LA, we're gonna solve homelessness with another ballot measure. Voters are inclined to say yes. And the extent of the generosity runs deep, but I think people are tired of it. And I think that people are starting to recognize there has to be a whole lot more accountability baked in.

Evan Meyer: 42:18.552 Yeah, it it so Senator Roger Neelo, California Senator up north, put out a bill to change that the the subject line of the ballot measures gets rewritten by the by the legislative analysis team instead of the attorney general's office. And

If you can imagine the turn old general the the goal is to have an impartial way of looking at things. And just to go under Tracy's point, like you have to be so careful when you read the headline of a bill, the headline of a proposition, even the analysis, you have to do your own research. I'm sorry, it just takes time and you have to study for these ballots. If you really want to be educated, you cannot just open the book. The last I r I I remember even the primaries last time I opened it and I couldn't find any information about people running. I had to go the council.

County web website. And I remember asking our chief of staff at the time, like, hey, where's the information on these people? And like, it's not in this primary election for some reason. And like Congressman Ted Lew's were information wasn't in there. And it was just, it's crazy. You just be careful, make a note of it, do your research. Don't ask friends for help. Do be an independent thinker. Don't look at someone else's list.

Be an independent thinker and know why you're voting for what you're voting for. Spend the day to to do it. Take a day off on a Saturday and make it a hobby with your family or whatever.

Traci Park: 43:48.108 And I'll just add another footnote to that with the ULA. That lady running against me is the lady who wrote the ballot measure. File that away.

Evan Meyer: 43:57.038 It's very weird like that. So you just gotta be careful about what you see. What does it believe? None of what you hear and half of what you see.

Traci Park: 44:03.832 Follow the money behind stuff too. Yeah. Usually a really good indicator. And then find out who those groups and organizations endorse as candidates. If they line up behind the suite of people that want to defund and abolish the police and cancel the Olympics and all of that batshit crazy nonsense, don't vote for their ballot measure. Yep. It's a setup. Hello. So my question is: what's the first

most tangible next step to address the homeless issues in our community. our continued work on the R V interventions is our primary focus right now. It's we we have very few tent encampments left. There's very few. We know where they are, we know who's in them, but there are very few left.

our much, much bigger issue now is the vehicles and the RVs. And for a lot of reasons, that has been a much harder problem to solve, including lawsuits filed by the movement lawyers who tie our hands when it comes to creating reasonable guardrails and enforcement around our public spaces and homelessness. there

Our lawsuits pending, alleging that managing our curb space basically criminalizes people who are living in their vehicles. people living in vehicles have not been as willing to give them up to go into interim motel stays. People in tents would say yes to that. But that has been a much more difficult proposition, value proposition to sell with the vehicle dwelling. So last year we brought on a new specialist that

specializes in vehicle interventions. And we had been working on a pilot program. A lot of you know all those RVs that had been over in Playa Vista by Home Depot and West Side Neighborhood School. Years and years and years it had been going on over there. And so we brought them on and it took much longer than I was happy about, nine months. But we housed everybody that was living in those vehicles through long-term rental

Traci Park: 46:15.082 Subsidies and so finally for the first time we cleared all of the RVs out behind the Home Depot. And I think Playa Vista was RV free and encampment free for the first time many, many in many years, a couple of weeks ago, which is a really big deal. But I'm not taking a victory lap on it because inevitably another vehicle will drive in there and some other encampment will come along. But that is just an indicator of at least we've gotten this far ahead of it. So the that

service provider is now working on the vehicles around Penmar Park and Washington Boulevard. So those are that is kind of the next big piece. Now that we've demonstrated success with our pilot program, we are going to continue to roll that out. And then as we are really shifting our policy focus, I have been very, very adamant that the beds that we're adding

Have that higher level focus on mental health and addiction and making that shift into treatment-based recovery housing. So those are two major, major things I'm gonna be working on in my next term. All right, part A. Is there a way to basically like beta test programs? Because if I hear about a program that's gonna fix homelessness for $4 billion, it seems like a massive monolithic thing. If it turns out to be the wrong thing, it's hard to course correct.

Is there any mechanism or is that not possible? Yeah, no, there is. And so we as a council office, you know, when I came into office, I was really unhappy with some of the approaches and providers that were already in place. we worked to improve things with a couple of them and we said goodbye to a couple of them. And we brought on new soup service providers with different ideas to help us adapt as the population that we were trying to serve had changed over time. So if you have ideas, whether it is

Tech, whether it's intervention approaches, whether it is back-end resources and how to make those available, how to make the connections to our existing framework of service providers. Yes, bringing those ideas and concepts to us are how we create a pilot program and test something to see if it works, and then we can decide to expand it and invest in it further. So the pilot program that I was telling you about in Playa Vista that we just finished, it's a perfect example of it. It took too long.

Traci Park: 48:40.354 And I was annoyed by that. But part of the reason it took too long is I don't have enough permanent beds and rental subsidies, and it takes long. But now that we've demonstrated that it worked, we're growing the program. So yes, we can do that. And if you have ideas, Sean Silva, can you give a wave? Sean is our field deputy for Venice. He's your fixer on the ground over here in Venice. If you need something, you can reach out to me and Sean directly anytime. But yeah, definitely.

Evan Meyer: 49:05.944 You're talking about this earlier, and I think it'd be very helpful. Can you walk through exactly why you're talking about Hampton and Rose? We have the encampment problem there. Walk through the step by step. What does it take for you to actually get those encampments removed? You were mentioning all the, you know, you need eight people to vote. I think it's helpful for people to understand what does it actually take? Because I've even on social media blamed you, even though you're one of the leaders on this. I'm like, Tracy needs to be doing more. So can you just walk us through how hard it is to actually do that?

Traci Park: 49:32.93 Yeah, sure. So I'll just use that encampment as an example. That is a group of people who chronically avoid interventions and move around. this is people that we have engaged with in multiple places, multiple locations, on multiple with different teams and different strategies.

You'll remember back in January of 2023, that location had 150-person encampment. And I teamed up with Mayor Bass and the Inside Safe team. That was our very first encampment intervention that we did. And at that time, after the encampment was cleared, I was able to enforce our 4118 zone. That's our

Safe schools and parks ordinance that allows a council member to choose or choose not to enforce that safe passage zone around certain sensitive use areas. One of those areas that can be protected is homeless shelters. At the time, the Venice Bridge home.

was still opening, was still open and operational. And in fact, part of the reason that we were able to move as quickly as we moved in 2023 and into the first half of 2024 is because we had the Bennice Bridge home at capacity every night of the week. You know, it had just been completely underutilized in the lead up to that because all the people who were supposed to be in it were in the tents outside around it instead. And so once that

facility closed down because Metro needed the site back. They are going to be doing a very large permanent housing development at that site. We had to close down the bridge home and we lost our 4118 zone protection. Frankly, between us, I have been worried about that area repopulating ever since we lost the 4118 zone. And if those of you who were involved at the time will remember, we had some

Traci Park: 51:41.516 Conversations as a community about keeping the Venice Bridge home operational at all when I took office and I tried to warn people, you know, let me get this cleaned up and let me give the 4118 area a try. Because if if we close it down and we lose it, and we haven't housed everyone yet, it's it's going to be an even worse problem. So we have activated the space in a number of ways. We've had art fairs out there, we've been working on our pollinator corridor and some other interventions. But this particular group has moved around.

And they have landed there in recent weeks. We are aware of it and in touch with the mayor's office about it. Now, when they arrive there, we begin with outreach, and those are in advance of our care or care plus operations. That's when you see us go out there with the sanitation trucks, and they're there to clear all the garbage. And on days when we get lucky, they can actually power wash the sidewalks.

Those encampments come right back when we're done. Those that's just the housekeeping service. And I hear all the complaints about it. You came in and did a cleanup and then the encampment came back. I got you. That wasn't a housing intervention necessarily. It was just a cleanup. If we didn't do them, imagine what would accumulate. We have to. I know it is ineffective, everybody wants the encampment to just be gone.

I can't make the encampment be gone unless I have a tool that allows me to regulate that particular place. So, in order to do one of those cleanups, we have to post notice. That takes time. We spend dozens and dozens of hours every week as a council office organizing with our city partners, our outreach teams, LASA, and all of the other organizations and agencies that are involved.

every time we do an operation. it can sometimes, especially for the big housing interventions where we clear an encampment, it can take 75 hours of planning sometimes. And then in the aftermath when I need to keep a space cleared, my hands are tied in terms of what I can do.

Traci Park: 53:55.808 Unless there is a school park, daycare library, or homeless shelter nearby. And that Hampton and Rose area was left exposed because there was a gap in coverage. And so that has been an area where folks have funneled to because they knew they could get away with being there. They were all up at the public storage not long ago. And because we had so many calls for service to LAPD, which is another way that I can get a 4118 zone, if I can make

Legislative findings about public health or safety risks. And so we were able to do that at public storage. The encampment moved over here. And now we've had 40 calls to LAPD for things like assaults, theft, domestic violence, fighting, just chaos and mayhem. Chaos and mayhem. And so we have been out there over the last several months now offering that group.

interventions and resources. Several of them said yes and already moved into interim housing. The people who are left are the ones who don't want to go. And so we are now rolling out another 4118 zone. I was able to make the legislative findings based on the dozens of calls to LAPD. And so that is going to create a new buffer area that will help us keep that space

Safe. Now you all know that 4118, it's a piece of paper, right? It's a statute that exists online. It is not a wall. It doesn't stop somebody from walking into the neighborhood and putting up a tent. It just gives us the tool to tell someone you cannot be this close to the school or to the daycare or to the library. It is just a tool to manage our public spaces. And I roll those out after we have done a comprehensive housing intervention.

And giving everyone encamped there an opportunity to come indoors. We just did one over at Washington and Beach Avenue, back behind the 7 Eleven at Lincoln and Washington, and another location where we've had similar problems, and we've got everyone housed there, and again, a new 4118 zone because of the public safety findings. So it is many, many steps. It probably will still be some weeks.

Traci Park: 56:17.814 until we get those new signs posted and have the tool that we need in place to actually enforce in the neighborhood. So guys, just know we are well aware it's there and we are well aware of the impacts and we are going to continue to do our best to address it. Bear with me as I cobble together solutions out of what sometimes feels like thin air.

Evan Meyer: 56:37.004 Why would you want this job for another four years? What do you think you can accomplish? What does this city and the and Venice, because we're in Venice, what does the city look like after your next four years when you run for governor or president?

Traci Park: 56:48.398 You're very funny. it depends on who the entire leadership team in City Hall turns out to be, what happens in my second term. I am so outnumbered currently in that council it feels like an unfair fight most of the time. But I have had a mayor that has been very supportive of what I'm trying to do here for us on the West Side.

She has been great in terms of providing us with Inside Safe and other resources that we have needed. but again, all of that balance of power can can change.

Evan Meyer: 57:29.688 Yeah.

Traci Park: 57:30.03 I'm not even really sure how to answer it beyond that, but I will tell you why do I want to do this again. You know, I never imagined in a million years that I would run for office. This was not part of my life plan to set aside my career and enter the political arena. I had no political experience at all when I took this on. And this job is like anything else in life.

It's what you decide to make of it. And I have decided that this is my life now. This is what I am doing with my time. And there is a sunset on my time in this role. I hope it's four years from now and that it doesn't end in six months. because I've seen what we can do. I've seen what we can do. The progress over here is real, but it is fragile.

And it takes constant daily maintenance to keep the ground that we've gained. Like I said, when I took office, Venice was still dying on the vine. We were not part of the plan for the Olympics, and I fought hard to clean this community up so that I could make these asks to host major events with a straight face. And

The opportunities that this creates for our neighborhoods and our communities is something that I want to see through for us. The Palisades fire is something else that weighs very, very heavily on me. I obviously was on the ground January 7th, and I have been heavily, heavily involved in everything Palisades related ever since. And the sense of

Obligation and commitment, I feel to see this through as we transition into what is going to be the largest construction zone in our city's history is very heavy on me. And we are headed into a year where the economic realities are gonna start kicking in. ALE and mortgage forbearance are expiring, people are paying mortgages on houses they can't live in and lots they can't afford to build build on. You've got my opponent's husband trying to.

Traci Park: 59:56.054 Permanently displace the Palisades bowl mobile home residents and sell that property out from underneath them to corporate developers for profit. That is something I feel so compelled to fight to protect. I also, because of the role that I have had over the last year and a half, have acquired a substantial level of subject matter expertise.

On where we are and what needs to be done moving forward. I have personally walked every inch of Unstable Hillside. I can tell you which bulkhead projects have been completed, which are underway, and which we still need to get funded. I could walk you through the DWP undergrounding plan. That is information that I learned because I worked our way through it.

I fought our way through it. I demanded the resources that we needed to get the community stabilized and on some form of a path to recovery. I can't download that out of my brain and hand that experience and that curated information and expertise to someone else. And I have to see this through. And I don't think that making a change in leadership right now is in the best interest of the West Side.

certainly not for Venice, certainly not for Palisades. And if you want to see us continue moving in the direction that I've been taking us, we need to stick together. And I need everybody to show up. My ability to continue delivering what I have done in these last three years depends on what happens in City Hall generally. The role of the mayor is essential. I have done what I have been able to do because I have the mayor's support to do it.

There is a council member out there who wants to repeal the tool that allows me to keep drug camps away from schools. If that becomes the rule in the city of Los Angeles, I'm not going to be able to help us. I'm not going to be able to keep doing what I'm doing. The consequences of these elections and what is at stake for Los Angeles and the West Side could not be more serious. And I know you hear every election cycle, this is the most important election of all time.

Traci Park: 01:02:16.472 But I think this is a really good tee up to see how local elections in particular impact quality of life and what your experience living in LA looks and feels like. Activating your networks, tapping into your social clubs, your professional networking, moms clubs, kids clubs, mahjong clubs, all of those places are where people are talking about these issues and where decisions are made being made about who to vote for.

But you have to vote. And and I worry about that, you know, and and and we have had a lot of displacement in CD11 in the last year and a half. This demographic is different, this go-around than it was in 2022. And with all of that displacement of thousands of voters in our district, the rest of us understanding the assignment and sticking together to make up for that deficit is gonna be absolutely essential. You're welcome.

TraciPark.com is my website, couldn't be any easier. And my email is traci@tracipark.com. So reach out to me. There are lots and lots of opportunities to get involved, to participate, and to help me get the vote out so that we can keep delivering a safer, better West side for all of us. So thank you so much for having me, Evan. You're awesome. Thank you.