Nithya Raman wins primary for Los Angeles City Council

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Los Angeles, California: Incumbent Indian-American Councilmember of the Los Angeles City Council, Nithya Raman won her primary race for the 4^th District seat and will contest in the November 5^th general elections.

“Please know how grateful I am for everything you gave us over this last year, and how incredibly energized I am to keep working with all of you for another four,” Raman said after securing her win and thanked volunteers and supporters as well. “None of this would have been possible without a truly special campaign team… and the incredible coalition of groups and leaders who threw down to support us.”

“There is a lot of frustration and anger out there and to be honest, I feel that same frustration,” Raman told Eyewitness News after her victory. “But to me, what this vote, what this outcome represents is that Angelenos want to respond to homelessness in the right way. By offering housing, by offering services, by doing work that can really move people indoors and off the streets – not just shuffle them from sidewalk to sidewalk as the city has been doing for so long.”

“First and foremost, I want to congratulate Councilmember Raman,” Raman’s challenger Ethan Weaver said in a statement. “She ran an incredibly well organized, hard-fought campaign. She stayed true to her core values and principles, even when that elicited criticism. She stood firm in her beliefs, and I admire that.”

“Councilmember Raman also never ducked an opportunity to debate, even on unfriendly turf. While we agreed on the important issues facing our city, we often have disagreed on the solutions, but we were never disagreeable” Weaver added in his statement while congratulating Raman “on a terrific victory.”

Born in Kerala, India, Raman relocated to Louisiana at the age of six before her family eventually settled in Massachusetts. Following her graduation from Harvard and her training in urban planning at MIT, she worked in Delhi and Chennai in India, focusing on “extreme poverty, fighting for basic necessities like water, plumbing, and shelter,” her website said.

Referring to her move to LA, Raman expressed, “I saw and felt a crisis growing around us, with more and more people falling into homelessness every year and more tents on our city’s streets,” adding, “I co-founded a volunteer group with my friends to try and help people experiencing homelessness in my own neighborhood. The group SELAH grew quickly, driven by a sense of urgency for change.”

Raman further noted that she campaigned on a commitment to establish a significant transformative plan and make a difference for local communities. As a result of people’s trust in that commitment, she pointed out, “Unsheltered homelessness decreased in our district for the first time in years. Tenants won the strongest package of new protections in forty years. Our air is cleaner, our streets safer, our local government more responsive. Our win changed what was possible in LA.”

As the Chair of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, Raman focused extensively on creating significant new policies aimed at eradicating homelessness across Los Angeles.

Through her efforts and initiatives, Raman successfully relocated over 500 individuals from the streets, established the “largest Homelessness Team” in any Council District, increased the district’s shelter capacity, and inaugurated “a multi-year city-run hotel shelter facility, the first of its kind in LA.” Furthermore, she obtained an Encampment Resolution Grant that facilitated the transition of about 100 individuals from the LA River into indoor accommodations and broadened “mental health and substance use services to supplement programs offered by LA County.”

“From my first day as Mayor, Nithya Raman and I have locked arms to tackle homelessness with urgency. I know firsthand how effective she is, both in bringing people safely indoors within her district and in pioneering policies to keep people housed all across our city…” Raman’s website said quoting Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass.

In addition to her initiatives in Homelessness issue, Raman also passed numerous legislations to bring about reforms in the city government, and protect renter’s rights, environment, and parks.