Los Angeles City Hall: Five big things to watch for in 2024

With a presidential election and Congressional seats to fill in 2024, it’s easy to turn one’s attention to the national stage.

But there are plenty of issues and events to keep an eye on locally in Los Angeles.

Once again, homelessness and affordable housing remain top of mind for many. Mayor Karen Bass, now a year into office, has made clear that Angelenos should not expect homelessness to be solved in just 12 months. But the question in the new year will be: is the situation at least improving?

At the same time, there will be plenty of debate and politicking at City Hall, what with seven Los Angeles City Council seats up for election and ongoing discussions about redistricting and other governance reforms following a series of City Hall corruption cases and scandals.

Below, we’ve highlighted five things Angelenos should watch for in the coming year.

Homeless count

The number of homeless Angelenos jumped 10%, to more than 46,000 people, in this year’s Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s annual homeless count.

The 2023 count was conducted just weeks after Bass became mayor. Initiatives like Inside Safe, her signature homeless program, and other measures taken by the Bass administration to combat homelessness, had barely rolled out or hadn’t yet been implemented.

But LAHSA’s 2024 count, once again scheduled for January, will be conducted a year into the Bass administration. Fair or not, constituents are more likely to hold Bass accountable if there’s another uptick in the homeless population.

Indeed, an uptick would not be surprising. Bass herself has admitted the likelihood that L.A. may see another increase in the homeless count, in part because some tenant protections enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic have expired or soon will end.

Tenant rights advocates have repeatedly raised concerns about a spike in eviction filings this year. They, along with Bass and other city leaders, worry that as more people lose their homes, more will end up on the streets.

“If there’s 3,000 pending evictions today, how many will that be by the end of the year?” Bass asked in July. “How will we catch those people? How will we know who those people are?”

According to L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office, a staggering 49,947 eviction notices were filed with the city between February and August.

Tenant protections

Speaking of tenants, Angelenos who owe money to landlords because of unpaid rent between the dates of Oct. 1, 2021 and Feb. 1, 2023, must repay their debts by Feb. 1, 2024, or face possible eviction.

Also starting in February, tenants in rent-controlled units could see rent increases, after getting some respite during a rent-hike freeze that the city ordered during the pandemic. About 75% of all multi-family rental units in L.A., or about 656,000 units, fall under the city’s Rent Stabilized Ordinance, according to the city’s housing department.

Earlier this month, the City Council adopted an ordinance to limit how much landlords of rent-stabilized units can raise the rent. The rent hike is capped at 4% – or 6% if the landlord pays for gas and electricity.

To combat the end of COVID-era tenant protections, the City Council passed a sweeping package of other protections for renters in the past year. They also approved Measure ULA dollars to launch an emergency renters assistance program – which also provides money to small landlords who are owed rent – as well as other affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs.

Heading into 2024, the City Council is expected to consider ordinances to establish a right-to-counsel program to provide legal aid to tenants facing eviction and to allow tenants in “no pets” buildings to keep animals they brought home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“By investing in protecting tenants, we are not only keeping Angelenos housed, we are saving money in costs related to emergency shelter, temporary housing programs, and health care,” Councilmember Nithya Raman said earlier this month when the council asked the city attorney to draft a right-to-counsel ordinance.

City Council elections

The race is on for L.A. City Council, with candidates vying to serve in even-numbered districts on the ballot in 2024.

District 14 has the most number of candidates running. That race features Councilmember Kevin de León – who resisted calls to resign for his involvement in last year’s racist audio leak scandal – and seven other candidates vying to represent Angelenos in downtown L.A. and Eastside communities including Boyle Heights.

The District 2 race in the Valley has also generated high interest, with seven candidates running to succeed Council President Paul Krekorian, who is termed out. District 2 represents residents in North Hollywood and other parts of the east San Fernando Valley.

Three other Valley seats are on the ballot in Districts 4, 6 and 12. The incumbents in all three are seeking reelection.

They include Councilmember John Lee in the West Valley’s District 12, which includes Chatsworth, Northridge and Porter Ranch. Lee, who is contesting accusations of ethics violations raised by the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, will face opponent Serena Oberstein, a former city ethics commissioner.

In District 10, appointed Councilmember Heather Hutt is seeking a full term. Four candidates are challenging her to represent a swath of the city stretching from Koreatown in Central L.A. to Baldwin Hills, the Crenshaw District and Leimert Park in South L.A.

Any candidate who gets more than 50% of the vote in the primary election will win their race outright. If nobody wins outright, the top two finishers in March will face each other in a runoff in the November general election.

Independent redistricting

In November, the City Council voted unanimously to place a measure on the November 2024 ballot asking if Angelenos want to switch to an independent redistricting process in which a panel of people who are independent of the City Council would redraw City Council district boundaries every 10 years.

Under the current system, a commission whose members are hand-picked by councilmembers recommends the new boundary lines for each district, and the maps that the commission recommends can be vetoed by the City Council.

This in-house approach has been widely criticized. City Council President Paul Krekorian spoke out at a press conference in November, saying, “Unfortunately, in the 100 years that this city has had council districts, we have never had independent redistricting. … It’s been the council that has drawn its own districts. And the system that we have right now is frankly the worst of all worlds.”

Concerns over just how much power councilmembers have in shaping the maps for their own personal gains played out during the last redistricting process in 2021.

The public’s appetite to reform the redistricting process grew after a 2022 audio leak from a backroom meeting. The leaked recording revealed that three councilmembers and a former president of the L.A. County Federation of Labor had met behind closed doors during the 2021 redistricting process to discuss how to redraw the council district maps to benefit themselves or their political allies.

The City Council is expected to debate other reforms including the widely criticized small size of the council itself, set at 15 members since 1925. L.A.’s population has roughly quadrupled since then to about 4 million, and as a result each councilmember now represents about 265,000 people. The City Council is also expected to consider ways to strengthen the city’s ethics commission following a string of corruption cases in City Hall.

Corruption and ethics cases

Three current or former city councilmembers accused of corruption or ethical violations are seeking final resolutions to their cases in the new year.

Councilmember Curren Price, who is facing criminal charges of theft by embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest, is expected to be arraigned on Jan. 8.

He’s accused of effectively embezzling money between 2013 and 2017 by having the city cover roughly $33,800 in medical premiums for his partner, Del Richardson, to whom he claimed to be married, though he was still married at the time to another woman. He’s also accused of voting on projects involving developers with ties to Richardson’s consulting firm and not reporting those connections. Richardson is his second wife.

Price, who represents Council District 9, has denied wrongdoing and pledged to fight the charges.

Former Councilmember Jose Huizar had his sentencing postponed to Jan. 26 and is expected to be sentenced to between nine and 13 years in prison. He previously pled guilty to felony charges for using his position to benefit himself and his associates, and for tax evasion.

Huizar, the former representative of Council District 14 from 2005 to 2020, admitted to leading a pay-to-play scheme. He gave preferential treatment to real estate developers who offered or facilitated bribes, which included offers of cash, casino gambling chips, prostitution and escort services, political contributions, flights on private jets and commercial airlines, stays at luxury hotels and casinos, expensive meals, tickets to concerts and sporting events, and other benefits, according to federal prosecutors.

Current Councilmember John Lee is also seeking a resolution to his case. In October, the District 12 councilmember was accused of violating city ethics laws for failing to report gifts he allegedly received from a developer while employed by the city.

The Los Angeles Ethics Commission said there was “probable cause” to believe that Lee, while chief of staff to then-City Councilmember Mitchell Englander in 2016 and 2017, accepted gifts far in excess of the gift limit for city officials, failed to report the gifts, misused his position, and aided and abetted Englander’s misuse of his own position.

Lee has called the accusations “misguided” and “baseless” and vowed to “vigorously fight” them.

“In my 20-year career with the city, I have never received an ethics violation. When departing city service, I voluntarily and proactively contacted the Ethics Commission to ensure I understood my obligations upon leaving City service,” Lee said in a statement in October.

Lee, who is seeking reelection, said he refused “to be bullied by investigators that are seemingly more focused on garnering headlines than pursuing facts, evidence and the truth, even at the expense of people’s reputations.”

As for Englander, the former councilmember was accused of not disclosing more than $20,000 in gifts he accepted during trips to Las Vegas and Palm Springs in 2017, for accepting gifts beyond the city’s gift limit, and for using his position for personal gain.

Englander pleaded guilty in 2020 to falsifying material facts and was sentenced to 14 months in prison but was released early. Englander began serving time in a federal prison in Tucson in June 2021, then transferred to a Long Beach re-entry facility that October and, according to inmate records, was released on Feb. 3, 2022.