Council member Mitch O’Farrell met his match in his incumbency race for City Council District 13. He’s running against Hugo Soto-Martínez, a social activist born to self-employed street vendors and backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. O’Farrell and Soto-Martínez represent two distinct sides of Los Angeles: the Angelenos who are struggling to afford gentrifying neighborhoods and fighting for an equitable city and those who have the means to afford the unaffordable rent, who want to push out unhoused people from sight. In the race for District 13, Angelenos have made clear that O’Farrell represents the latter, and Hugo represents the former. This upcoming election will show which class will turn their envisioned Los Angeles into a reality.
On March 24, 2021, at the behest of O’Farrell, about 400 officers from the Los Angeles Police Department entered Echo Park to forcibly displaced and remove over 180 unhoused Angelenos and their allies. Activists and unhoused folks were occupying the park to protest against the housing crisis and rising rent. O’Farrell called the clearing a success. He ordered that the unhoused folks be put into temporary transitional housing through projects Roomkey hotel rooms, Project Homekey sites and A Bridge Home shelters.
Community members, along with Soto-Martinez, opposed the forcible removal of the unhoused individuals, claiming that the park had been turned into a much-needed safe haven. Soto-Martinez questioned what would happen once their stay at the temporary housing services were up. The clearing of the encampment was followed by a $500,000 renovation and repair project of the park, making the area more appealing for local residents.
The clearing of Echo Park is a microcosm for the stances of O’Farrell and Soto-Martinez. O’Farrell views the solutions to homelessness as a quick move from street homelessness into an expanding shelter system. The focus is to decrease the plight and sight of homelessness across his district and Los Angeles in general. In the aftermath of the Echo Park raid, O’Farrell stated, “We returned the crown jewel of the park system to the community for everyone, housed or unhoused, to enjoy. That’s what parks are for.”
In regard to homelessness policy, O’Farrell attempted to ban free meals for the people experiencing homelessness at Echo Park and accomplished a ban on overnight RV parking in the Media District. He also supported the displacement of tenants in Hollywood in favor of a hotel. With a year-over-year increase of 22% in the homelessness population in his district, the council member’s own record on homelessness has not proven to focus on the quick transition of giving affordable housing to those on the street. Rather, it follows the city’s track record of criminalizing homelessness rather than ending the crisis.
Soto-Martinez has pushed back against the housing policies of O’Farrell, which are consistent with making the city look more enticing to developers and high-income residents. Soto-Martinez is running on monumentally increasing the affordable housing stock and has criticized O’Farrell for only allocating a minuscule percentage of new units to be affordable. Under the proposed policy of Soto-Martinez, the city would convert hotels, office space, retail space, and underutilized public property into affordable housing. His policy would also focus on expanding successful programs that produce affordable housing and require new development set aside a larger portion of new units for lower-income residents.
The homelessness and housing policies of Soto-Martinez are focused on rapid transition of people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing. On Soto-Martinez’s website, he states, “As I lay out in my housing policy, we need to go farther and faster on social housing, community land trusts and other underexplored housing options.” As opposed to Council member O’Farrell’s approach to making homelessness illegal in public spaces and using the police as a means to force people experiencing homelessness into temporary shelters that, according to Soto-Martinez, are not real solutions to the crisis L.A. faces.
The Los Angeles City Council District 13 race represents a larger issue of two contentions in L.A.: the desires of developers to build luxury housing for high-income residents versus of vulnerable residents who want a home.
This article is part of a series about Los Angeles housing issues and solutions. If you have information or a story you’d like to contribute, please reach out to byersj@usc.edu.