The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-1 to dissolve its Housing and Homelessness Committee and remove Councilmember Nithya Raman as chair, and the sharpest criticism came from a fellow Democrat who called her "all talk and no action."
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who represents District 8, introduced the restructuring that eliminated the committee entirely on August 11, 2026. Raman, a democratic socialist representing District 4, lost the chairmanship she had held through a period when, by the city's own admission, Los Angeles's homeless population grew larger than it was when Mayor Karen Bass took office.
The vote was not close. Fourteen of the council's fifteen members backed the move. Only one dissented. And the criticism that followed was not polite.
Imelda Padilla, a Democrat and candidate for Council District 6 who previously served on Raman's committee, delivered a point-blank assessment of what that service was like. Padilla told Raman directly:
"The months that I served on that committee under your leadership were the most unproductive time I've had on council. You ran it like a lecture hall at a university, not a place of government decision making."
Padilla did not stop there. She accused Raman of failing to schedule more than 100 motions, canceling meetings, and leaving when controversial votes came up.
"You were removed because of your inability to lead and get things done. The homeless crisis does not need a chair that is all talk and no action."
That last line, from a fellow Democrat, not a Republican opponent, captures the scale of the breakdown. Los Angeles has no Republicans on its fifteen-member council. The body is made up of ten Democrats, four democratic socialists, and one Independent. When a council that left-leaning votes 13-1 to strip one of its own members of a leadership post, the failure is not ideological. It is operational.
Raman responded on Instagram, framing the move as punishment for her challenge to Mayor Bass. She wrote:
"Mayor Bass' top City Council ally removed me as Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee. The Mayor may be trying to punish me for challenging her."
The claim positions Raman as a victim of political retaliation. But the Bass campaign pushed back hard, pointing to Raman's own record. Alex Stack, a spokesperson for the Bass campaign, said Raman "canceled committee meetings for weeks, didn't show up to votes, and failed to deliver on building more housing or getting people off the streets."
Stack went further, targeting the spending record of what he called Raman's "signature program." He described it as having spent more than $60 million over nearly a year while filling only three apartments.
"Her signature program has been a failure, spending over $60 million for nearly a year but only filling three apartments."
Sixty million dollars. Three apartments. If that figure is accurate, it amounts to $20 million per occupied unit, a ratio that would be difficult to defend under any theory of governance.
Padilla also challenged Raman's claims about reducing homelessness in her own district. She pointed to a city program called Inside Safe as the actual driver of those results, accusing Raman of dishonesty.
"Now you are being dishonest about how homelessness was reduced in your district: it was Inside Safe."
The relationship between Inside Safe and Raman's own program remains unclear. Stack referenced Inside Safe as Raman's "signature program," while Padilla described it as something separate from Raman's leadership, a distinction that matters when tens of millions of dollars are at stake. What is clear is that neither Raman's allies nor her critics are satisfied with the results.
And the broader picture is worse. Los Angeles has more homeless people now than when Mayor Bass took office. The committee Raman chaired was supposed to address that crisis. Instead, according to the council members who voted to dissolve it, the committee became a bottleneck, more than 100 motions left unscheduled, meetings canceled, and the chair absent during difficult votes.
Raman loses the chairmanship but keeps her council seat. She continues to earn approximately $245,255 a year, a salary pegged to what California Superior Court judges make. Every member of the Los Angeles City Council receives the same base pay regardless of committee assignments or leadership roles.
So the financial consequences for Raman are zero. She draws the same quarter-million-dollar salary whether she chairs a committee or not, whether 100 motions sit unscheduled or not, whether $60 million produces three occupied apartments or three thousand.
Harris-Dawson, the council president who engineered the restructuring, did not offer a public statement explaining his reasoning, at least none that has surfaced. The full scope of the restructuring beyond dissolving Raman's committee is also unclear. But the vote itself sent a message that thirteen of Raman's colleagues were willing to deliver publicly: the committee was not working, and its chair was the reason.
Raman's framing of the vote as mayoral retaliation may play well with her base in a future campaign. But it sidesteps the substance of what Padilla, Stack, and a near-unanimous council laid out: canceled meetings, unscheduled motions, absent leadership, and a spending record that produced almost nothing for the people sleeping on Los Angeles streets.
This was not a partisan ambush. There is no opposing party on the Los Angeles City Council to mount one. This was a Democratic and democratic-socialist supermajority concluding that one of its own members failed at the job she was given, and acting on it. The lone dissenting vote only underscores how broad the consensus was.
Los Angeles voters deserve to know why more than $60 million in public money allegedly produced three filled apartments. They deserve to know why a committee chair left more than 100 motions sitting on a shelf. And they deserve to ask whether Raman's retaliation claim is an explanation or a distraction from a record she cannot defend on the merits.
When a city council with zero Republicans votes 13-1 to fire you from a leadership post, the problem is not partisanship. The problem is performance.
