Traci Park campaigned for City Council on a promise to solve homelessness, but she consistently opposes new subsidized housing, especially if it’s in her backyard. California’s homelessness crisis is a direct result of the high cost of housing, and politicians like Park are keeping it that way.
Traci got her start in politics by blocking shelter for people experiencing homelessness in Venice. City officials planned to convert the Ramada Inn near her Venice home to transitional housing with services provided by People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) as part of the city’s Project Roomkey program. Instead of embracing the city’s effort to bring more shelter online for people living on the street, Traci spearheaded a failed effort to block the conversion. Park also vehemently opposed the “A Bridge Home” in Venice, which provides shelter to unhoused adults and transitional-age youth, calling it “disastrous” and a “blight on our community.” And she joined the NIMBY chorus against a housing project they dubbed the “Monster on the Median“, which would bring 140 affordable units to the Westside. From the beginning, Traci’s entire motivation for gaining power in City Hall was to block transitional housing in her affluent neighborhood.
In addition to blocking transitional housing in Venice, Traci opposes the only strategy proven to solve homelessness: providing permanent housing. Given the staggering cost of homelessness in Los Angeles (including shelter, service providers, healthcare, police, courts, sanitation, unemployment, foster care and more), a failure to provide permanent housing is the height of fiscal irresponsibility. But Traci has said that housing is “too costly.” At a September 17, 2022 debate, Traci could not name a single housing project in the district she supported for people experiencing homelessness.
Immediately following the election but before she was even seated, Traci Park killed $2.3 million in funding that would have provided shelter to people living in their RVs along Jefferson Boulevard at the Ballona Wetlands. After tanking the program, she committed to bi-weekly sweeps on Jefferson, which have been proven harmful and completely ineffective in addressing homelessness. And in her first week in office, Traci introduced a motion seeking to delay development of one of the only 100% affordable housing projects on the Westside, located at the Disability Community Resource Center.
