Are CD4 Residents Looking for a Councilmember or a Savior?

We are reeling from a pandemic. We are in the midst of the greatest social uprising and racial reckoning in recent history. National political turmoil has cast doubt on every branch of power in our constitutional democracy, including the highest court. 

At the local level, we are dealing with a homelessness crisis, a massive corruption scandal, and a pandemic-spurred economic crisis about to escalate into an unprecedented number of evictions.

We are all tired. So tired. Of the suffering. Of the pain. Of a seemingly ineffectual government. Of the injustice of it all. Understandably this has galvanized a more energized voter base that is demanding a new kind of politics and governance. One that sees them, hears them, and cares about them. 

We are in the perfect storm for a savior, the desirable promise of a candidate that could offer us something, anything, “different” to deliver us from this collective suffering. Los Angeles City Councilmember David Ryu, who was once himself the outsider-reformer candidate in 2015, has now become the symbolic sacrificial lamb for this newly politicized and increasingly angry electorate.  

I understand your anger, your rage. I understand because I have been you. I was in the fight of my life for my home. I was facing eviction from the Villa Carlotta in Hollywood, a place that had been my sanctuary when the whole world felt out of control. The same place that, thankfully, I have once again been able to call my refuge in the storm of 2020. But that thanks isn’t to intangible forces. That thank you belongs to David Ryu. 

At the end of 2014, my neighbors and I were all served eviction papers. New owners wanted to redevelop the 50-unit rent-stabilized building into a boutique hotel and were evicting us under the Ellis Act. A hotel required a zone change and an encounter with then-Councilmember Tom LaBonge revealed that he supported the concept.  

“Hollywood is changing and people want hotels,” he would finally admit to me at a City Council meeting after effectively ducking me for months. I won’t even get into the theatrics I had to engage in to keep him from ignoring me. I had naively believed that I’d march down to City Hall and speak with my Councilmember or the Mayor (yes, very naïve) and they would want to make things right. 

It was then that I realized the obstacles that exist for average people seeking help from their local elected officials are often insurmountable. It is devastating to feel that lack of power and sense of unworthiness.  

Luckily, LaBonge was being termed out the following spring and the race for his replacement was already underway. The runoff pitted political outsider David Ryu, against LaBonge’s chief of staff, Carolyn Ramsay. Ramsay was favored to win, and I was warned that she, like her predecessor, would likely support the hotel conversion. The stakes for me were extremely high -- my beloved home and community of eight years were on the line. 

I organized my very first protest called V in April 2015. (Photo above, right) Close to a hundred people stood around the building holding hands to “hug” it in an action of solidarity with the tenants who were fighting to stay. I invited both CD4 candidates. Only David showed up. (Photo above, left) He hugged the building with us and spoke. He promised that, if elected, he would make protecting tenants a priority. He promised he would oppose a zone change for Villa Carlotta. He promised to be accessible to his constituents. He promised to fight developer influence at City Hall. 

David Ryu ran a historic race in 2015 and won. His win was monumental for outsider candidates seeking office, as it was a major upset and shakeup to the establishment. He was also the first Korean American ever elected to the City Council. This represented an enormous victory for one of the largest minority populations in the city, who, due to gerrymandering, had never been represented. And he had done it in an unprecedented way: by vowing not to take developer money–something that was unheard of until then. The irony isn’t lost on me that, in many respects, he paved the way for his current challenger. 

To this day, Councilmember Ryu has kept those promises. For the last five years, I have watched him help and support so many tenants facing eviction in his district, whether by exercising discretionary powers in land use matters, or writing strongly worded letters to landlords harassing their tenants. I know this because my own eviction experience propelled me into the world of grassroots tenant activism and led me to co-found the Los Angeles Tenants Union, where I assisted and organized other tenants facing eviction.  

The fact is, David has been a reliable leader on the Council when it comes to tenants rights issues. Maybe it comes from his own understanding of what housing precariousness feels like, having grown up as an immigrant child of a working-class family in an apartment in East Hollywood. No one understands struggle more than a human who has endured it. 

The truth is Councilmember Ryu doesn’t get enough credit for being behind some of the most progressive policy changes in City Hall. He led campaign finance reform to provide more funding for viable grassroots candidates. He fought to implement a developer contribution ban. He is the first -- and possibly only -- councilmember to voluntarily commit to making the district’s approximately $1 million in discretionary fund spending transparent to the public and to appoint a districtwide citizen’s oversight commission to decide how the spending is allocated. 

There are even more changes in the pipeline: a vacancy tax for housing that remains wastefully vacant, Equitable Preservation Overlay Zones, which would help protect tenants from eviction and prevent the destruction of the city’s existing rent-stabilized housing stock. Ryu’s accomplishments are too numerous for me to list in this editorial, but an exhaustive list can be found at davidryu.com/accomplishments. 

Critics in this race have pointed to the tremendous amounts of money coming from political action committees (PACs) as proof that Ryu has “taken” money from groups he’s disavowed, but to claim that is misleading to voters that might not understand candidates, by law, cannot coordinate or communicate with PACs. They are completely independently run groups that decide who they want to support, oftentimes favoring incumbents by running their own political ads. There is absolutely no way for Councilmember Ryu to stop a PAC. He would be breaking campaign finance law if he even tried.  

What everyone seems to want are simply different conditions. I say “simply” because identifying it is simple–but creating those new conditions is far more complex than just picking someone new, because the conditions weren’t caused by David Ryu. And if we take out the players who are trying to change the game, we will always be playing the same game. 

I don’t agree with every vote the council member has ever cast, but I also don’t believe that is a realistic litmus test to determine if someone should be re-elected. The downside to incumbency is that it is beholden to a record. This means there is always a disappointed faction of the electorate ready to exact political revenge by voting for the “other” candidate. I believe the criteria to determine if a representative deserves another term should be:  

1. Has this person been available and responsive to their constituency?  
2. Are they willing to listen to and work with the community?  
3. Are they able to make the “right” decisions, even when they are politically unpopular?  
4. Are they working to make the government more accountable, transparent, and more accessible to its electorate? 

The answers to all of these in regards to Councilmember Ryu are emphatically yes. Because if David can stomach getting berated by a mob of angry homeowners for wanting to open a homeless shelter near them – homeowners who threatened to recall him for his efforts – as he did in Sherman Oaks and still find a way to get a shelter built, then he has demonstrated that he is willing to take the heat and has what it takes to get the job done. Imagine what he could accomplish with the support of all those currently mobilized in the movement to support future efforts. 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: While the specific shelter project protested by Sherman Oaks residents was not built, a similar one is currently under construction nearby, following Ryu’s negotiations with the homeowners.] 

If you think that simply voting in a new councilmember will solve homelessness, end police violence, stop climate change, and make all of your political problems go away then we will be having the same conversation in four years. The city is a fatally flawed slow-moving machine with numerous departments and commissions. On issues such as funding for the unhoused, it actually relies heavily on the county, which comes with its own departments, commissions, and elected officials.  

I would caution anyone against voting emotionally when it comes to issues as complex as homelessness. We all want the unhoused to be homed. I use the word “home” because it isn’t just about having a roof over one’s head; it is about having a feeling of safety in the world. Practically speaking, the solution is not as simple as voting in someone with good ideas. 

Ideas are simply seeds. Planting those seeds and getting them to grow in the hostile environment at City Hall is an altogether different thing. It requires experience and an understanding of the terrain. I know because I’ve participated in hundreds of city council and commission meetings during the last five years. 

The midst of a pandemic would be the worst time to start from scratch just because we’re angry and need someone to blame. Residents would suffer a delay in access to services and support during a transition. And by all estimates, the bleeding for tenants is about to start -- and it will be heavy. 

None of this is meant to discourage this newly energized base of voters or tell you that what you want isn’t possible. It is meant to encourage you to participate more in the civic process and to empower yourself by learning how it works. And to gain appreciation for the value of having someone already in office who understands how all the various city and county agencies interplay. 

Incumbency – while it might not have the sex-appeal of a media-savvy insurgent campaign with Hollywood heavyweights sharing its messaging – has the incalculable value of experience and knowledge. I say this as someone who has made the difficult choice to run against an incumbent, Council District 13’s Mitch O’Farrell, because, in that instance, the bad far outweighed the good. That is simply not the case here. 

This difficult moment in time requires someone with experience and tenacity, even if it is tempting to believe that electing someone new is the answer.  Councilmember Ryu has proven he will roll up his sleeves and do the hard work to make City Hall a place where everyday people have a voice. His constituents deserve to have him to continue his work. 

(Sylvie Shain is co-founder of LA Tenants Union, a former candidate for City Council, and a resident of District 4. This perspective was posted first at the Los Feliz Ledger.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.