Mayor of Los Angeles

Signed September 18, 2026 as Chapter 260 — Bass chose a design October 9, with no start date announced · updated October 13

Mayor Karen Bass has chosen a design for the one-mile stretch of Forest Lawn Drive beside Griffith Park. Her office said on October 9 that the plan adds a protected left-turn lane and protected bike lanes and keeps the road's four existing lanes, and that it will 'improve traffic, cycling and pedestrian safety, and keep traffic flowing.' A city official who was not named told LAist the approved design also widens portions of the road; the mayor's office did not confirm the widening on the record. Widening was first proposed by a consultant for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation said it is 'coordinating with the Bureau of Engineering on advancing the Mayor's direction.' The mayor's office did not say what the design costs, when work starts, or whether it will reduce speeding.

The design replaces a lane reduction that LADOT and Councilmember Nithya Raman's office had designed and striped, with construction scheduled for June. That plan would have taken the stretch from four car lanes to two. Bass intervened in May and asked city departments to keep the existing lanes, draw up a new plan and do more community outreach, citing community opposition that included Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai, the two cemeteries the stretch serves. City transportation staff wrote that the consultant's widening plan had 'low' potential to slow speeding cars, and that it would cost nearly five times as much as the lane reduction, per LAist.

A lane reduction there is also harder to carry out now. SB 194 is a transportation budget bill from the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, and Newsom signed it on September 18 among the bills his office announced that day. One section of it bars a city of 2,000,000 or more — Los Angeles is California's only city that size — from reducing the number of vehicle travel lanes on a street that provides the only access to two or more adjacent cemeteries without a noticed public hearing, written findings on emergency access, fire hazard and consistency with the city's mobility plan, the prior approval of the city's governing body, and the concurrence of the mayor. That language was added to the bill on August 28, three days before the session's final votes; both houses passed it on August 31, the Senate concurring in the Assembly's amendments 29 to 9.

Raman said the striping and design plans were finished and construction was set for June, and that 'then Mayor Bass directly intervened'; she said the mayor's directive 'undermines the project's most important goal, to increase safety along this stretch.' Bass's campaign said Raman's plan 'is opposed by local businesses, faith leaders, and community members' and that Bass 'is moving forward with a plan that improves bike lane safety without negatively disrupting people's ability to attend funeral and church services' (NBC Los Angeles, August 18). In a joint statement in August the cemeteries said Bass had 'demonstrated responsive leadership and a willingness to get this right.' Raman had not commented on the design the mayor chose in reporting located through October 13.

LAist, reviewing city collision data, counted more than 95 collisions on the corridor since 2013, four of them deadly; one driver died there in August after a vehicle hit a tree and caught fire. LADOT told NBC Los Angeles the lane reduction would have little impact on travel times. Estimates for it put the added travel time at about 15 seconds on a weekday evening rush-hour trip and a little more than a minute and a half at weekend peaks.

Forest Lawn paid a state lobbying firm $125,000 between April and June of 2026, and Rick Taylor and Associates took in $360,000 from a law firm working for the cemetery across 2025 and 2026, per LAist's review of Secretary of State and City Ethics Commission lobbying filings.

Per LAist and NBC Los Angeles. The October 9 design, the city staff finding on speeds, the unnamed official's account of the widening, and the cemeteries' statement are LAist's reporting.

Updated October 7, 2026

It’s no secret Los Angeles has a homelessness and housing problem. Improving quality of life for all Angelenos has been an ongoing issue in local politics.

In December 2022, Mayor Karen Bass declared a 6-month-long state of emergency on homelessness, enabling the city to act with more urgency. The order lifted regulation to bypass bureaucracy, expedite contracts, and allow the city to purchase lodging and land for housing. It also identified key metrics to measure outcomes.

Nearly three years later on November 4, 2025, the extended emergency declaration was lifted.

Los Angeles saw 2-consecutive years of reduction in homelessness, including a 17% drop in street homelessness. Inside Safe moved 5,800 people off the streets into motel rooms and cleared more than 100 encampments.

But in the last year, Los Angeles saw an 8% increase in homelessness again. The trending reversal is attributed to failures in halfway housing operations after temporary rental subsidies ran dry. This made it harder for the homeless population to re-enter permanent housing. As a result, data shows a sharp 24% increase of people moving from halfway homes back to the street.

The data shows that actions taken under the emergency order were not sustainable.

In 2026, for every 1 person who was housed, the city took in 2 more newly homeless folk. The LA Times reported that ~40% of participants in the program returned to the streets after staying in halfway housing for a year that was originally designed to be for 90 days.

Field research found that efforts missed ~30-40% of the unhoused population in Skid Row, Hollywood, and Venice. The same audit found that for every 4 tents removed, 3 rough sleepers (no tent/encampment) or vehicle dwellers appeared nearby.

Both candidates agree that homeless spending and outcomes tracking needs help.

They disagree who should be responsible for audits.

That’s where recent drama begins.

The Audits

1. March 2024

   City Controller Kenneth Mejia announces an audit of Inside Safe, the mayor's program moving people from tents into hotels and motels.

2. March 2025

   A separate court-ordered audit reviews $2.4 billion in city homelessness spending. It could not confirm that paid-for services were delivered, nor if 2,300 claimed housing sites existed.

3. October 2025

   Mejia says his office never got the mayor's cooperation for his audit. The court-ordered audit that replaced it cost the city $2.8 million.

4. May 5, 2026

   At a debate, Bass confirms she blocked the audit. She says one elected official should not audit another, and that the City Charter does not allow it. Mejia reads the Charter differently.

The Firing

1. August 10, 2026

   Raman announces she is being removed as committee chair for the Housing and Homelessness Committee after calling for an audit.

2. August 11, 2026

   The Council votes 13 to 1 to split the Housing and Homelessness Committee. Raman is the only dissenter and her firing is confirmed.

Attendance Drama

1. August 19, 2026

   Bass attacks Raman’s attendance at their first runoff debate. Raman misses her final Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting as chair the same day. Raman cites excused absences due to her work on the South Coast Air Quality Management Board.

2. August 24, 2026

   LA news reports Bass missed 13 of the last 21 LAHSA board meetings, meeting the threshold where bylaws allow removal of a member.

3. August 31, 2026

   Bass deploys NoShowNithya.com built on Squarespace.

Congressional Testimony

1. September 2, 2026

   Bass is requested to testify before Congress on LAHSA spending, and spending records are requested going back to 2021.

2. September 4, 2026

   Bass announces she is stepping down from the LAHSA board. Her lawyer tells Congress she is not available to testify on the requested date.

3. September 9, 2026

   Bass steps down. No replacement is named.

4. September 15, 2026

   The hearing was held without Bass or Raman.

The Forum

1. October 4, 2026

   At a South L.A. mayoral forum, Raman says she would leave LAHSA for a new city homelessness bureau and request an audit of the city's homelessness response on day one. Bass calls the current system dysfunctional and says a new system is needed.

The city spent roughly $3.6 billion over three and a half years for a roughly ~10% net improvement in homelessness, left roughly ~$500 million of it unspent while people died in the heat, cannot demonstrate unit economics of what a bed cost or prove whether services it paid for were delivered, has been blocked from further federal financial support for unproven yield and punts the blame to them, only produced gains that reverted within a year of the emergency order ending (as estimated by pundits in 2023), and blocked recent calls for an audit from other civic leaders that would explain why this was the final outcome.

Per LAist, NBC Los Angeles, LA Magazine, Westside Current, the RAND Corporation, the Los Angeles Times, and the subcommittee's September 3 release.