Traci Park has built her career siding with corporate landlords and wealthy homeowners while blocking affordable housing, opposing tenant protections, and even facilitating mass evictions, making her the most anti-housing voice on LA City Council.
The majority of residents in Council District 11 are renters, but Traci Park governs as if she represents only the wealthy. During her campaign, she met often with homeowners associations and neighborhood councils in Brentwood and the Palisades but skipped opportunities to speak with renters. In October 2022, she refused to attend a debate at Mar Vista Gardens, the only public housing complex in her district.
Once in office, Park made clear who her real constituents are. One of her first motions sought to give private neighborhood associations in wealthy enclaves the same privileges as official, city-certified neighborhood councils, without any of the transparency or accountability. Certified neighborhood councils must comply with the Brown Act, the Public Records Act, and city ethics training. The private associations Park wanted to elevate operate behind closed doors, sometimes charging dues to participate.
Her proposal would have allowed these secretive groups to influence city policy without public oversight. Among the clearest beneficiaries would have been the Brentwood Community Council, led by corporate real-estate attorney Carolyn Jordan, whose family and firm gave nearly $28,000 to Park’s campaign. With that level of investment, Brentwood’s power brokers could count on Park to deliver political favors once she reached City Hall.
Traci Park’s campaign was built on real-estate money. She accepted more than $1.2 million from corporate landlords, developers, and their lobbying arms. The largest donor, Douglas Emmett Inc., funneled $566,000 to Park through a Police Protective League-backed political committee. Kilroy Realty, a major developer and top funder of the recall effort against Governor Gavin Newsom, added $330,000. The California Apartment Association, one of the state’s most powerful landlord lobbies, contributed $265,000 after spending millions to weaken rent control and eviction protections statewide.
These companies saw in Park a reliable ally who would defend property interests, slow tenant protections, and block affordable housing. Their investment paid off.
The clearest example of Park’s loyalty to corporate landlords is her handling of the Barrington Plaza mass eviction. Douglas Emmett owns the 712-unit complex, which lost a resident in a 2020 fire after years of ignored safety upgrades. When former Councilmember Mike Bonin demanded that the landlord install sprinklers without evicting tenants, the company refused. Instead, it invoked the Ellis Act, a state law allowing landlords to leave the rental market, even as it admitted plans to re-rent the units later.
After Bonin opposed the plan, Douglas Emmett poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into electing Park. Once in office, she did nothing to protect her constituents. Her only action was a vague motion asking for a “report on the status of the Ellis Act process.” Tenants at Barrington Plaza have since described harassment, intimidation, and fear as they face forced displacement. Park never challenged the legality of the evictions, leaving tenants at the mercy of a multi-billion-dollar landlord that helped fund her rise to power.
Traci Park has built a legislative record that consistently sides with landlords and property interests over renters. Since taking office, she has voted against nearly every major tenant protection measure considered by the Los Angeles City Council.
In early 2023, Park opposed multiple ordinances designed to keep families housed after the pandemic, voting no on rules that would have prevented evictions for small rent debts and expanded relocation aid for tenants displaced through no fault of their own. She claimed the measures were “unbalanced” and harmful to “mom-and-pop landlords,” echoing industry talking points. She and Republican Councilmember John Lee were the only two members to oppose the renter-protection package.
She later voted three separate times against rent caps that limited annual increases to 4 percent under the city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance, again joining Lee as the lone dissenters. Park also voted no on strengthening the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance and opposed the statewide Justice for Renters Act, which would expand local rent control.
Her most callous vote came in February 2025, when she rushed through more than 20 emergency motions in response to the devastating Palisades fires but singled out one to oppose: a temporary eviction moratorium for tenants who had lost income because their homes or jobs were destroyed. She argued that the measure would “cause serious harm to rental housing providers,” a claim repeated by landlord lobbyists celebrating her vote. Even as fire victims faced homelessness, Park voted to protect property owners instead of displaced residents.
Taken together, her votes form a clear pattern: Traci Park has fought rent caps, relocation aid, eviction moratoria, and tenant protections at every turn. When renters needed relief most, she sided with the landlords who funded her campaign.
Traci Park built her political brand on opposing new housing in her district, especially for people facing homelessness or needing affordable options. Early in her political rise she fought the city’s plan to convert the Venice Ramada Inn into transitional housing under Project Roomkey. She also joined the backlash against A Bridge Home in Venice, calling the shelter “disastrous” and framing it as a threat to her neighborhood. Her campaign also fought the “Monster on the Median,” a 140-unit affordable development on the Westside. From the start of her climb into City Hall, Park aligned herself with the goal of keeping affordable housing out of her backyard.
Once in office, Park continued that obstructionist pattern. Before she was sworn in, she intervened to kill a $2.3 million plan to house people living in RVs along Jefferson Boulevard near the Ballona Wetlands and favored police-led sweeps instead. A man living in his RV died in a fire soon after. In her first week as councilmember she introduced a motion to delay a 100% affordable housing project at the Disability Community Resource Center.
Her interference went further and deeper with the Venice Dell affordable-housing project. Although the project was fully funded and approved, the California Department of Housing and Community Development issued a formal letter of inquiry in 2025 because the City of Los Angeles, under Park’s influence, “significantly delayed and effectively denied” key components of the development. Just days later, Park attacked Venice Dell during a City Council session, calling it “defunct” and “a waste of taxpayer dollars.” She also advanced a competing motion to relocate the project to “Lot 701,” a maneuver widely described by local media as a stall tactic designed to delay the housing while wealthy neighborhood interests reorganized.
The Venice Dell story highlights how Park’s politics favor delay and exclusion rather than solutions. Although she claims to support affordable housing, her record reveals repeated blocks and diversions when actual developments threaten to change the status quo of her district.
