The L.A. Times' Traci Park Puff Piece Overlooks Her True Constituency: Corporate Landlords

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Dakota Smith's puff piece portraying Councilmember Traci Park as a compassionate leader guiding Pacific Palisades through wildfire recovery is more than misleading—it’s an insult to the thousands of renters, working families, and unhoused people she has actively harmed while in office. If you read the article in isolation, you’d think Park was a tireless public servant. But here’s the truth: Traci Park isn’t just ignoring the housing crisis—she’s accelerating it.

From supporting mass evictions to undermining tenant protections and blocking affordable housing, Park doesn’t represent the majority of her constituents. She represents the donors who bought her seat at City Hall. Park’s district is majority renters, yet she’s the most anti-tenant voice on the L.A. City Council. And it’s not hard to see why. Her 2022 campaign was bankrolled by over $1.2 million from corporate landlords, including Douglas Emmett—the same real estate giant responsible for one of the largest mass evictions in L.A. history at Barrington Plaza. Park took $566,000 from them and then stood by as over 500 low-income renters were evicted under dubious legal claims.

The Barrington Plaza tenants lost their homes because their billionaire landlord refused to install basic fire safety features like sprinklers, even after deadly fires. Instead of forcing them to comply with safety regulations without evicting anyone—as former Councilmember Mike Bonin had demanded—Park did nothing. Her only action? Asking for a report. That’s what half a million in campaign cash gets you.

And this isn’t an isolated failure. From February to December 2023, there were over 5,300 evictions in Park’s district alone, according to the L.A. City Controller. That’s not just a statistic—that’s thousands of people being pushed further toward homelessness in a city already overwhelmed by housing insecurity.

After the devastating wildfires in January, Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martínez and Eunisses Hernandez introduced a motion to temporarily protect tenants impacted by the disaster. It was modest—just a pause on no-fault evictions and non-payment evictions for those who could prove they lost income due to the fires. Park didn’t support it.

Instead, she offered an amendment to redirect Measure ULA funds—voter-approved revenue meant to fund long-term housing, tenant protections, and services—to cover emergency rental aid. Her amendment failed because, legally, ULA funds are designated for building housing and protecting tenants—not for carving out favors for her wealthy homeowner base.

Meanwhile, Park and others claimed there wasn’t “enough data” to support eviction protections. But Soto-Martínez’s office found evictions had surged to 2,400 just weeks after the fires—nearly double the typical monthly rate. Those are “real people,” as Councilmember Ysabel Jurado put it, being shoved out of their homes while Park pushed process over compassion.

Traci Park doesn't just fail to help unhoused residents—she actively helps create homelessness. She campaigned by stoking fear about shelters in Venice. She helped kill transitional housing projects like the Ramada Inn conversion. She led the charge to delay or block 100% affordable housing projects in her own district. Her answer to homelessness has been police, sweeps, and propaganda—not housing.

She says she supports "common-sense" solutions, but when presented with permanent supportive housing—the only approach proven to end chronic homelessness—she calls it too expensive. When asked to name a single supportive housing project she supports, she couldn't. Instead, her entire political brand was built around opposing shelters in her own backyard while criminalizing people for being homeless.

The L.A. Times says Park is “empathetic.” Maybe—to her donors. But to the majority of her constituents—renters, working people, unhoused residents—she’s been indifferent at best and hostile at worst. Click here to email Dakota Smith, asking that she consider including the perspectives of those harmed by Traci Park's policies in the wake of the fires.