Los Angeles City Councilmember and mayoral contender Nithya Raman walked into a routine Sherman Oaks homeowners meeting this week and walked out with a campaign headache, after a crowd of residents loudly booed her over homeless encampments near local schools. Parents from parts of her district have been increasingly vocal about safety and daily school commutes, and the tense exchange landed right in the middle of Raman’s citywide mayoral bid, which already leans heavily on housing and public safety.
According to The New York Post, Raman told the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association crowd she “didn’t think a kid’s gonna be safer if they are 10 feet or 500 feet away from a school.” The remark drew immediate boos from the room. The Post reports that parents at the meeting described what they called extreme incidents near encampments, including overdoses, fires, and confrontations, turning a simple walk to campus into a daily stress test.
What the law says
Under an expanded version of Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18, the city already bans sitting, sleeping, and storing property on public sidewalks within 500 feet of schools and day care centers. The 2022 amendment extended that rule citywide, greatly increasing the number of places where anti-camping restrictions can be enforced. ABC7 covered the council vote and noted just how dramatically the measure widened potential enforcement zones.
Raman’s record and neighborhood complaints
Raman has defended her office’s encampment-to-home outreach strategy even while voting against broad expansions of the anti-camping ordinance, arguing that blanket bans simply push unhoused residents “deeper into residential and business areas,” according to reporting in the Los Angeles Times. The Times has also detailed parents’ reports of fires, overdoses, and intimidating behavior linked to some encampments in pockets of her district, a context that helps explain why the Sherman Oaks meeting turned so confrontational so quickly.
The political stakes are obvious. Raman officially launched her mayoral run in February and has put housing and safety at the center of her platform, even as both opponents and potential allies sift through her voting record on encampment enforcement. NBC Los Angeles covered her campaign rollout and noted criticism from allies of Mayor Karen Bass, who have taken issue with Raman’s resistance to tougher enforcement around schools…