From left: Spencer Pratt, Karen Bass and Nithya Raman are shown on a television as they take part in the Los Angeles mayoral candidates debate on May 6.
Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
With the June 2 primary election only a few days away, most Californians are rightfully focused on figuring out who should be their next governor.
But another race could have a similar impact on the future of the state. And it’s one worth paying attention to even if you don’t live there.
I’m referring to the contest for Los Angeles mayor.
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Three top candidates are fighting to advance to the general election in November. One of them has the potential to dramatically reshape the future of housing in California. Los Angeles City Council Member Nithya Raman has aggressively campaigned on major reforms to reduce the governmental housing bureaucracy and increase the city’s annual construction threefold. She has proposed issuing an executive directive guaranteeing approval for new housing construction in 60 days or less for developments that already comply with zoning. She wants a citywide self-certification model to speed up permits for “straightforward” projects.
But most importantly, Raman is a supporter of Senate Bill 79 — a new statewide law that goes into effect on July 1, which allows developers to construct residential structures up to nine stories near transit stops.
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Los Angeles has expanded its transit network in recent years and plans to add hundreds of miles of rail and rapid bus routes in the decades to come. Given this transit construction boom, one analysis showed effective implementation of SB79 could allow 448,000 new housing units to be built.
That’s a transformative number in a state with an unrelenting housing crisis. Yet the hopes that Los Angeles will get its act together and build at the scale needed to make a dent in the affordability crisis appear to be iffy at best. A UC Berkeley-Los Angeles Times poll released Thursday shows the mayoral race in a dead heat: incumbent Karen Bass with 26% support, Raman at 25% and Trump-backed reality television villain Spencer Pratt at 22%.
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Bass and Pratt have shown little interest in implementing sweeping changes to the city’s housing needs.
True, Bass has implemented her own programs to ease homelessness, another top issue among voters that is, of course, closely linked to housing affordability. Her Inside Safe initiative has led to thousands of Angelenos moving into temporary housing. And in April, Bass signed an executive order addressing the city’s approval processes to speed up housing production.
Yet, as the Los Angeles Times reported, roughly 40% of Inside Safe participants returned to homelessness. And Bass has too often sided with residents who oppose new housing construction.
Bass was one of many city officials who did not embrace SB79 and has resisted its implementation. She has argued that the bill would “erode local control” and “diminish community input on planning and zoning,” two classic NIMBY talking points.
As for Pratt, who lost his home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires and whose celebrity stems from the MTV show “The Hills,” fighting SB79 has become a crusade. And he echoes Bass, or influences her, with that same NIMBY messaging. SB79 “strips local control, creates a county-level authority that overrides city and community decisions on rebuilding after the wildfires, centralizing power away from locals,” he said in a TikTok video.
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Bass, the incumbent, is almost certain to make it to the general election. Should Pratt, who has never held elected office, edge Raman out in the primary, Los Angeles will likely wage war against the implementation of SB79.
That result would appear to be at odds with what voters actually want.
A recent survey of registered voters in Los Angeles found that affordable housing was a leading issue in the mayoral election, with 71% favoring the construction of low-income housing near public transit.
Yet despite this apparent public support, being openly pro-housing in Los Angeles remains politically fraught.
“A very vocal, but really a minority of residents in the community can put tremendous pressure on a city official,” David Garcia, policy director at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, told me. “We’ve seen elected officials recalled or targeted in the next election cycle because of pro‑housing votes.”
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Garcia said the fear of backlash has historically made politicians reluctant to pursue major zoning or permitting changes, even when those alterations comply with existing regulations.
Raman is adamant that, if she does become mayor, she won’t buckle.
Raman criticized city leadership for not “proactively” planning new housing before SB79 during a May 5 debate in Sherman Oaks between her and Bass. “This city has not grappled seriously with the housing shortage in ways that demonstrate results to Sacramento,” Raman said. “We should have stepped up.”
Yet, when it comes to actually putting shovels in the ground and building the housing that is mandated by state law, California voters are also notoriously fickle.
“You can accommodate it on our major thoroughfares, you can build duplexes, triplexes in some single-family neighborhoods that are near transit,” Raman said when pressed about building in suburbs like Sherman Oaks.
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“But do you have a goal of preserving single-family neighborhoods?” the debate moderator asked her.
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“Some single-family neighborhoods can be preserved. I think some of them will have to accommodate more density when they are near transit,” she said.
A chorus of boos rang through the audience.
Justin Ray is a Los Angeles-based journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times and Columbia Journalism Review. He currently works for the independent, environmental news outlet Grist.