Henry Mantel

Government Reform Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) is a way to vote that asks voter to list candidates in order of preference instead of picking just one. If a voter’s first pick does not win enough votes to make it past the necessary threshold, then their vote goes to their second pick, and so on until one candidate has a majority. RCV is far superior to the way we vote now and creates incentives for candidates to work together and build coalitions instead of attacking each other. Los Angeles should amend its charter to adopt Ranked-Choice Voting. Criminal Justice / Public Safety Despite California’s strong anti-discrimination laws, victims of discrimination often lack the resources necessary to enforce their rights. The City should be improving education and outreach to communities who are most vulnerable to discrimination. Criminal Justice / Public Safety Police officers are frequently called to situations that do not involve dangerous criminals or violence, but folks in desperate need of aid, like those living on the streets or with mental illnesses. LA recently launched an Unarmed Model for Crisis Response that has been a great success and should be expanded so that our neighbors can get the help they need, giving the police more time to handle situations that actually require their assistance. Infrastructure / Transportation In order to make Los Angeles more walkable, we must make it legal to build more dense, multi-family housing, especially near transit stations, so that more people can live close to where they work and commute without a car. Allowing for more housing to be built near or on top of businesses and transit stations will allow more workers the freedom to walk to work or utilize public transit, taking cars off the road and out of limited parking spots. Immigration ICE raids in our schools are threatening students, parents, teachers, and workers. It is unacceptable that these raids are allowed to go forward at all, putting everyone in danger and disrupting students’ education. The city must do more to keep ICE away from schools. Environment / Energy Cars are California’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Single-Family Zoning has forced people to spread out into the suburbs, destroying natural habitats and requiring longer and longer commutes to get into the city. In order to reduce the use of fossil fuels, LA needs to build more dense, multi-family housing so that people do not need to be spending hours of their lives in their cars every day. Environment / Energy Trees are a necessary part of any healthy ecosystem and livable community, yet there are areas of the city with barely any tree canopy at all. The lack of trees means less shade, which makes areas of the city hotter, requiring more fossil fuel consumption to cool down, especially during the summer. LA should loosen restrictions on tree planting and expand parks in order to help keep the city cool and the air clean. Education Expanding after school programs is one of the most effective ways of ensuring that kids are safe, engaged, and given opportunities to enrich their days in ways that are productive and healthy. Giving kids these opportunities helps reduce crime and helps parents who work full-time. The city should expand after school programs to make sure kids are getting attention and care they need. Criminal Justice / Public Safety Yes, we need public safety. But paying LAPD officers 300,000 a year while we wait on hold for 45 minutes when calling 9-1-1 isn’t keeping us safe. Officers who commit abuses getting millions in settlements paid by taxpayers while they escape punishment isn’t keeping us safe. If we want to be safe, we need to hold LAPD accountable for using taxpayer money responsibly and delivering the effective service we are paying for. Infrastructure / Transportation Despite having some of the best weather on the planet, Los Angeles is dangerous for people who choose to bike. Our bike infrastructure is nonexistent in most of the city and the infrastructure we have is not protected from dangerous drivers. In order to make biking a viable option, we should be expanding bike lanes and making sure they are adequately protected. Environment / Energy Approximately 85% of the housing in Los Angeles was built before 1990, meaning many of the buildings in the city are not equipped to deal with the changing climate and the dangers that come with it. Buildings should be constructed or retrofitted with climate resilient features, like graywater systems, EV charging stations, native flora, solar panels, and energy storage systems. Infrastructure / Transportation The fact is that our streets have not been designed with pedestrian safety in mind. Even though voters passed Measure HLA in 2024, the city has been dragging its feet in implementing the necessary upgrades, leading to many preventable injuries and fatalities. We should accelerate HLA’s implementation to make sure that those who choose alternate forms of transportation, like biking and walking, are safe from dangerous drivers. Housing In order to build housing, developers have to run through a labyrinthian permitting process that can take years and cost millions of dollars. This process makes it nearly impossible to build housing cheaply and efficiently, even in places that are zoned for such development. In order to build the housing we need, the permitting process will need to be reformed to allow for more housing to be built so that we can address the housing crisis quickly. Immigration This year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been grabbing our immigrant neighbors off the street, even those who have never committed a crime and are legal residents. Despite LA being a sanctuary city for immigrants, the LAPD has been aiding ICE in their raids and putting down protests. Sanctuary city protections must be enforced in order to ensure the immigrant community is protected from federal overreach. Criminal Justice / Public Safety Nothing drives crime like desperation and the housing crisis is making people desperate. About half of all households in Los Angeles are rent burdened and one unexpected expense or accident away from getting evicted and ending up on the street. In order to reduce rents and help get people off of the street and out of encampments so that people can feel safe in their homes and walking the streets, we need to eliminate Single-Family Zoning and build more housing. Government Reform The Los Angeles City Council has 15 members for 3.8 million residents. That means every city councilmember is supposed to represent the interests of more than 250,000 residents. This has made our government less effective and less responsive to the needs of residents. In order to solve this, the City Council should be expanded so that our elected representatives can better respond to the needs and desires of their constituents. Housing Los Angeles’s rent control law is called the Los Angeles Rent Stabilization Ordinance (LARSO). The City Council recently amended LARSO so that the rent in LARSO covered units can only be increased by 1 – 4%, which was a good step but did not go far enough. LARSO should have been amended to cap the maximum allowable rent increase at 3%. Housing Solving the housing crisis will require building more housing of all kinds, not just luxury housing for including more affordable, public, and social housing. Right now, getting into the affordable housing that exists can take years, which is unacceptable. Los Angeles needs to invest more money in building housing for those who cannot afford market-rate or luxury housing, especially seniors on fixed incomes and those with mental and physical disabilities. Housing In order to ensure that every student in Los Angeles is housed while reducing the cost-of-living for the teachers who are tasked with raising a new generation of Angelenos and the workers who make our schools run, we must make it legal to build more housing across the city, particularly near our schools so that kids and teachers can safely walk or bike to school. Reducing the cost of housing will also increase the amount of young people that can afford to start families, thus increasing the amount of students in our schools and increasing the funding our schools receive. Criminal Justice / Public Safety Black and LGBTQ Angelenos are disproportionately more likely to end up homeless while single mothers are the most likely group to face eviction and often end up homeless due to fleeing domestic violence. Single-Family Zoning was also invented as a way to prevent People of Color and Immigrants from moving into white neighborhoods without explicitly saying so. In order to make sure LA is truly a sanctuary for everyone, we need to remove this remnant of segregation and build enough housing so that everyone can be housed, regardless of income, identity, or ability. Housing The city owns property that is being under-utilized. This property should be used in ways that support our schools, such as building housing for teachers.