Skid Row Residents Say Mayor Karen Bass Doesn’t Deserve Reelection

LOS ANGELES—With voters set to decide who will lead California’s largest city for the next four years, some residents who live on the streets of Los Angeles, or have been affected by homelessness, spoke out against the current leadership, calling for change.

Angelenos have less than a week to decide who their next mayor will be.

The top three candidates are incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman, and Pacific Palisades fire survivor Spencer Pratt. Recent polls have shown that Bass remains under the 50% needed to win outright, while Pratt and Raman are running neck-and-neck for second.

For years, local residents have watched what was supposed to be a contained area for the homeless grow throughout the city. During her 2022 campaign for mayor, then-candidate Bass ran on solving the crisis.

“Our city is facing an unprecedented emergency, and we need to treat it as such,” she wrote in 2022. 

While Bass has touted decreases in unsheltered homelessness and expanded housing and services, questions about where the city’s millions in taxpayer dollars are actually going have become a major issue.

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Throughout Bass’ term, the city has allocated well over $2 billion to homeless services and programs. In her first partial fiscal year, several hundred million dollars were directed toward the issue. 

By fiscal year 2023-24, that number jumped to $1.3 billion, covering programs like Inside Safe, permanent and interim housing, and outreach and prevention services. However, only an estimated $599 million was spent by the end of that fiscal year.

During that time, Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia released a report in 2024 showing how little of the allocated funds had been spent. 

As Mejia sought answers from the Bass administration and the City Council about where the rest of the money went, officials failed to provide clear explanations. Questions about the lack of transparency grew, with public criticism at the time calling for better tracking and accountability.

What the People Say in Skid Row

“The whole city of LA is now Skid Row. That’s the reality. I think everybody’s sick of it. Even the people on the street are sick of it. Even the people living in low-income housing are sick of it. They’re not doing anything,” Don Garza, a U.S. military veteran who has been in Skid Row for 26 years, told the Daily Signal. 

“Where’s the money going?” he continued. “I already told you where the money’s going—it’s going in their pockets. We know, we’ve seen it. But the question is, why do they fight so hard to not be accountable for that money? That’s the question.”

Crackdowns on the city’s nonprofit organizations have ramped up under the leadership of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli. In January, officials arrested and charged 42-year-old Alexander Soofer of fraudulently obtaining $23 million in taxpayer funds through his organization and keeping at least $10 million of it.

“[Pratt has] got a point. I want to know what nonprofits get the money, how much they get, where it goes, and what the results are. And from what I’ve seen, there’s no results,” Garza said. “Karen does not deserve another [term]. She doesn’t deserve to be the mayor again.”

“As far as Spencer Pratt, he’s absolutely correct. There’s no reason why we can’t do these things. I agree with him that laws should be enforced,” he added. 

Another Skid Row resident, Rick, who provided only his first name, called the money scandal regarding homelessness the “biggest rip-off in history.”

“I don’t give a f— about the money. I want to see them locked up. And that’s what is the most important part to me,” he continued. “I like to see them suffer. Because they did a lot of wrong s— to people of all color and poor people. And they get mad when somebody like me is talking because I’m telling the truth.”

When asked about Bass’ leadership, Rick stated that he was confident the incumbent mayor would not win again.

Along with call outs of the nonprofit organizations down in Skid Row, many on the ground have been vocally against health services that have provided things like needles and pipes to drug users, also known as harm-reduction services.

With part of Pratt’s campaign honing-in on wanting to cut the drug abuse and get proper mental services to those on the streets, an ex-psychiatric nurse by the name of Fred, who has lived in Skid Row for more than four years, told the Daily Signal that he agreed with wanting policy to change if Pratt were to win. 

“What I’d like to see is, when they have somebody that’s wigging out and it’s obviously [a] mental [issue] … to go ahead and talk them down instead of the police going in and having to tackle them, and all this other stuff,” Rick said.

However, even if new leadership comes to the city, not all in Skid Row say real change is likely. A resident by the name of Jake told the Daily Signal that even if Pratt were to get in, he believed the crisis would stay the same, as it has already hit “the ceiling.”

“It’s going to stay the same. It’s at its worst, you know. … You can’t go any further than hitting the ceiling,” Jake said. “Look at all the mayors we’ve had in the past. What’s another person going to do to try to fix this whole situation?”

With just days until the June 2 primary, a Cygnal poll conducted May 15–18 showed Bass at 25%, well short of the majority needed to win outright. Pratt sat at 22% and Raman at 18%, with 25% of likely voters still undecided.