Nithya Raman faces growing criticism as residents and political allies question her leadership

Residents in Nithya Raman’s district are sounding the alarm, accusing the progressive candidate who vowed to amplify their voices of leaving them shut out, ignored and unable to get answers from her office.

Raman stormed into City Hall in 2020 as a grassroots political insurgent, unseating an incumbent councilmember in what many viewed as a major upset. 

An urban planner and co-founder of a homelessness outreach organization, she built her campaign around housing affordability, homelessness and tenant protections.

Raman frequently framed herself as an outsider willing to challenge City Hall‘s status quo.

Now, as Raman seeks Los Angeles’ highest office, critics across her district describe a very different experience, one they say left them frustrated, shut out and struggling to be heard.

In speaking with The California Post, residents repeatedly cited the same frustrations: unanswered calls, difficulty securing meetings and feeling shut out of decisions shaping their communities.

“I was shocked and horrified at how she treated people,” said Shira Scott Astrof, who lives near Runyon Canyon. Astrof said her frustrations with the councilmember began while trying to help residents in her building navigate affordable housing concerns and fears over potentially losing their housing.

“Because tenant protections had become one of Raman’s signature issues, I thought for sure the council office would become involved,” Asrof told the California Post. Astrof said she encouraged neighbors to contact Raman’s office and seek assistance. She said the response was not what she expected.

“I either got wrong information, rude information, but most of the time they just wouldn’t answer our emails or return calls,” Astrof said. “She ran on her biggest thing being that she protects renters,” she added.

Maria Kalban, said her frustration with Raman wasn’t over a single disagreement — it grew out of years spent working on land-use and planning issues — where she said extensive community efforts repeatedly ran into a wall with Raman’s office.

When Raman first took office, Kalban said she believed the councilmember’s urban planning background would lead to meaningful collaboration.

Kalban and her husband had spent years involved in neighborhood planning, including helping build United Neighbors, a coalition linking roughly 150 community groups across Los Angeles.

Kalban said residents spent months crafting proposals they believed would meet state housing mandates while directing growth toward major corridors and commercial areas instead of single-family neighborhoods. “We did our homework on this,” Kalban said.

She said despite meetings with city agencies and presentations to planning officials and the mayor’s office, they increasingly felt they were getting little traction from Raman.

“We began to realize there was nothing we could do because she was definitely focused on adding a lot of density into single-family areas, and she didn’t care what else you could come up with,” Kalban said.

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Over time, Kalban said the experience left her questioning Raman’s willingness to collaborate.

“She has an idea of what she wants to do and no interest in talking to anybody that can offer balance,” Kalban said. “Nithya looks like she’s a friendly person, but of all the people we’ve worked with, she is very much an island.”

Tom Glick, a member of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and a former Los Angeles city planner who spent more than three decades working for the city, said his disappointment carried another layer.

During his decades in government, Glick said constituent service was considered one of the most basic responsibilities of elected officials. “All these council people understood that constituency was important,” Glick said.

He said he and members of neighborhood groups repeatedly attempted to schedule meetings involving issues affecting their communities. Eventually, Glick said he filed a public records request seeking calendars from Raman and her staff to understand who was being included in meetings.

Glick said he never received a response from Raman, though he later obtained a heavily redacted copy of her chief of staff’s calendar through a public records request.

The California Post reviewed the calendar records obtained through that request.

The documents contained substantial redactions and limited meeting details, offering little insight into outreach or engagement efforts by Raman’s office.

“She is a council member who only wants to deal with people who support her,” Glick said.

The criticism now appears to be surfacing inside City Hall as well.

On Tuesday, Raman faced another political setback when fellow Democratic Socialist-backed council colleagues broke from her mayoral bid and instead lined up behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.

The California Post reached out to Raman’s campaign and council office for comment.