LA’s lefty councilmembers dig in against clearing homeless

They could be playing with fire.

Three of LA’s lefty councilmembers on Tuesday tried to torch efforts to clear homeless encampments from tinderbox hillsides, voting to stop authorities from removing camps on privately owned land in the city’s most extreme fire-danger zones without owner permission.

The motion, which ultimately passed 11–3, directs city agencies to explore legal ways to cut through the red tape that ties the hands of police and firefighters, preventing them from clearing entrenched camps on private land in “Very High Fire Severity Zones” when absentee owners fail to act.

“The hazard to our city and other hillside residents is very real, very palpable,” Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, one of the authors of the measure, warned on the council floor before the vote.

“The threat is immediate, not hypothetical,” she added, arguing that when property owners fail to address dangerous conditions during periods of extreme fire risk, “we have a duty to act.”

She described the effort as a preventative safety measure, not a crackdown.

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“This is actually helping to protect residents in hillside communities that are under threat, particularly on red flag days,” Rodriguez said, adding that the goal is to give city crews “the tools that they need” to address encampments that pose an imminent fire danger.

“These areas are often a mix of ownership,” the motion states, warning that identifying parcel boundaries in steep canyon terrain can be “difficult and time-consuming” — time communities don’t have during peak fire season.

The three no votes were from Democratic Socialists–aligned councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Ysabel Jurado.

Soto-Martinez said the measure could be used “to push homeless folks from one side of the street to another hill to another hill,” while Councilmember Ysabel Jurado called for more study — despite the fact that the motion itself orders a study.

In a standout break from her left flank, Councilmember Nithya Raman — a declared mayoral candidate typically aligned with the DSA bloc — voted yes.

“This has a real impact on our community — we’ve had to evacuate from fires, and we need preventative measures like this,” said Lydia Grant, president of the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council.

Grant noted that encampments on private hillside land have already brought fires, sewage dumping and massive trash buildup to neighborhoods that have repeatedly faced evacuation orders.

Grant described warming and cooking fires burning just uphill from homes while officials often stand by because the land is privately owned.

Under the current restrictions, officials “can’t go on the land and clear,” any fires that sparked up on private property, Grant said. “They have to get the property owners to do that.”

Santa Monica Canyon resident Sharon Kilbride described a similar stalemate in a canyon near the Palisades before the Palisades Fire, where roughly two dozen people camped on private brushland in a high-risk zone.

“The sheriffs couldn’t remove them,” she said. “And then they had like two or three fires in that area.”

In parched, fuel-packed terrain, she said, ignition is almost unavoidable.

“People have warming fires… and they cook. If you have camps on dormant land, you will have fire.”

Even after the Palisades Fire, officials say the problem did not disappear.

In October 2025, a multi-agency operation organized by the Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness sent police, park rangers, city officials and volunteers into Very High Fire Severity Zones to search for illegal camps and offer aid.

Despite expectations that few encampments would remain after the blaze, teams still found multiple camps, abandoned sites, hazardous debris and even large containers of oil hidden in remote brush — according to a report by Circling the News.

Just down the road in Malibu, officials say a fire last September that was sparked by an unpermitted campsite on private vacant land near the Malibu Racquet Club began as a “small cooking fire” before firefighters knocked it down.

Residents living above the site said the incident underscored how quickly disaster can ignite in wind-whipped terrain.

The motion now heads to the City Attorney, who will work with the Fire Department and Building and Safety officials to determine what legal changes would be needed before the city can act.