LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCILWOMAN KATY Yaroslavsky is a moderate in today’s L.A. politics. A thoughtful champion on climate change who brings needed urgency to that issue, she cut her policy teeth as an environmental and cultural advisor to County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. Yaroslavsky’s 2022 election to the council marked her leap into elected office, and she is now at City Hall, where issues have a way of piling on top of each other — homelessness is about housing but also about jobs and mental health and addiction. Transportation, the main subject of this interview, quickly drifts into development, economic opportunity, public safety and climate change.
At City Hall, which has become markedly more ideological in recent years, Yaroslavsky is a pragmatic liberal. Her approach to making the region’s transit system safer — she sits on the Metro board — includes improving outreach to unhoused people on buses and trains as well as “hardening” stations and involving police where needed. She acknowledges that the region’s reliance on commerce makes the port invaluable, while also lamenting the pollution that the port produces.
And she already has found herself in the complicated politics of homelessness, where basic humanity and the need for protection can sometimes trigger angry constituents who resent bringing shelters to their neighborhoods.
Hers is, of course, a familiar name in Los Angeles civic life. In fact, she sits at the junction of two L.A. families dedicated to serving this area. Her father-in-law, Zev Yaroslavksy, represented the council’s Fifth District from 1975 to 1994, as she does now. And her mother, Laura Plotkin, was the chief deputy in Kuehl’s district office when Kuehl served in the state Legislature.
Yaroslavsky recently spoke with Blueprint editor-in-chief Jim Newton in the councilwoman’s brightly lit, colorfully decorated City Hall office.
Blueprint: Why are we here at City Hall? You’ve done work at the county and as a lawyer. What drew you to this office as a place to represent your city or your community?
KATY YAROSLAVSKY: I’ve had a varied career. I started off in the private sector, and I knew very quickly that I wanted to be doing policy work. … I worked at Latham as a land-use lawyer for five years or so and then did Coro [a prestigious public affairs fellowship] as a 30-year-old … , and I used that to pivot into the work I wanted to do, which was climate policy work. …
I had known Sheila [Kuehl] because my mom had been her district director when I was a kid. … She called me up out of the blue and offered me a job. She said, “I need a person who can do this and this.” [climate policy and the arts]. I said, “OK, I can do that.” …
We got Measure M passed [that parcel tax, approved by voters in 2018, which pays to capture stormwater runoff and improve the region’s water conservation capacity]. For me, that was my first experience on a campaign and putting together what became the thing on the ballot. It was so exciting, and it was so impactful. Measure W is a billion dollars every few years for something that most people don’t even understand. They don’t understand what stormwater is, but they understand why we need to green communities, which is why it got almost 70% of the vote. But it was that experience that told me: “Oh, I want more of this. I want to be able to work on big things. And I think the best way to do that is to continue in government.”
So one day I just happened to ask, “I wonder when [Councilman] Paul Koretz is termed out?” It turned out the timing was actually pretty good. It was going to be in three or four years, and I just started moving down the path of “maybe I’ll do this thing” and do climate work at the city. …
At the time I had two kids [she now has three], and I’m from here. And I want to stay here. And I want this to be a place where my kids can grow up and want to stay here. So as a lifelong Angeleno, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make the most impact.
BP: And how has the experience of being here compared to what you thought it would be?
KY: First of all, it’s an incredible honor and privilege to represent the Fifth Council District. It’s a really smart, engaged, diverse constituency.
BP: Challenging, too, I would guess.
KY: You have to be on your A-game. And your team has to be on its A-game.
And it’s also frustrating because the bureaucracy of the city is so profoundly broken and under-resourced. The disconnect between what so clearly needs to be done and the tools and resources we have available to us — and the lack of coherent governance to solve these really thorny issues like homelessness, public safety, public health — it’s infuriating.
BP: It’s been a source of frustration for as long as I can remember.
KY: When it comes to transportation, for as much criticism as people like to throw at Metro, at least you have a coherent governance structure for what you’re trying to solve. If you’re a smaller city, maybe you don’t like how the representation shakes out, but the governance works. And that’s evidenced by the fact that we keep building the infrastructure that’s really complicated and hard to build.
Are there challenges around public safety? Of course, but those are minor compared to the governance challenges that we’re facing in homelessness.
BP: What does that it mean to you, here in this building, to be a centrist?
KY: I’m a centrist in the context of this body [the council], specifically. I’m not a centrist when it comes to national politics.
BP: A centrist in L.A. is a liberal anyplace else?
KY: Yeah, right. I am pretty close to being in the middle of this body. …
I think I’m more pragmatic than ideological. I’m interested in problem solving, and part of why this local position was interesting to me was because it’s nonpartisan, and therefore you can focus on the issues … and work with people all over the place.
And it was much less politically charged when I decided to run than it is now. That’s where social media has played a large part. … Local politics wasn’t highly ideological or philosophical. It feels different [now], and yet … everybody’s interested in problem solving. It just depends where they are coming at it from.
BP: I don’t want to seem nostalgic, because there were plenty of problems here when I first came to this building. But there did seem to be an ethic of problem solving then [in the early 1990s] that was less ideological than it is today. At least, it seems that way from the outside.
KY: It certainly feels that way sometimes on the inside, too. I’m trying to get away from that. My office is having conversations with some colleagues where we have shared priorities and interests. We’re talking with Nithya [Raman, councilmember for the Fourth District] about climate work and sustainability, for instance.
When there are lean times like we have now budget-wise, it does force you to be smarter and more strategic about leveraging county, state and federal dollars. We’re having conversations with Nithya and others about how we bring those resources here — Traci [Park, council member for the Eleventh District], around the Olympics. Those conversations are happening, and they’re starting to be ongoing, because I’m so frustrated with this bureaucracy. … We have the Olympics coming in four years, [and we need to] go straight to the feds and try to get some money … for projects, for beautification.
BP: From the transportation perspective, what needs to done to be ready for the Olympics? There’s been talk of a “car-free Olympics.” I don’t really know what that means, or whether that’s possible, but as you look at it now, are you satisfied with where we are?
KY: I think there are two ways that we as a region could approach this. We could focus on temporary solutions: “Wilshire is going to become a bus-only lane!”
BP: For two weeks.
KY: Right. And we could fairly easily get everyone around on bus and bike and whatever. And create thoroughfares that are only for official mass transit.
Or, we could do a hybrid of that where we also use the Olympics to accelerate a lot of the work that we know we need to do anyway, around “first-mile, last-mile” [that’s City Hall for the improvements needed to get transit riders from stations to destinations] around connectivity, around bus and bike lanes. And we should do that. Otherwise, it would be a waste. My position is that the Olympics will be a failure if we don’t leverage it to go get what we need.
BP: Otherwise, it’s just a two-week event that comes and goes.
KY: And that we spend all this time on, and what’s there to show for it? We’re not building big things, which I think is great. We don’t need more stadiums right now. But we do need safe streets, and safe intersections, and protected bike lanes, and … a safe Metro system.
And we aren’t focused on that in this city right now. We haven’t been because of the funding issue and for a variety of reasons. But I think that if we can get that infrastructure in place, it’ll make it easier for us as a city to be complying with things like CHIP [the Citywide Housing Incentive Program, which commits the city to creating more affordable housing and creates incentives for developers to build more dense housing close to transit stations].
Not everyone is going to ditch their car. Not everyone should be expected to. But if, after the Olympics, if 5% more people are walking or biking to get to the grocery store, or get a cup of coffee, or pick up their kids, then that’s huge. And they will only do that if they feel safe doing it.
BP: Is that a hard infrastructure challenge, as opposed to an ongoing expense such as policing Metro, that you wouldn’t expect the Olympics to be able to cover?
KY: Yes. We’re obligated under Measure M [the county’s half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements, passed by voters in 2016] to build that out, that first-mile, last-mile piece or to pay for it to be done. … And that’s a couple hundred million dollars for the city of L.A. alone.
So let’s go get money and do it.
BP: And what is the “it”?
KY: Bike lanes, enhanced lighting, safer intersections, bike share, curb cuts, medians — all that stuff that makes it safe and easy for people to get to the Metro stations from within a mile.
BP: Following up on your comment about safety: How big an issue is safety on Metro? And how much might it affect ridership?
KY: I think it’s THE issue right now, THE most important issue. What’s the point in spending billions of dollars on a piece of infrastructure if people don’t use it because they don’t feel safe? It was starting before COVID, but COVID accelerated the falling apart, the deteriorating of safety.
It is moving back in the right direction. … People have been connected to housing and services in the system, which I think is great. And I think it’s important that we harden the system, too. If you’re just there to take a nap, or shoot up, or use the bathroom, we need another place for you. You can’t be there.
One of the things I’m interested in is activating the stations. There are other ways of providing less active safety by having more eyes and ears around. So, cafes, newsstands, restaurants even. These are all ways that other places in other parts of the world activate their stations.
For example, in Tokyo … you go to the main station, and some of the best restaurants in the city are there, underground, and some of the best shopping in the city is there. We’re not there. We’re a generation or two away from there, but we can move towards that. We should, because a lot of people would rather have a café with people sitting at tables than have an armed police officer.
BP: You mentioned Tokyo. I know you were in Paris recently, too. Are there cities that are doing this better than we are? And, more specifically, are there things that we can learn from other cities that we can bring to L.A.?
KY: I would say that there are places like London, where it’s easy to find a bike, where bike share works. Paris is a compact city compared to L.A., and so thinking about what we’re doing aboveground and around stations is as important as what we’re doing in the system itself.
Are we putting housing on top of our stations? Are we putting daycare centers on top of our stations? Community spaces? Retail?
BP: There’s a sense in which all these things relate to each other…
KY: Yes. One of my frustrations with the governance here is that we have all these different committees. Everything is everything. …
I’ve suggested to some colleagues, “Why don’t we do some joint committee meetings where we talk about the intersection of transportation and housing policy?” Part of it is we have to go to council, which is why I think we ought to have the option of going down to fewer meetings a week so we can try to have more substantive conversations.
BP: When you talk with constituents about what they want, how does that conversation compare to the conversation here? Are the things they care about the same things that you spend your time here, as a council, talking about?
KY: Often, but, coming back to District Five, a lot of who we hear from are homeowners associations, some of the neighborhood councils and activists. And we hear from labor sometimes. And constituents who are unhappy about homelessness or public safety one-offs.
But we’re not hearing often from individuals who would take that transit, or who would benefit from the affordable housing, because they’re too busy trying to figure out where their kids are going to get childcare.
So, yes and no. One of the things we’re focused on is: How do we create the space in all of our schedules and time [for] people who don’t normally interact with government? One of the things I’m often struck by is that I’ll be talking to people and they’ll say, “Things are pretty good. There’s just this one thing I need some help with.”
Everyone’s upset about homelessness. Nobody’s happy about response times at LAPD. Beyond that, it’s preferred parking distracts, or this, or that, and most people just aren’t focused.
BP: I’ve never been to a dinner party where someone mentioned preferred parking districts. I’ve long been struck by the fact that there’s a conversation among people in L.A., and there’s a government conversation, and sometimes they overlap, but a lot of the time they don’t seem to. Ideally, you’d want those to be the same, for someone to say, “Oh man, it took me an hour to get here tonight. Maybe I should talk with my councilwoman about traffic.”
KY: That doesn’t happen much.
BP: Homelessness might be the exception.
KY: Homelessness, yes. And what we need to do is figure out how to get a handle on that so we can start to think about some of this other stuff that is hugely important for a livable city.
I don’t know what percentage of our time, or my staff’s time, is spent on homelessness, but it’s significant. And that’s what it has to be right now, but I’m looking forward to us making sufficient progress on it as a city, state and country. I think that’s going to require federal intervention. I think it’s going to require state action.
We need to change laws. And mental health and addiction and criminal justice reform. All sorts of things. …
BP: On transportation, is it possible to fundamentally change this city to the car? Is that necessary, and is it possible?
KY: It’s both necessary and possible. As I said, not everyone is going to ditch their car, nor should they. My 79-year-old mom isn’t going to start taking the bus unless she has to and it works for her. … But some percentage of people will want that option, and we need to provide that option.
As we build more housing, which we are obligated to do by the state, and which we clearly need — particularly affordable and low-income housing — there are going to be more people coming here. And they’re going to need to get around. And our streets are pretty busy.
And also, it’s a joy to take a walk to the coffee shop, or to ride your bike to grab dinner or see a friend.
We absolutely need to. And because L.A. isn’t as spread out as we all think it is — I mean, sure, if you wanted to ride your bike from Woodland Hills to San Pedro, that would suck — but there are a lot of trips that are under 1 1/2 miles. It’s significant; no one likes sitting in traffic. …
So I think it’s absolutely necessary and doable. It will solve a lot of our climate challenges and quality-of-life frustrations, too.
BP: How are we doing as a city with respect to climate change and clean air goals?
KY: Pretty bad. Some of it we have control over, and some of it we don’t. There’s a lot of progress we’ve made since the ‘70s, but our port generates a lot of direct and indirect pollution. We have oil drilling in neighborhoods, still. We don’t make it easy to put solar on your home. We still import a lot of our water. And most people still drive everywhere.
We have a lot of work to do. It’s hard because we need to balance commerce with communities. And there are some very powerful interests that are invested in keeping things the way they are.
For example, at [one of my first council meetings] I brought a motion to create a climate action and adaptation plan for the city, which is basically an implementation plan for all the stuff we know as a city that we need to be doing. … Most if not all big cities have some version of a climate action and adaptation plan, and we don’t. Which is nuts.
So one of my big pushes in this past year’s budget was to get $1 million to hire a consultant to do the damn plan. And the fight was crazy. We got it through, and it’s happening, but grudgingly.
BP: Sorry. What was the opposition?
KY: Oh, “It’s a million dollars. We don’t want to tie our hands. Shouldn’t that money be spent on homelessness?”
We need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We need to be able to do that.
BP: Even if that’s difficult, there’s a part of me that’s encouraged to hear that this kind of conversation is happening behind, or in addition to, the conversation about homelessness — that all other work hasn’t stopped while the city focuses on homelessness.
KY: We have to, right? Imagine 30 years from now, if we don’t figure this stuff out, and you turn on the faucet, and nothing comes out. It’s existential.
It’s human nature to focus on whatever is right in front of you, on the crisis du jour. Which is why we haven’t, as a planet, figured out how to tackle climate. So much of that work is now happening at the city and regional levels because it’s not happening at the national level. …
That’s a huge part of why I ran, is to do this work. We’re still doing it.
