Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Julia Wick and David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.

It’s been a minute since Hugo Soto-Martínez and Colter Carlisle last bumped into each other in the laundry room of their apartment complex.

Not since before Carlisle, who serves as vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, filed paperwork Monday to challenge Soto-Martínez for his L.A. City Council seat.

“I am wondering if it will be the most awkward moment of my entire life,” Carlisle said of his inevitable laundry room run-in with his new opponent. “But we’ll see how it goes.”

A sitting council member being challenged by a member of a neighborhood council is far from an unusual occurrence. But this is the first time, to our knowledge, that a council member will face off against their upstairs neighbor.

“I want to be clear that me running has zero to do with the fact that he’s my downstairs neighbor,” Carlisle said.

Carlisle, who works in freelance legal sales and has served on the neighborhood council since 2021, will face a vertiginously steep path in his quest to unseat Soto-Martínez.

Soto-Martínez ousted an incumbent in 2022, expanding the council’s left flank to represent a densely packed collection of neighborhoods that includes Silver Lake, Echo Park, Atwater Village and Hollywood.

A former union organizer, Soto-Martínez has deep support from the city’s powerful labor unions and the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. He is one of the few renters on the council and was running unopposed until Carlisle entered the race.

It was “a massive coincidence,” Carlisle said, that the neighborhood council member (who won his 2023 election with 16 votes) and the City Council member (who won his 2022 election with 38,069 votes) lived in the same East Hollywood complex in the first place.

“After he won, we were both kind of like, ‘Wait, are we, like, co-workers now?’” Carlisle recalled. “When that happened, it was sort of like, OK, I don’t want to bother him at home. I don’t want him to come home and worry he’s going to run into me. Both of us need to come home and decompress.”

Carlisle voted for Soto-Martínez for 2022, he said, but housing issues catalyzed his decision to challenge his neighbor in 2026.

Carlisle argues that the city’s push to build more housing is displacing long-term residents. He thinks the payouts the city requires for tenants who are pushed out by new construction are insufficient.

“I don’t believe that knocking down the rent-controlled apartments is going to lead to more affordability in Los Angeles,” Carlisle said.

He takes particular issue with Soto-Martínez’s support for Senate Bill 79 — a housing bill on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk that would override local zoning and allow far more density near transit stops.

Carlisle vehemently opposes the bill, contending that new construction will come at the expense of existing rent-stabilized units. (The bill exempts most rent-stabilized buildings, but not duplexes.)

He also thinks Soto-Martínez should have fought a planned eight-story apartment building on Carlton Way. The development will require demolishing a number of small rent-stabilized apartment buildings to build 131 new apartment units — 17 of which will be set aside for low- or very low-income residents.

Soto-Martínez spokesperson Nick Barnes-Batista said the council member’s office had been working closely with the tenants on Carlton Way and that the project followed affordability guidelines. Although the remaining 114 units in the building will be market rate, they will all fall under the city’s rent-stabilization ordinance, Barnes-Batista said.

Barnes-Batista also clarified that his boss did not take an official position on SB 79: He merely voted to oppose a resolution opposing it, rather than voting to support it.

(We apologize that you will have to read the prior sentence twice, slowly, to understand what the heck it means. The semantic distinction is there, but it’s a narrow one.)

“Renters make up over 60% of the city, yet they’ve historically been left out of decision-making at City Hall. We’re changing that with a full-time team helping tenants facing eviction stay in their homes, and we have a motion in committee right now to hopefully cap rent increases at 3% for every rent-stabilized tenant in Los Angeles,” Soto-Martínez said in a written statement.

And for those keeping track at home, Councilmember Tim McOsker is now the only incumbent running unopposed.

State of play

— PAYING PLAINTIFFS? Seven people told The Times they were paid to sue Los Angeles County over sexual abuse at juvenile halls. The claims were part of a $4-billion payout — the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history. A Times investigation found that a nebulous network of vendors ushered people desperate for cash toward a law firm that could profit significantly from the business.

— SCRUTINIZING SB 79: Gov. Gavin Newsom still hasn’t decided the fate of Senate Bill 79, the aforementioned landmark housing bill that would upzone scores of neighborhoods across the city, paving the way for taller, denser buildings near public transit. But the scramble is already on by homeowners, renters’ rights advocates and even politicians to figure out which locations are covered by SB 79 — a task made difficult by the bill’s various exemptions and deferrals.

— HOUSING SLUMP: Apartment construction in L.A. has dropped by nearly a third over the last three years, as real estate developers struggle with unprofitable economics and continued uncertainty around city and state housing laws. “L.A. has been redlined by the majority of the investment community,” said Ari Kahan, a principal of California Landmark Group.

— RAISING THE WAGE: Speaking of new regulations, six members of the City Council are looking at increasing the hourly pay of private sector construction workers with a law that would give them a $32.35 per hour minimum wage and a $7.65 per hour healthcare credit. Under their proposal, the council would need to authorize a study of the idea first.

— AUTOMATIC APPROVAL: One of Mayor Karen Bass’ appointees on the Board of Police Commissioners has secured another term, but not because he was approved by the City Council. The mayor’s reappointment of Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent turned top USC security official, showed up on several council agendas. But the council, facing protesters at several meetings, never actually acted, allowing Southers’ approval to become automatic.

— FAREWELL, ZACH! Bass is losing her top press deputy. Deputy Mayor Zach Seidl has taken a job as managing director of Click Strategies, a political consulting firm based in L.A. run by former Newsom comms chief Nathan Click. Seidl, who departs Oct. 17, has been an aide to Bass over the last decade, working for her in the U.S. Congress, on the campaign trail and inside City Hall. Bass has named Samuel Jean, a communications strategist, as her interim communications director.

(Fun fact: Back in December, Seidl helped Click pull off his marriage proposal to his now-fiance and Seidl’s then-colleague, former Bass deputy mayor Joey Freeman, on the observation deck of City Hall.)

— RESISTING THE RVS: A proposed RV park in L.A.’s Harbor City neighborhood has been met with fierce opposition from local residents, spurring a lengthy battle inside and outside City Hall.

— FINDING THE BEDS: A new tracking system at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority was supposed to modernize an antiquated process for filling beds inside L.A. County’s homeless shelters, ensuring that more people get off the streets. But the nonprofits who run the shelters say the data produced by the system are often inaccurate.

— POLICE BLOTTER: LAPD officers apprehended a man on Friday who drove a car onto the Spring Street steps of City Hall and wouldn’t come out of his vehicle for about two hours.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness did not launch any new encampment operations this week.
• On the docket next week: The City Council votes Tuesday on whether to finalize a big increase in trash fees for single-family homes and small apartments. Meetings will be canceled on Wednesday and Friday so members can attend the annual League of California Cities conference.

Stay in touch

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