Housing for All

Housing in Los Angeles has become so expensive that it’s now out of reach for far too many Angelenos. Our affordability and homelessness crises continue to deepen: low-income homeowners are struggling to hold on, and a majority of renters are rent-burdened. Too many people are forced to choose between paying rent, buying groceries, and getting essential healthcare. Rather than relying on short-term fixes, we need smart, long-term, structural solutions that address the root causes of LA’s housing crisis.

As Mayor, Rae will prioritize keeping families housed today while building the foundation for a city where everyone has a stable home in the future. She will address the urgent need to house people who are already unhoused, keep people in their homes, and advance the long-term goal of preventing homelessness before it begins. She will strengthen tenant protections, expand rental assistance, and support legal aid for tenants facing eviction, while also investing in rapid rehousing and supportive services for residents without a home. Rae will fight poverty, not the poor, replacing the city’s broken shelter system and harmful encampment sweeps with a strong Housing First approach rooted in dignity and results.

She will fast-track deeply affordable housing and use public land to build social housing—democratically governed, permanently affordable homes that serve people across incomes, not investors. She will also expand pathways to homeownership and ensure new housing is sustainable and close to jobs and transit. Rae will build workforce housing so essential workers, like teachers, nurses, and service workers, can live near where they work. Homes should belong to the people who live in them, not to hedge funds. Under Mayor Rae, neighborhoods will be built for neighbors, not speculation.

Fast and Free Buses

Los Angeles streets are not built to support fast, reliable transit, leaving the eight out of ten Angelenos who depend on buses for work, school, and daily errands stuck with slow, inefficient commutes. Some of our busiest routes are among the slowest in the nation, adding hours to people’s workdays, and undermining our climate goals. Fare discount programs for low-income riders are so confusing that most people don’t use them, while transportation costs have become the second-highest item in families’ budgets. What’s more, hundreds of families lose loved ones in preventable collisions every year on our streets.

As Mayor, Rae will make transit fast and free for everyone by eliminating fares across the system, saving families money and boosting ridership immediately. She will expand bus rapid transit, with dedicated lanes and speedy boarding, a proven solution that moves riders quickly while taming traffic. Rae will also connect our rail, bus, and bike networks into a truly seamless system so every Angeleno can reach any corner of Los Angeles safely and freely without driving. With tree-lined sidewalks, green spaces, protected bike routes, and safer intersections, Rae will build a Los Angeles where people—not traffic—come first, and every neighborhood is cleaner, healthier, and safer to call home.

An Economy for the People

Los Angeles is unaffordable, and wages aren’t keeping up. The cost of housing, groceries, and medicine keeps rising while paychecks stay the same. Renters now need to earn $50 an hour to afford the average apartment in LA—three times the city’s minimum wage. Homeowners are being squeezed by rising insurance and interest rates, making it harder to buy, rebuild, maintain, and stay in their homes. Small businesses are being pushed to the brink by high costs, steep rents, corporate competition, and economic instability. Meanwhile, corporate profits in California have soared by 43% over the past two decades, while workers’ earnings have barely moved. LA drives a quarter of California’s economy, yet too many Angelenos are being left behind. We must reject the idea that small businesses and workers are at odds, and instead invest in solutions that uplift workers and entrepreneurs together.

As Mayor, Rae will raise wages by increasing the minimum wage across sectors and strengthening workers’ rights to organize. She will fight wage theft and illegal union-busting, expand union jobs in city contracts, and partner with labor and city agencies to ensure safe, healthy workplaces. Rae will keep Los Angeles a strong union town.

To support small businesses, Rae will launch the city’s first nonprofit public bank—keeping local dollars in local hands. The bank will invest in affordable housing, small businesses, and sustainable infrastructure. Rae will also help undocumented and low-income vendors sell their goods online and bring Hollywood back to LA with fair incentives and housing for entertainment workers. Rae will help entrepreneurs start new small businesses by removing barriers to capital, and help existing small businesses stay in business by strengthening commercial tenant protections and directing resources to our iconic commercial corridors.

Rae will move forward the work of the LA Reparations Advisory Commission, beginning with acknowledging past harms and advancing fair compensation and economic opportunity to close the racial wealth gap.

As Mayor, Rae will open the city’s books through a People’s Budget process—giving residents a real say in how their tax dollars are spent and transparency in the city budget.

REAL Safety

We know that real safety begins with people having their needs met, that is how we prevent crime from happening in the first place- we make sure people are fed, housed, can get mental health support, and live in a clean and healthy environment where they have the opportunity to thrive in communities that are well resourced. We know harm happens, but we address it with care first and utilize intervention models that are not punitive, carceral, or militarized and center repair. Most calls to 911 are non-violent in nature and are best handled by unarmed responders who are trained in de-escalation, crisis response, and conflict resolution. We will scale up these models that have been proven effective while saving the city money. This allows the LAPD to focus on serious crimes, while community-based professionals take on the work of care, healing, and prevention—building a safer Los Angeles for everyone.

As Mayor, Rae will build a care-first safety system that sends the right kind of help to the right kind of crisis under a new Department of Community Health and Safety. She will expand unarmed crisis response and community intervention teams, so behavioral health crises and neighborhood conflicts are met with trained professionals, not guns. She will invest in mental health programs and community healing spaces and expand neighborhood clinics and youth programs. She will increase support for domestic violence survivors, ensure safety on transit through trained ambassadors, and end the criminalization of poverty or houselessness.

Rae will ensure real accountability at the LAPD by upholding transparent misconduct standards and ending practices that conceal wrongdoing, helping save the city millions in avoidable liability costs. And she will make Los Angeles a true sanctuary city—cutting all ties with ICE and protecting immigrant families, workers, and vendors from detention and harassment.

True safety means care, accountability, and belonging—not fear.