"Nithya Raman Shrugged Before Dead Bodies Piled Up" by Daniel Guss

Didn't I write about this last week?

Daniel Guss - @TheGussReport

- For the few years she has been on LA City Council, Nithya Raman continually ignored pleas from her constituents about menacing and violent attacks by a few members of the local homeless population in a one-block area in Sherman Oaks. As I wrote last week, her consistent response was disdain for the victims rather than their attackers.

Shrugging at the danger and disease worked fine for Raman, who merrily ignored similar pleas at City Hall meetings, where she was often seen mask-less, laughing and chatting with colleagues and aides, rather than paying focused, if any, attention.

But in short order, danger and disease were joined by the deaths of homeless people on that very same block.

Not once, a few days ago, at Van Nuys and Ventura Boulevards…

Photo credit: @WhirlyGirl1200 on Twitter.

Not twice, like this one, yesterday on January 18th, a single block north at Van Nuys Boulevard and Moorpark Street…

Photo: Daniel Guss of The Guss Report.

But three times in the last week alone, on the very same block about which I wrote on January 12th, including another who died across the street by the AT&T store, according to the LAPD and local business owners.

Had Raman, who chairs LA City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, acted at any point beforehand, she might have saved some of those lives with the plentiful resources, and endless promises, at her disposal.

¡Qué lástima, Nithya Raman!

In fact, death happened here so often in the past week that the LAPD at first dubiously claimed it had no record of any of them, until shown photos with time-stamped metadata of their personnel on the scene as they waited for county morgue personnel to arrive.

For more than a year, I repeatedly sent questions about this area to Raman, her chief of staff and media relations person, to no avail. It wasn’t until the third death, yesterday, that I even got a response. But instead of directly addressing my questions, they only sent a predictably vapid and vacuous statement.

That’s an accountability dodge that may work with the LA Times, but not here.

Raman waiting until three deaths to respond is like asking how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll lollipop? By the time you find out, it’s pointless.

But here in Sherman Oaks, it takes three. Three deaths to get a response from Nithya Raman that doesn’t answer any of the posed questions, doesn’t remedy any of the ongoing problems and doesn’t save any of the lives.

Seriously, Nithya.

What now?

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(Daniel Guss, MBA, was nominated for three 2022 LA Press Club awards and was a runner-up in 2021 and 2020. He is City Editor for Mayor Sam, and has been a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)