Meet Faizah Malik, Candidate For Los Angeles City Council District 11

LOS ANGELES, CA — Faizah Malik, 41, is vying to be elected to the Los Angeles City Council, representing District 11.

In the June 2 primary, incumbent Councilwoman Traci Park will face one challenger: Malik.

Learn more about Malik's goals for Los Angeles:

What is your educational background?

I grew up attending public schools in Orange County and then attended Brown University, followed by law school at the University of Michigan.

What is your professional background?

For the past eight years I have worked at Public Counsel, where I am the managing attorney of housing justice initiatives. There I defended LA's eviction protections, ensured that tenants received rent relief and represented the Bruce family in the return of Bruce’s Beach.

After law school I worked as a public interest attorney with community organizations and spent three years working for the New York City Council, writing laws and advising councilmembers on transportation and housing policy.

Have you ever held public office, whether appointive or elective?

No

What are the top three issues facing Los Angeles right now?

First and foremost, our district is dealing with an affordability crisis, and everything that comes with it, including housing affordability and availability and homelessness.

Another major issue is the underfunding of our infrastructure and basic services for residents which is a problem on its own, but is also impacting the massive disaster recovery and rebuilding project we must attend to in the Pacific Palisades.

Finally, our government is not transparent or accountable to everyday Angelenos, and it has to be in order to build trust and deliver on the long term solutions we need so that we can build a beautiful future for the next generation.

What is one specific policy you would advocate for or introduce as a City Council member in your first year?

Too many people do not trust or are misinformed about our affordable housing system. People don’t know who owns or manages our affordable housing,where it is located or how to access it.

One policy that I would advocate for as councilmember is the creation of a single database to track all the covenanted affordable housing units in the City which will provide transparency to the public.

New York City already has a portal like this, which allows residents to easily find and apply for affordable rental and homeownership opportunities. There is no reason why Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the country, can’t have the same system.

I will also explore pairing a streamlined application portal with a community preference policy for neighborhoods facing high displacement pressure.

What specific actions should the City Council take to address homelessness, and how would you evaluate whether those efforts are working?

To meaningfully address homelessness we have to get people housed and keep people housed, which means we must protect tenants and also make serious strides in housing affordability.

I encourage people to review my detailed policies on both of these issues on our campaign website.

The main driver of homelessness is the outrageous cost of housing in our city. If we were able to prevent all people from falling into homelessness in Los Angeles, and our homelessness system continued to house people at its current rate, we would be on track to end homelessness in LA in less than five years.

I will fight for strong rent stabilization and tenant protections and I will work to open more shelters in our district and build more of the types of housing that people need to successfully transition out of homelessness.

To address housing affordability, we need to focus on both preserving existing affordable housing and building a lot more housing that people can actually afford.

I will immediately unlock housing production when in office, this includes the Venice Dell project which has been repeatedly stalled at great cost to the taxpayers.

I will also advocate for zoning and land use policies that increase housing opportunities for all income levels. I will fight to streamline more housing development and to prioritize the preservation of existing affordable housing in CD11 to prevent the displacement of communities in the district.

What is one specific change you would support through the City Council to improve public safety in your district or citywide?

Despite low crime rates and spending 46% of our discretionary budget on policing, residents report that they don’t feel like their communities are safe. Policing on its own doesn’t create real public safety. Safe streets, robust and well maintained infrastructure, programs for youth, adults and seniors are great examples of public investments that increase community safety, and these are also all areas that have been underfunded in our recent city budgets.

As councilmember I will commit to a strategic framework for public safety that includes upstream harm prevention, community violence intervention, and support services for survivors. Upstream harm prevention means housing, economic and food security, quality jobs, healthy built environments, youth development programs, and quality education. Community violence intervention includes gang intervention, mentoring, trusted messengers, and wraparound services.

I will also continue to build out our unarmed community safety workforce through programs like CIRCLE (Crisis and Incident Response through Community-led Engagement) and UMCR (Unarmed Model of Crisis Response), which divert non-urgent calls and resolve most incidents without police involvement.

Investing in programs that allow our sworn police officers to focus on the most violent crimes will improve the efficiency of our response systems and ensure that people in crisis are receiving the specific kinds of support that they need.

How should the City Council balance housing development, neighborhood concerns, and state housing mandates in Los Angeles?

Each councilmember should work to meet the housing needs of their district, but right now CD11 has not built enough housing in comparison to every other district. Our city and our state are in a housing crisis and to solve it, every district in LA needs to build sufficient housing.

The extremely high cost of housing is the biggest driver of homelessness, so we must bring housing costs down by protecting our existing stock of affordable housing and building housing that residents can actually afford. We can use Regional Housing Needs Allocation guidelines to inform our plans to increase housing supply in CD11.

As councilmember, my goal will be to make sure that the development that we desperately need is done responsibly and with input from residents. That includes advocating to make sure state mandates work for community members. Transparency and accountability are top priorities for me.

Too often we have seen City Hall work for the wealthy and well-connected rather than for every resident, frequently with disastrous consequences. I will hold rotating town hall meetings so that residents have an opportunity to bring their concerns to my attention directly, and I will work closely with neighborhood councils and community organizations to ensure no corner of CD11 is overlooked.

I will also create public programming around civic education, digital literacy and civil rights to provide constituents with the opportunity to learn more about our government and how to get involved.

Why are you a better choice than your opponents?

My opponent opposed sanctuary city policies, voted against tenant protections, and has repeatedly blocked affordable housing from being built, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. These are not democratic values or the values of our district. But they are the values that I have spent my entire career fighting for as a public interest attorney, which is why I have been endorsed by more organizations than my opponent, including 15 Democratic Clubs, the LA County Federation of Labor, the California Women's List and the Sierra Club. I also have the support of our City Controller Kenneth Mejia and legendary activist Dolores Huerta.

Unlike my opponent, I am not taking donations from corporations, the real estate industry, the fossil fuel industry or any lobbyists. I am proud that my campaign is funded by everyday people. The majority of donations to our campaign are under $100, while my opponent has an average donation of over $500. Many of her major donors have funded the campaigns of Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians, and I think it’s worthwhile for voters to consider why those people would also want to support my opponent in this election.

My opponent is kicking the can down the road on homelessness and climate change with the same shortcuts that we know don’t work in the long run. We cannot leave these issues for the next generation. Our district deserves a brave leader who will fight for a better future for our kids, and I am ready to be that leader.