After years of obstruction, delay, and spin, Traci Park finally got called out publicly and directly over Venice Dell. And this time, it came from someone with the authority and the receipts to shut the whole routine down.
In a blunt series of posts this week, LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath dismantled Park’s latest talking point on Venice Dell, accusing her of sweeping people out of CD11 while blocking housing and then pretending to be confused when the County steps in to fund what the City refuses to allow.
“Sweeping people out of your district instead of building housing is not a solution,” Horvath wrote, before laying out what Park has spent years trying to obscure.
Park’s claim was familiar. She accused the County of cutting homeless services while “dumping” money into a defunct project tied to shady operators. It sounded ominous. It was also false.
First, Horvath shut down the smear. The nonprofits behind Venice Dell are not affiliated with Weingart. They never were. Lumping a legitimate affordable housing project in with unrelated corruption scandals is not oversight or concern. It is a bad faith attack on community partners who have spent nearly a decade complying with City demands, redesigning plans, and surviving lawsuits that Park’s political allies cheered on.
Second, Horvath took on the budget narrative Park likes to weaponize. Yes, the County faces real shortfalls due to expiring federal funds and broader fiscal pressure. But the County’s response has been to stretch dollars toward proven housing solutions. The City’s response, under Park’s leadership in CD11, has been to burn more than a million dollars fighting a project that was already approved.
Park complains about cuts while defending a City strategy that prioritized litigation and obstruction over housing. She does not get to play both sides of that equation.
Third, and most damaging for Park, Horvath called out the lie at the center of her tweet. Venice Dell is not defunct. The state committed more than $43 million to the project last fall. That does not happen for dead projects. It happens for projects that meet housing obligations and are being unlawfully stalled by local officials.
The reason Venice Dell has not moved forward is not funding. It is not legality. It is the City’s decision to backtrack after years of approvals. That reversal is exactly why state officials have warned Los Angeles that it could lose zoning control and housing funding under the builder’s remedy if it continues to sabotage approved projects.
In other words, Park’s obstruction is now putting the entire city at risk.
Horvath made the contrast explicit. The City can keep fighting housing. The County will keep funding it.
This was not an abstract policy disagreement. It was a public rejection of Park’s preferred strategy of quietly killing housing through process while blaming everyone else when the consequences show up on the street.
Venice Dell has been delayed for nearly a decade despite multiple City Council approvals, a green light from the Coastal Commission, and the collapse of every lawsuit brought against it. Even the Los Angeles Times editorial board called the City’s conduct disgraceful, singling out Park as a longtime detractor who actively worked to stop one of the only significant supportive housing projects on the Westside.
That history matters because Park is now pretending the project simply withered on its own.
It did not.
City departments changed requirements midstream. Coordination was frozen for months. Last minute objections were manufactured after years of compliance. And when the Board of Transportation Commissioners was rushed into a last minute vote to reject housing on city owned land, it was not an accident or a technical judgment. It was the final procedural move in a coordinated effort by the Mayor’s office and Traci Park to kill the project after it had already cleared every major approval. That is why Venice Dell is stalled at that site.
Park’s tweet was an attempt to rewrite that record. Horvath’s response was a refusal to let her. This is what accountability looks like when someone finally says the quiet part out loud. Venice Dell is alive, funded, and desperately needed. And the only thing standing in the way is a City Councilmember who would rather sweep people out of her district than allow housing to be built in it.
