Everyone wants to talk about who the next mayor is. Today, we’re talking about what they’ll actually be able to do — because the council itself might be about to double in size. This is LA Mayor 2026. Today: council expansion — 15 seats versus 25 — and an APA housing forum that just turned into a real accountability test. Let’s get into how the pieces fit. And whether a bigger council makes upzoning easier — or just gives you ten more vetoes to negotiate around. Start there, Sarah. Tap follow so the next episode finds you. Okay, so there’s chatter about expanding the City Council from 15 seats to 25 — but why would someone voting for mayor next year actually care about that? I get the instinct to call this inside baseball, but council size really does set the limits on what a mayor can get done. LA has 15 council districts for roughly four million people — one of the lowest representation ratios of any major American city. So each member has a huge amount of turf, and a huge amount of leverage over land-use decisions. LAist reported in February that a commission recommendation would expand the council to 25 seats and pair that with ranked-choice voting. The mayoral connection is pretty direct: housing and homelessness policy in L.A. needs council votes, and individual councilmembers have historically used near-veto power over projects in their own districts to slow or kill new housing. Per LAist’s May reporting, the mayoral candidates are already drawing sharp contrasts on housing strategy — but those strategies only matter if a mayor can move a council majority. And in June, the current council voted to put a charter-change package on the November ballot, including a measure altering how the council can set policy at LAPD. So, heading into 2026, the structure of city government is genuinely in flux. So if the council gets bigger, does that actually make it easier for a mayor to build a coalition, or does it just mean more individual members to negotiate with? Right — more seats could dilute any one member’s blocking power on housing, but the next mayor would also have more votes to line up from day one. So watch whether the candidates take a position on the charter reform package. If someone wins without a clear plan for working a reconfigured council, their housing and homelessness agenda could stall just as fast as before. From APA Los Angeles:
The mayoral race in the City of Los Angeles in 2022 presents an important change in leadership that will impact the number one issue that voters want addressed: our homelessness and affordable housing crisis. This issue is at the top of mind for a majority of Angelenos, and we want to see our local government act like it’s our most pressing crisis.
So, that APA forum framing — “How Will LA’s Next Mayor Shape Affordable Housing and Homelessness Policies?” — that headline was written for the 2022 race. And it’s still sitting there in 2026: same question, same room of housers. Which tells you something. The planning community’s ask hasn’t changed because the answer never landed. Right, and here’s what gets me — the people in that room are reading the same FY budget I am. If a forum built around affordable housing doesn’t produce a deed-restricted unit number from either candidate, that silence is the data point now. I’m done waiting for the number to surface — the absence is the story. And it connects right back to the council piece we just hit. You can stand in a room full of housers and promise everything, but you’ve still got to move it through fifteen districts built to protect their own turf. A forum answer doesn’t survive contact with that council. Got thoughts on the race, a story idea we should chase, or a correction we need to make? Send us a note at lamayor2026 at lantern podcasts dot com. Thanks for helping us keep this coverage useful and accurate.
We’ll be watching that November charter-reform ballot package, especially whether the mayoral candidates take clear positions on council expansion and LAPD policymaking authority.
As always, you’ll find links to every story we mentioned in the show notes — open them if you want to dig into the details for yourself. That’s LA Mayor 2026 for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.