The Budget and Finance Committee quietly rejected a key piece of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s request for more outside counsel funding last Tuesday, voting to remove the line item tied to the ongoing fight against the Venice Dell affordable housing project. While the committee approved the remainder of the $12 million request, members confirmed in closed session that “item six” had been deleted, effectively denying additional funding for the City Attorney’s efforts to continue litigating against a project the City itself approved.

The motion moved quickly. After roll call, Budget Chair Katy Yaroslavsky recommended adopting the package with the amendment discussed behind closed doors. The clerk called the vote. Yaroslavsky, Bob Blumenfield, Heather Hutt, Tim McOsker, and Eunisses Hernandez all voted yes on the amended version, making the denial unanimous.

What was not said aloud was just as important. Item six is widely understood to be the request for an extra $850,000 to fight Venice Dell, on top of the more than $600,000 already spent. The City Attorney has been locked in a costly and increasingly untenable battle with the developers, even as courts have repeatedly ruled against the City’s arguments. The request sparked public backlash in recent weeks from residents, housing advocates, and fiscal watchdogs who questioned why the City was pouring scarce money into blocking deeply affordable and supportive housing during an ongoing homelessness and budget crisis.

Hundreds of constituents wrote to City Councilmembers demanding they invest in “solutions that bring stability, affordability, and inclusion to our neighborhoods instead of diverting scarce resources to fight against them.” Opposition messages also overwhelmed the council file in the lead-up to the hearing. Many pointed out that continued litigation puts Los Angeles’ Prohousing status at risk and could expose the City to more than $10 million in damages if courts rule that officials improperly obstructed an approved project. Others noted the contradiction at the heart of the City Attorney’s strategy: the office is suing the nonprofit developers for failing to build the very project the City has been trying to stop.

The committee’s decision to strip the funding suggests a shift in political will. Members appear less inclined to accept open-ended legal spending on a case with diminishing returns, and more sensitive to the public frustration over misaligned priorities. The move also undercuts claims from opponents of Venice Dell that there is broad support for continuing the legal fight. A well-funded NIMBY group calling itself Safe Coastal Development had urged its supporters to pressure the committee to keep the litigation alive, repeating familiar accusations about “gifts of public land” while overlooking the City’s own approvals and the project’s purpose.

For now, the Budget and Finance Committee has drawn a boundary. Without this additional allocation, the City Attorney will have to rethink the strategy to halt Venice Dell or return to Council with a new request. The full City Council will still take up the broader funding package on December 5, but the signal from the committee is clear. In a year of painful budget cuts and spiraling need, pouring more money into stopping affordable housing is becoming politically difficult to defend.