Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto is once again stepping in to support CD11 Councilmember Traci Park’s effort to derail the Venice Dell affordable housing project. Last week, she submitted a 196-page report attached to Park’s Lot 701 motion that revisits years of litigation and administrative disputes previously resolved in favor of the project, reintroducing those arguments in an effort to cast doubt on the development’s viability.
Before examining the report itself, it is important to understand who initiated the litigation surrounding Venice Dell. The long-running dispute did not arise from neutral oversight. It stemmed from lawsuits brought by organized neighborhood groups seeking to block housing on Lot 731. Originally operating as Venice Vision and Fight Back Venice, these opponents later rebranded as the Coalition for Safe Coastal Development (CSCD), which became the formal vehicle for suing the City.
Several individuals connected to those groups also have direct ties to Councilmember Park. Prominent Park donor Christian Wrede co-founded Fight Back Venice, while CSCD President Seth Lichtenstein and CSCD Directors Charles and Karen Rosin are also significant campaign donors. Lichtenstein’s contributions were later subject to an LA City Ethics inquiry involving campaign finance violation by Park.
Since Park and Feldstein Soto entered office in 2022, the political and legal posture surrounding the project has shifted. The same neighborhood networks that organized opposition and litigation from the outside helped shape the arguments now being raised from within City Hall. Rather than continuing to defend an approved City project against those claims, City leadership has increasingly echoed them. What began as a dispute between the City and outside opponents has effectively become a situation where those opposition arguments are now being advanced by the City itself — a reversal that helps explain the timing of a lengthy report revisiting settled issues as the project moves closer to construction.
The report arrives as Park moves to shift affordable housing away from Lot 731, the approved Venice Dell site, and toward nearby Lot 701, even though Venice Dell continues to secure funding, win in court, and move forward. The Lot 701 motion does not present a realistic plan to build housing. It would stop the current project and require any replacement to start over from the beginning with new approvals, financing, and studies. By releasing the report alongside that motion, the City Attorney’s analysis reinforces an effort to stall Venice Dell rather than move affordable housing into production.
Substantively, the report focuses on familiar themes: appraisal differences, rising development costs, financing complexity, and a side agreement related to project budgeting. These points are framed as explanations for delays. However, most of these issues were previously examined through litigation, agency review, and the City’s own defense of the project. When these claims were first raised, the City successfully defended Venice Dell against lawsuits alleging coastal conflicts, parking displacement, and improper use of public land. Courts rejected those challenges.
A central example is the report’s treatment of the Disposition and Development Agreement between the City and the nonprofit development team. Feldstein Soto repeatedly treats the DDA as though it represented a completed transfer of property, raising concerns about valuation and procedural requirements that typically apply when land is actually transferred. In reality, the DDA functions as a framework governing how development would proceed if certain conditions are met and does not itself transfer any property interest. During litigation, the City and developers successfully argued that any transfer would happen later through a ground lease and that many objections were premature for that reason. The court agreed and allowed the agreement to stand.
The report also revisits issues the City Attorney’s office already litigated alongside the developers. In that case, the City argued the project was properly approved and that appraisal timing and related procedural claims didn’t invalidate the DDA. The judge agreed. So the report’s suggestion that City Council may have been misled in 2022 isn’t a newly uncovered issue. It mirrors arguments that were already raised and rejected in court. What has changed is not the legal record but the City’s posture toward it.
The report further weighs in on project financing and feasibility, areas that typically fall outside the City Attorney’s role. It portrays evolving costs and layered funding as indicators of instability, even though such adjustments are routine in supportive housing development. Feasibility determinations are made by housing finance professionals and the agencies responsible for underwriting projects. Venice Dell has undergone review and received funding commitments from City and County housing departments, state programs, and HACLA. Characterizing routine financing evolution as evidence of failure effectively second-guesses determinations already made through specialized housing review and echoes critiques previously raised by project opponents.
A similar dynamic appears in the report’s appraisal discussion. Differences in valuation are common when publicly owned land is used for long-term public benefit rather than sold on the open market. In these cases, the central question is not maximizing sale price but whether the public benefit — here, deeply affordable housing — justifies the use of the land. City law expressly permits below-market conveyance for affordable housing, and the Los Angeles Housing Department is responsible for those determinations. Framing appraisal variation as a legal defect reframes a policy decision as a procedural problem and mirrors themes advanced in earlier CSCD litigation.
Notably, the report does not identify legal violations or recommend enforcement action. Instead, it compiles a retrospective narrative of project complications without proposing corrective measures. The practical effect is to revive arguments that outside litigants were unable to prevail on when the City defended the project.
The broader pattern is difficult to ignore. Over the past several years, the City Attorney’s office has supported continued litigation against Venice Dell, sought funding to sustain those challenges, and played a central role in defending delays even as the project secured approvals and financing. Seen in that context, the 196-page report appears less as new oversight and more as a continuation of an ongoing strategy aligned with efforts to halt the project.