I’m Henry Mantel, a Tenants’ Rights Attorney, Park La Brea resident, and former Mid-City West Neighborhood Councilmember. I was raised here in Los Angeles and even though I’ve lived in several other cities in my life, I’ve always come back to LA. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to build a brighter future through legal advocacy, non-profit work, and campaigning. Now I’m running for Los Angeles City Council District 5 to solve LA’s housing crisis for good.
CD5 has been my home for most of my life. When my family first moved out here from New York City in 1994, I lived in Hancock Park and attended 3rd Street Elementary School and John Burroughs Middle School before transferring to Harvard-Westlake in 7th Grade. I was Bar Mitzvahed and confirmed at Wilshire Boulevard Temple and went to Brandeis University after graduating high school in 2010. While at Brandeis, I studied abroad in Kyoto, Japan and took my first steps into politics as a field organizer for a Democrat running for Congress outside of Boston.
After graduating from Brandeis in 2014, I came back to LA and did non-profit work for groups like United Way of Greater LA and joined Carolyn Ramsay’s campaign for City Council. In 2016, I started law school at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, where I concentrated on studying government and public policy, even lobbying for a bill in the state legislature through McGeorge’s Public Policy Clinic. I moved back to LA after graduating and now live in Park La Brea, where I serve on the Residents’ Association and enjoy how walkable and diverse the community is.
After becoming an attorney in 2020, I joined Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County as an Eviction Defense Attorney, defending tenants from evictions. Doing eviction defense gave me a hard look at just how terrible the housing crisis is, how easy it was for people to end up homeless through no fault of their own, and how difficult it is for our most vulnerable neighbors to get the help they need. It also showed me just how much working people were struggling to make the rent or suffering in uninhabitable housing due to abusive landlords. In 2023, I joined the Mid-City West Neighborhood Council to try to do more to help my community grow and thrive.
Now it’s 2025, I work for a private firm suing landlords for slum housing conditions, and the housing crisis has only gotten worse. There are so many tenants stuck in toxic or infested homes that haven’t been renovated in decades because our city government has intentionally limited housing production. This housing crisis has done so much harm while robbing generations of opportunities for stability and growth. Young people are moving out and Hollywood is going with them. Things need to change.
I’m running for City Council because I want to solve the housing crisis for good. I want to see LA grow up into a city brighter than any on Earth. I want LA to be a vibrant hub of business and culture where everyone’s needs are met. I want the air to be as clean as it is the day after it rains, every day. And I want our government to actually solve systemic problems instead of protecting this intolerable status quo of stagnation.
The primary is June 2, 2026. Between now and then, I hope I can earn your vote.
Henry Mantel for City Council 