Meet the Council District 5 candidates
Meet your CD5 candidates.
With term limits ending the tenure of current representative Paul Koretz (now running to be the next City Controller), his seat around the City Council horseshoe table in the John Ferraro Council Chamber is “open.” Also, portions of our community that recently were part of CD4 (some for 70-plus years) now are the eastern edge of the new CD5. This includes the neighborhoods west of Western Avenue between Wilshire and Olympic boulevards and everything west of Rossmore Avenue between Olympic Boulevard and Melrose Avenue.
Meet the four candidates on the June ballot for CD5, in their own words.
Jimmy Biblarz
Jimmy Biblarz
Born and raised in West Los Angeles, Jimmy is an educator, policy expert, and housing advocate. Shaped by his own experience with housing insecurity and eviction, Jimmy centers empathy and compassion in his approach to the homelessness and housing crisis. He is running for Los Angeles City Council District Five to get to the heart of these issues — no more short-term fixes for lasting problems. His top priorities when elected are working to build a more inclusive and rational housing system, methodically tackling our homelessness crisis with investments in housing, long-term mental health care, and substance use services, and reimagining several Westside streets to make them more walkable, environmentally sustainable, and safe and enjoyable to live and work on.
Jimmy was at Harvard for college, graduate school, and law school. There, he was a National Science Foundation Fellow and an inaugural Stone Fellow, a set of social science graduate students and professors dedicated to studying the rise of income and wealth inequality. While at Harvard, Jimmy worked at the LA Public Defender’s Office, Protect Democracy, and on the Biden voter protection team. Inspired by the progressive wins in Los Angeles in 2020, Jimmy decided to take on the fight himself.
Like much of his district, Jimmy is a renter, union-member (UC-AFT), and proud member of the LGBTQ+ community. He lives with his partner Harry, in Beverly Grove. He works as a faculty member at UCLA Law School and is a K-12 LAUSD alum, all schools in the district. If elected, he would be the youngest member of the LA City Council, and the first LGBTQ+ member to represent District 5.
Scott Epstein
Scott Epstein
Scott Epstein is a public policy professional and seasoned community leader who served as the chair of the Mid City West Neighborhood Council from 2014 to 2021. Under Scott’s leadership, the council brought millions of dollars into the community for traffic calming, revitalized public spaces, and recruited hundreds of volunteers to assist in efforts related to homelessness, transportation, urban greening and racial justice.
Scott is also the Founder of the Midtown LA Homeless Coalition, a nonprofit that connects people experiencing homelessness with basic needs, services, and housing.
Scott serves as an elected delegate to the California Democratic Party and a board member of the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance.
Scott is running for city council to make LA work for all of us, and will bring leadership to city hall that is grounded in community, guided by compassion, and focused on results.
Scott’s top priorities would be addressing homelessness, building an affordable city, supporting small businesses, reimagining public safety, reforming city hall to root out corruption, and tackling our climate crisis.
Scott is running to take bold action on these issues and has the skills in policy analysis, community engagement, and coalition-building to get the job done.
Katy Yaroslavsky
Katy Yaroslavsky
Katy is an experienced environmental attorney, policy maker, and mom to three young kids. She’s running to make our neighborhoods healthier and safer, and our city an easier place to live.
Katy was born and raised in LA, attended entirely public schools, including UC Berkeley and UCLA Law School. She served as the general counsel of a climate change non-profit, and most recently, she’s enacted policies and created programs on behalf of LA County’s 10 million people as a senior policy advisor to LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, where she created LA County’s first sustainability office and led the development and negotiation of 2018’s Measure W, which is making LA more climate resilient through building new parks and stormwater infrastructure, while creating thousands of good-paying local union jobs.
Katy understands that the biggest issues we’re facing — homelessness and poverty, public health and safety, environmental sustainability, and our economy — are intersectional and regional and will require collaborative, proven leadership, working in partnership with community and the private sector, to solve.
Endorsers include Congresswoman Bass; State Senators Kamlager and Allen; LA County Supervisor Kuehl; the LA County Federation of Labor; Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, and hundreds of community members.
Sam Yebri
Sam Yebri
Sam Yebri is a longtime community and non-profit leader, attorney, small business owner, immigrant, and husband and father of four young children who will fight tirelessly for the residents of the 5th District of the City of Los Angeles by tackling our homelessness crisis with urgency and compassion, prioritizing public safety, and ensuring we have the world-class city services we deserve.
His journey towards public service began when he was a year old, when he and his parents arrived in Los Angeles as refugees from Iran. After attending public schools in the 5th District, Sam went on to earn degrees from Yale and USC Law School and returned home to build a successful law firm in Century City, where he has used his expertise to advise startups and small businesses and litigate on behalf of workers.
Committed to public service and championing the promise of Los Angeles, Sam formerly served as a Commissioner on the Los Angeles Civil Service Commission and as a member of the City Attorney’s Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and currently serves as a board member of the Friends of Westwood Library. He has also served on numerous non-profit boards, including Bet Tzedek Legal Services, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Community Foundation, and ETTA, which provides services and housing for developmentally disabled adults, and engaged thousands of immigrants and first-generation Americans in civic life by co-founding 30 Years After in 2007.
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