Meet Hugo Soto-Martinez, Candidate For Los Angeles City Council District 13

LOS ANGELES, CA — Hugo Soto-Martínez, 43, is vying to be reelected to the Los Angeles City Council, representing District 13.

In the June 2 primary, incumbent Soto-Martínez will face three challengers: Dylan Kendall, Rich Sarian and Colter Carlisle.

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Learn more about Soto-Martínez's goals for Los Angeles:

What is your educational background?

I earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology and political science from UC Irvine.

What is your professional background?

I spent 16 years as a union organizer with UNITE HERE Local 11, helping workers win better wages, healthcare, and protections. This experience taught me negotiation, coalition-building, and how to deliver concrete results.

Have you ever held public office, whether appointive or elective?

Los Angeles City Council, District 13

What are the top three issues facing Los Angeles right now?

Improving city services — Working streetlights, safe and reliable transit options, consistent trash pickup.

Housing affordability — As the only renter on City Council, we lowered rent hikes for the majority of rental units in LA for the first time in 40 years.

Protecting immigrant families — Block-by-block rapid response networks to respond to federal attacks.

What is one specific policy you would advocate for or introduce as a City Council member in your first year?

I would expand policies to aggressively enforce anti–wage theft laws, including empowering the city to enforce wage theft laws that are currently only enforceable by the state government.

Wage theft costs workers in Los Angeles over $1 billion every year, making our city the wage theft capital of the United States. That’s money taken directly out of the pockets of working families.

On City Council, I’ve already worked to strengthen enforcement, and in my first year I would build on that by expanding proactive investigations and ensuring workers have the tools and support to recover stolen wages.

No worker should be cheated out of a paycheck they’ve earned—and in Los Angeles, we need to lead the way in making sure that never happens.

What specific actions should the City Council take to address homelessness, and how would you evaluate whether those efforts are working?

To address homelessness, the City Council should focus on three things: building more affordable housing, preventing people from losing their homes, and expanding care-based outreach.

First, we need to significantly increase the production of deeply affordable housing so people can move off the streets and into stable, permanent homes.

Second, we have to prevent homelessness by strengthening tenant protections, fully funding legal support for renters facing eviction, and investing in proactive outreach to help families stay housed before they fall into crisis.

Third, we should replace ineffective sweeps and punitive approaches with care-based solutions — expanding mental health services and sending trained, unarmed responders to connect people with the help they need.

We should measure success by real outcomes: fewer people becoming homeless, more people moving into permanent housing, and more people staying housed long-term. In our district, proactive tenant outreach has already kept hundreds of families from losing their homes — showing that prevention works.

What is one specific change you would support through the City Council to improve public safety in your district or citywide?

I would expand Los Angeles’ Unarmed Model of Crisis Response citywide so that trained clinicians and social workers — not armed officers — respond to nonviolent 911 calls.

Public safety should focus on prevention, care, and accountability. This program does exactly that by sending the right responders to situations involving mental health crises, homelessness, and other nonviolent needs.

It’s already working: tens of thousands of calls have been diverted from LAPD and LAFD, with 96% resolved without police involvement. Expanding it will keep residents safer, free up officers to focus on serious crime, and deliver faster, more appropriate care.

When someone calls 911, they deserve the response that best meets the situation — not a one-size-fits-all approach.

How should the City Council balance housing development, neighborhood concerns, and state housing mandates in Los Angeles?

We need to build more housing — especially affordable housing — while making sure people aren’t pushed out of the communities they’ve built.

That means using public land, speeding up approvals, and investing local dollars to get housing built — without politicians blocking projects. And those jobs should be good union jobs.

At the same time, we have to protect tenants. Stronger rent protections, eviction defense, and real anti-displacement policies are essential so new development doesn’t come at the expense of working-class communities.

We can meet state housing requirements and address the crisis — but only if we build housing and protect people at the same time.

Why are you a better choice than your opponents?

I’ve lived the struggles working families face — and I’ve spent my life organizing to change them.

I was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, the son of immigrant street vendors. When my dad became disabled, it was my mom’s union job as a janitor at LAX that gave our family stability. That experience shaped my belief that having a job with good wages and healthcare could be transformative to many families.

I became the first in my family to graduate college, but instead of pursuing law school, I joined my co-workers in organizing our workplace. We won, and that victory set the course of my life.

For over 16 years, I organized alongside workers across Los Angeles — fighting for better wages, affordable housing, and immigrant rights. In 2022, I took on an incumbent and won by building a grassroots movement rooted in those same values.

On the City Council, I’ve delivered on that commitment: expanding housing, protecting tenants, cracking down on wage theft, and strengthening labor standards.

What sets me apart is not just where I come from, but what I’ve done — I’ve built power with working people, and I’ve delivered results. That’s the leadership I’ll continue to bring.