Debs was born in Toledo, Ohio, on February 7, 1904, and came to California in a box car when he was 20 to work in the motion picture industry as a dancer.

[2] Debs married Lorene Marsh Robertson of Placerville, California, in 1944; they had two adopted children, David and Catherine Clare.

[8] In 1947 he ran for the District 13 seat in an area that extended westward to Vermont Avenue and south to Valley Boulevard;[11] he beat incumbent John R. Roden in the runoff vote.

After an explosion at the controversial city incinerator at Avenue 21 and Lacy Street, Debs pushed through a resolution calling for an investigation into the circumstances of letting the contract.

Debs was in the forefront of a City Council move against J. Paul de River, the only Los Angeles Police Department psychiatrist at the time, whose activities during the Black Dahlia murder case were said to have resulted in the arrest of two men later released for lack of evidence.

[13][14] He criticized de River for having written a "luridly illustrated" book on criminal sex cases, using Police Department files as source material.

[citation needed] During the 1960s, Debs was an implacable foe of the youth counterculture movement centered on the county-administered Sunset Strip.

With the cancellation of both freeway projects and competition from the nearby and newly built Century City as a premium office market, Debs' plans for the Strip were only partly realized.