He was a member of the Los Angeles City Council for 30 years, where he was known for his promotion of the arts, support of gay causes, advocacy of rent control and other economic measures.

The younger of two sons, Joel "suffered from hay fever so severe that at the height of the ragweed season, his parents sat him in the shop's cold storage room, in a fur coat, to help him breathe".

He told a reporter in 1991, "I didn't love practicing tax law ... the result of my efforts was finding ways to save rich people money.

[citation needed] In May 1971, Wachs, "a young political newcomer," "overwhelmed" veteran James B. Potter, Jr. in Los Angeles City Council District 2, which included portions of the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Fernando Valley.

[16] In 1986, a redistricting move stripped Wachs of more than 90% of his old district, and put him into a new one that ran from his home in Studio City to Sunland-Tujunga in the far northeast San Fernando Valley.

[9] He was nevertheless easily reelected in April 1987 in the realigned, more conservative district, despite the opposition of the Los Angeles Apartment Owners Association, which attacked him because of his fight for rent control.

In 1973, as a relatively unknown new city council member,[21] he finished a distant fifth in a crowded primary in an election in which Tom Bradley eventually won his first term as Los Angeles mayor.

[8] In 1987 he flew to New York City to be a part of a seven-member panel that tried to determine what to do with a 12-foot-high, 112-foot-long outdoor steel sculpture by Richard Serra titled "Tilted Arc," which had drawn complaints[27] and was eventually disassembled, removed, and put in storage.

It later reversed itself and Wachs specifically compared the commission's initial decision to the prosecution of a Cincinnati museum over a show by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

[28] In 2001, Wachs resigned his council seat and moved to New York City in order to serve as president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

[30] "Wachs defied easy categorization on the council, emerging as a populist who railed against what he saw as insider dealing in City Hall and misuse of taxpayer funds.

He organized the first ones—in Studio City, Sherman Oaks, North Hollywood-Toluca Lake and the hill area south of Mulholland Drive in November 1971, choosing the first members himself from a range of backgrounds.

[8] His measure outlawing employment discrimination against victims of AIDS was passed unanimously by the City Council,[31] despite the fact that his mail on the subject was running heavily against it.

[34] Wachs cast the only vote against a city ordinance prohibiting minors from purchasing drug paraphernalia, saying in 1983 he did not think police officers should spend their time raiding head shops.

[37] Wachs was credited with forging a 1997 deal with the developers of a downtown sports arena that lifted some of the onerous provisions that would have worked to the financial disadvantage of the city.

When he was newly elected to the Los Angeles City Council, he distributed a mock ordinance that would supposedly have taxed all male residents on the size of their genitals.