After one year, the daily focus remains the same for Mayor Karen Bass: tackle L.A. homelessness

As Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and I discussed her first year in office and the tension between goal-setting and responding to crises, she was interrupted with an update from an aide: The Los Angeles Police Department was analyzing a string of recent murders, and officials suspected that a serial murderer might be responsible.

At that moment, the issue was revealed: Bass spent most of her first year in the very hard struggle to house this city’s enormous population of homeless people. That’s difficult enough, but the city never lets up. Crime, strikes, struggling businesses – even a hurricane – pulled Bass from her central mission time and again.

And yet, she ends the year as she began it on Dec. 12, 2022: waging a daily campaign to improve life for those without a place to live.

“I do not have to act impulsively,” Bass said of the job’s competing demands that tug at her time. Experience working in emergency rooms helped her to appreciate that, she added. “If somebody is actively bleeding or not breathing, I’m OK … I can be calm.”

That has served her well, but how should one evaluate the work of a mayor? By grace under pressure? By the capacity to stay the course? Or by the effectiveness of responding to crises? And how does one gauge progress on homelessness, a problem that hardly seems solvable in one year under one mayor.

To explore those questions, I sought out the wisdom of two of Los Angeles’ most experienced leaders. Robin Kramer, chief of staff for mayors Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa, told me L.A. chief executives historically considered it a victory to be able to spend half their time on their agenda, with the other half spent responding to the issue of the day.

By that measure, Bass has been admirable, Kramer said.

Zev Yaroslavsky, who was first elected to the City Council in 1975 and later served on the Board of Supervisors until he termed out in 2014, echoed her appreciation for Bass’ steadfastness – both for the tenacity of her campaign to tackle homelessness as well as for her courage in taking it on. He noted that Bass’ first official act, declaring a state of emergency on homelessness, gave her access to additional tools for responding – and even bigger symbolic ones.

Bass put her reputation on the line, Yaroslavsky said, announcing that “I’m in charge, and hold me accountable for the results.

“That’s what leaders do,” he added. “They lead.”

Bass both claims credit and acknowledges frustrations in her pursuit to put roofs over the heads of her city’s most desperate residents. External inputs – the expiration of eviction bans enacted during COVID, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing asylum seekers to Los Angeles and elsewhere – have put new pressure on an already overwhelmed system.

The result is that the overall number of unhoused people in Los Angeles – roughly 46,000 – may be larger today than it was a year ago, Bass’ efforts notwithstanding.

Permanent housing for a few hundred people is hardly the long-term answer to Los Angeles’ overwhelming issue of homelessness, but the elimination of some encampments has been noticed, and some see glimmers of hope.

Knocking down barriers has been more feasible, Bass said. She and her staff knew, for instance, that some homeless people were not receiving benefits because they lacked social security numbers or addresses, but they did not appreciate the rippling effects. Having discovered that wrinkle, Bass appealed to federal officials to waive the requirements, and she secured an agreement.

But homelessness, of course, was one of many demands on her attention and focus.

And then there is crime. In Los Angeles, violent crime has declined in 2023 by about 4.6%. Property crime has ticked up slightly, increasing by 2.1%.

That’s not exactly cause for rejoicing, but it’s hardly a crime wave. Complicating the numbers, however, was the eruption of “smash-and-grab” robberies, which – while rare – nevertheless capture attention and instill fear.

“It doesn’t matter what the data says,” Bass said. “Whether people feel it is another matter.”

Though she declined to blame any person or strategy for the persistence of property crime or the public’s fear of it, Bass did note that she does not plan to endorse in the district attorney race. That’s a telling change. Bass supported George Gascón when he won the job four years ago.

For Los Angeles, though, there is no crisis like a traffic crisis, and Bass’ first year closed with an opportunity to shine. When a fire just after Thanksgiving threatened the structural integrity of Interstate 10 in the downtown area, Bass was quick, decisive and effective. A project initially estimated to take three to five weeks was completed in eight days.

The freeway was, in one sense, a perfect problem for Bass. It required relationships with officials in Sacramento and Washington D.C., places where she has served. It required a cool head, which her background has equipped her for. And it served her well to be not just a doer but a listener, a quality not all mayors – or elected officials at any level – possess.

Indeed, it is that last factor that may set Bass furthest apart from some of her predecessors. That allows her not just to govern but to learn, and 2023 has been, for Bass, a year of declarations and programs, of cajoling, directing and responding but also of learning.

“There’s no metric for listening,” Kramer said, but it is vital. As Bass enters her second year, Kramer predicted that the lessons of the first will help the mayor structure the most important and underappreciated aspect of her work: the daily decision about where to apply her attention.

“What is the most valuable resource of a mayor?” Kramer asked rhetorically. “Her time.”

Jim Newton is a veteran journalist, best-selling author and teacher. He worked at the Los Angeles Times for 25 years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist, covering government and politics.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: After one year, focus remains for Mayor Karen Bass: tackle L.A. homelessness