Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-The shame of LA’s worst-in-the-nation homelessness was on full display for all of America during last week’s Dateline NBC entitled “City of Angels.”
It addressed the absurdity of our region’s immense wealth and capability, but failure to deal with the ever-worsening problem.
The blame deservedly goes on the narrow shoulders of Eric Garcetti, the Mayor of Los Angeles, except, according to Garcetti, virtually everyone else is at fault -- from NIMBY-ism to Washington, D.C.
The big question is one that is insufficiently asked by the footsy-playing local media establishment: why is Garcetti continually on the road, running for President rather than running the City of Los Angeles, which he was twice elected to do?
Finally, someone asked Garcetti, “How can you be President if you can’t manage to get people who are living in tents off the street?”
Thank you, Craig Melvin.
You didn’t see that question asked during political reporter Dave Bryan’s recent KCBS tickle-fight with Garcetti in its recent “will he, won’t he run” segment, in which Garcetti spoke to the Associated Press only of President Donald Trump’s latest lunacy, but not of his own failures in LA. This inability to hold Garcetti directly accountable for abandoning LA in favor of greener pastures goes double for KABC’s “Ask the Mayor” with Adrienne Alpert.
Garcetti’s response to Dateline’s question was pure evasion:
“Part of the reason I’m thinking about (running for President) is when I walk down the streets of my own city, we are making progress with no help from the feds. But this is on everyone’s watch.”
That is a dodge.
Garcetti became an LA City Councilmember in 2001, which goes back to the early first term of President George W. Bush. Then he became City Council President in 2006, a role he held until he was elected Mayor in 2013, and then re-elected in 2017. This and all other Los Angeles civic problems are on Garcetti’s watch far more than anyone else’s. He was the voice for Los Angeles this entire time. His failure to be heard and deliver results is his fault, as is the worsening of the problems.
As to that “progress,” where is it, Eric? Right now, LA City Council is mired in 15 community battles about where to put temporary housing for what amounts to a few dozen people in each Council District when there are tens of thousands of people in need. Seventeen years after you were first elected is a little late in the game, don’t you think?
Now, a half year before viable candidates prepare to line up to take on Trump in 2020, Garcetti considers that as progress? Really?
As a champion of community conscience, Dateline interviewed the most pragmatic voice in Los Angeles media, the LA Times’ Steve Lopez.
“…unless you come up with a plan to scale this up, the services, the treatment and then cut off those paths that are leading more and more people onto skid rows of LA, this is just going to get worse,” Lopez told Melvin.
Garcetti has no such plan, which may explain why he is so often elsewhere.
The disingenuousness wasn’t limited to Garcetti. Venice City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who has also been on the City Hall payroll for a substantial portion of his career, said that it is “easy” to fall into homelessness. But in Bonin’s own case, his sleeping on the beach, in his car and on friends’ couches was precipitated by alcoholism and drug addiction. The message to children from Bonin should have been, it’s easy to sidestep the addiction which led to his homelessness: don’t use drugs or alcohol in the first place. But by minimizing the factors which led to his own homelessness, Bonin distracts from the problem of homelessness by the non-addicted working poor.
The greatest gift that Garcetti could give Trump is to run for the Democratic nomination, though he most likely won’t even be in the mix given his lack of qualifications outside of 200 N. Spring Street, and dubious ones within it. His failures as Mayor on homelessness and myriad other issues make for sufficient fodder to keep even a troubled incumbent in office. But time is running out for Garcetti here in LA, with little to show for it.
The greatest gift that local Los Angeles media can give its viewers and readers is to stop entertaining the Garcetti fantasy and start holding him accountable. It’s the same mistake it made with Antonio Villaraigosa -- fantasizing about what he could be next,rather than what his job is now. And how did that turn out?
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Join his mailing list or offer verifiable tips and story ideas at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
