California Today: Can Los Angeles Homelessness Be Solved? The Mayor Thinks So

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/us/california-today-los-angeles-homelessness.html

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Good morning.

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Let’s turn it over to Adam Nagourney, our Los Angeles bureau chief, for today’s introduction.

LOS ANGELES — It was a warm February morning and Mayor Eric Garcetti had what seemed to be a good idea: to sit outside at a cafe for an interview about his re-election campaign.

What Mr. Garcetti got was a real-time reminder of what he would list as one of his first-term regrets: the rising homeless population here. Within moments after he settled in, accompanied by two aides and one security officer, two homeless men came by and asked for money. (He politely declined.)

The first one moved on; the second did not, pacing back and forth and talking loudly for the remainder of Mr. Garcetti’s visit. At one point, a member of the mayor’s security detail tried to lure the man away, but he returned. Mr. Garcetti was unflustered, talking with the focus and discipline of a politician.

“We decided to bring Exhibit A to you,” Mr. Garcetti finally said. “It’s bad out here.”

For all that, Mr. Garcetti said he thought that the situation should improve for two reasons. Los Angeles city voters approved an initiative last fall to fund a $1.2 billion bond measure to pay for new housing for the homeless. And Los Angeles County is voting next week on a county sales tax to fund mental health, drug abuse counseling and other services for the homeless.

I asked Mr. Garcetti if those measures, assuming the second one passes, would produce a noticeable difference in 10 years. “Yes,” he said. “If that’s the timeline, absolutely. Look — this is a problem of human creation that human action can solve. Homelessness doesn’t exist everywhere, and there are reasons why.”

“Homelessness is a solvable issue,” he said. “It really is.”

Mr. Garcetti gestured to the man on the street. “Look — this guy needs serious mental health care,” he said.

Read more in Mr. Nagourney’s interview with Mr. Garcetti about his plans for homelessness and other issues here.

(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)

• Flooded farmland in California is giving scientists a look at how to ease strain on the state’s aging dams. [The New York Times]

• Santa Barbara County’s Cachuma Lake, once a poster child of the drought, has seen a remarkable turnaround. [Los Angeles Times]

• “A transformative project.” Los Angeles International Airport broke ground on a new $1.6 billion terminal. [Los Angeles Times]

• On Tuesday, President Trump hinted at a shift on immigration, but then took a hard line on the topic during an address to Congress. [The New York Times]

• Three Californians whose relatives were killed by unauthorized immigrants were invited to the speech as guests of Mr. Trump. [PolitiFact]

• A company based in Hollister is offering “biblically responsible” investment products that screen out support for the L.G.B.T. “lifestyle.” [The New York Times]

• YouTube, which started the ball rolling on cordcutting, is introducing a subscription service. [The New York Times]

• “I didn’t become a software engineer to be trying to make ends meet,” said a Twitter employee in San Francisco earning $160,000 a year. [The Guardian]

• A new comedy festival in San Francisco will feature Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin Hart and Sarah Silverman. [The New York Times]

• The fallout from the Oscars flub is far from over. Warren Beatty called for an explanation. [The New York Times]

• Will the best picture award give “Moonlight” a box-office bump? The film is expanding to 1,500 theaters. [The New York Times]

• Lady Gaga has been tapped to step in as the headliner at the Coachella music festival after Beyoncé canceled. [The Press Enterprise]

• A Death Valley road trip: Salvation Mountain, sand dunes and the Salton Sea. [The New York Times]

• They sell 1.5 million cheese rolls a month. How Porto’s Bakery became a Southern California food institution. [Orange County Register]

Ah, July Fourth weekend, a time for beaches, barbecues, beer — and snowboarding?

If you needed any more evidence of California’s epic snowfall this winter: At least two ski resorts are so deeply blanketed that they’re planning to stay open into early July.

California ski resorts typically close sometime in the spring.

Barring a dramatic turn in the weather, however, Squaw Valley, in the Tahoe area, and Mammoth Mountain, in the Eastern Sierra, both said they anticipated plenty of snow on the slopes well into summer.

“We’re confident that we’re going to have some pretty killer conditions,” said Lauren Burke, a Mammoth spokeswoman.

How can they be sure?

The last time Squaw stayed open into July, in 2011, the resort was piled up with about 32 feet of snow at the end of February, said Sam Kieckhefer, a spokesman. This year, that figure is 48 feet.

It’s not unheard-of for California skiing to last into July. Squaw has made it that long four times in the last 50 years, said Mr. Kieckhefer. At Mammoth, with its higher elevation, the skiing has stretched into July more than a dozen times since the early 1970s.

Mammoth’s longest season ever? In 1994-95, it lasted an incredible 10 months, ending on Aug. 13.

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The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U.C. Berkeley.