After many months of embracing some of the most punitive anti-homeless laws in the country, Los Angeles city hall has unexpectedly shown a measure of compassion toward the many thousands of homeless women, men and children living on our sidewalks, in parks, under freeways or in cars and vans.

I was surprised when Mayor Eric Garcetti and seven members of the city council announced on Tuesday they would declare “a state of emergency” to try to attack homelessness and promised to spend up to $100 million on some sort of a program. In my weeks of reporting for a three-part series on homelessness for the web site Truthdig, I found only one member of the council who completely opposed laws that generally ban the homeless from leaving their possessions on the street. That was Gil Cedillo, the only vote against the punitive legislation.

It may have been a coincidence, but the official’s announcement came a few days after Truthdig completed running my series. However, as I blogged on Truthdig today, “The public officials, of course, didn’t need our web site to alert them. All they had to do is look down the street, or better yet, walk there to see the tents and tarpaulins of the homeless encampments on Skid Row sidewalks or to check them out in parks and under freeways throughout the city. There is hardly any place in this rich city without women, men and children living on the streets or in cars and recreational vehicles.”

It will be up to Garcetti to pull the many elements of the government together to have a program that will succeed. Finding $100 million is a first priority. He’ll have to work with the numbers guy, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, who has warned that at least $100 million goes down the drain, wasted on jailing the homeless and treating them at public hospitals.

Only seven of the 15 council members joined Garcetti in his announcement. Some members of the council seen to wish the homeless “would die and decrease the surplus population,” in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge. The mayor will need more votes. Garcetti will have to make sure that the city and county umbrella agency for homeless care, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, finds housing and care in a faster and more efficient way than it has been doing. Garcetti will have to get the county supervisors on board. The county has a large number of homeless. Finally, he will have to work with state legislators for measures that will help finance construction of housing for the homeless. It will do no good to ask Congress. The Republican majority has sharply reduced the amount of federal funds for homeless housing.

“It’s getting people into housing with support services,” Garcetti told me. “We went to …a 95 percent success rate with Hollywood Forward (a housing program). We know how to do this successfully.”

“A lot of people say don’t talk about homelessness and don’t talk about ending homelessness because there is no political upside, the problem is intractable even if somebody cares about it,” he said as we talked in his city hall office. “But I have worked on this issue ever since I was 14 or 15, when I was in junior high school. I used to come down and volunteer on Skid Row… That’s one of the reasons I’m mayor.”

He told me about what’s being considered for the homeless program he is expected to unveil, hopefully soon.

“We first have to start with outreach workers, “ he said. “We have eight teams, 16 people for the entire county of Los Angeles. In the budget, I doubled this. The city has never done this before. I put another 10 teams or 20 people out. If we are going to be serious about housing about 10,000 people a year, we probably need 500 outreach workers over the next two or three years.” Then housing and medical and mental care must be found for those contacted by the workers.

I asked him about the punitive legislation passed by the city council. “You’re a liberal, progressive, humanistic person,” I said. “How do you feel about presiding over a city hall that has all of these repressive homeless laws? Does that bother you?”
“Yes,” he said, “that is the reason why we won’t be implementing the the new ordinance,” he said. “(We) need to keep the sidewalks clean, no question. But until they change the penalty and the type of property seized… we won’t prioritize that enforcement, we won’t do it. I want to change the debate from how are we going to enforce to how are we going to house. That is something the city has not done particularly well.”

Of all the comments prompted by the firing of Austin Beutner as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, the most meaningful came from the paper’s thoughtful and talented Patt Morrison.

“Thank you, Austin, for understanding and caring about Los Angeles as an extraordinary world city, and its flagship paper as having an important civic role,” the interviewer, columnist and all around journalist wrote on Facebook. “The reason the Founding Fathers singled out ‘the press’ in the Bill of Rights is because of the vital public part it must play in order for democracy to function.”

It’s interesting that her comment and Beutner’s frank explanation of his abrupt departure appeared on Facebook. His Times e-mail account had been closed down. I hope they didn’t escort him from the building under armed guard, his possessions packed in cardboard boxes, a common corporate practice. But when it comes to Tribune Publishing, owner of the Times, nothing would surprise me.

Morrison is able to judge Beutner’s year as publisher in context. She is sharp and skeptical She was there in the paper’s great days and has toughed it out during the Times’ decline. I only talked to Beutner once, during a news conference when he was considering running for mayor. I thought he was very smart but without the gift, or curse, of bullshit needed for the political game. All I know about his tenure at the Times is second hand, much of it from shell-shocked friends awaiting the possibility of more layoffs. So I seized on Morrison’s comments as being an important message to her readers and to the community.

Morrison praised Beutner for seeing Los Angeles as a world city and for understanding the Times' role in shaping its future.

In his short tenure as publisher, Beutner has tried to do that. He wasn’t on the job long enough to be judged fairly. But his revival of the California section, with its focus on local news, was a big improvement over the past. The reporters assigned to city hall, the county building, the state capitol, transportation, the drought and other matters, are working hard in covering their beats. We old aficionados of beat coverage appreciate that. I love the newsletters Essential California and Dodgers Dugout. I thought giving letter grades to L.A. city officials was a bit superficial, but I’ll bet a lot of readers enjoyed it.

Readers, or the lack of them, were the problem Beutner couldn’t overcome in just 12 months. They keep disappearing, as does revenue. His solution was improving the digital delivery of news over the Internet, with an intense local and statewide focus. He combined this with a messianic intensity about the paper’s duty as a civic citizen.

“I agreed to become the Publisher and CEO of the Times because I believe in Los Angeles and recognize the unique role the Times plays in our community, he wrote in his Facebook farewell. “It is the civic conscience which holds accountable those with power in Los Angeles, helps celebrate what is good in our community, and provides news and information to help us better understand and engage with the world around us.”

That obviously wasn’t the view of his corporate overseers in Chicago who have always seen the Los Angeles Times as an odd, undisciplined place that had to be whipped into line. So here they come again, clueless invaders. All we readers can do is jeer their arrival and offer the greatest sympathy to the remaining journalists working for them, still dedicated, as Morrison wrote, to helping democracy function.