“Homelessness is a problem that involves thousands of people and requires a massive response but at the end of the day it’s really about one person at a time,“ said Miguel A. Santana, Los Angeles’ city administrative officer.

I visited Santana in his City Hall East office this week for guidance on the homeless relief plans that come in confusing number almost weekly from city hall and the county hall of administration.

Santana is the key person in the city’s efforts to deal with the fast growing number of homeless and the encampments that house them. Answering to Mayor Eric Garcetti and the 15-member city council, he has direct oversight for the city budget and departments, including those dealing with homelessness. He must also mesh the city’s efforts with those of county government, which operates welfare, foster care, emergency hospitals, jails, health clinics and other units that provide care for the homeless. In addition, both the city and the county are seeking federal funds to supplement local money for emergency and long term housing for the homeless.

Santana is well equipped for the job. Before he became city administrative officer in 2009, he was a deputy county administrative officer, supervising the departments that provide social services to the homeless and other poor.

Too many people see the homeless as a pitiful, disgusting or scary mass of unfortunates, all pretty much the same. It’s much more complicated, Santana said, and so are the solutions. “Each person who is out on the street today is there for a different set of reasons,” he said. Those helping them must tailor solutions to the widely varying needs of people who range from addicts and mentally ill to families thrust onto the streets by job loss or illness. It calls, he said, for “intensive case management.”

I asked Santana how he is getting disparate city and county bureaucracies together on the complex program of creating low cost housing while persuading the homeless to give up the street life for an apartment.

“I was on a conference call today with my counterparts in the county,“he said. “It helps that the majority of the people in the county working on this I worked with when I was there several years ago.” That would be a departure from years of feuding and non-cooperation between the city and county.

I asked a county supervisorial aide working on homeless about this. “We are in constant communication with city council offices, mayor's office, the city attorney,“ the aide said. “There is unprecedented cooperation, and the elected officials in office today understand the need for this. They have learned from the past,”

Mayor Garcetti recently met with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who with Supervisor Sheila Kuehl authored the supervisors’ plan to allocate more money for low-income housing. Garcetti and Ridley-Thomas’ goals coincide—higher wages, more housing and a plan to persuade the homeless to use it. Their exchange of letters following the meeting had the careful, formal sound of statements made by heads of state after they get together and paper over differences—sort of Putin and Obama. But they each concluded their letters with pledges to work together.

For it to work, they and other elected officials will have to answer a central question posed by Miguel Santana during our conversation—who will assume command of the effort. The mayor? Fifteen council members? The five supervisors?

“Because for the longest time, our homeless strategy has been one looking at the other and saying you’re in charge,” he said. “ And at the end of the day nobody was really in charge. “

The negatives and positives of a changing Los Angeles were on display Monday when the chairman of the city council’s budget and finance committee spoke to lawyers, lobbyists, union leaders and other city hall aficionados at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum.

City Councilman Paul Krekorian, who represents the 2nd District in the San Fernando Valley, gave a generally rosy picture of city hall at the forum, which is organized by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer, who also edits the Emma’s Memos web site.
“We’re seeing the dark days of the recession through a rear view mirror,” Krekorian said.

Better business conditions have increased city revenues, he said, and the municipal work force has been reduced by 5,000. The deficit is going down and reserve funds are going up.

What was most interesting was Kerkorian’s reaction to two serious about two issues confronting Los Angeles, the problems of traffic and immigrants making a living.

He was asked about a proposal called Mobility Plan 2035. Now being discussed at city hall, it calls for adding hundreds of miles of bus and bike-only lanes. Faced with lawsuits attacking the plan for causing even more traffic jams, council members, who already approved the plan earlier, are now talking about making revisions to forestall legal action by homeowner and business groups who complain of the loss of motor vehicle lanes. Times reporter David Zahniser wrote that council members are expected to approve a revised plan.

Krekorian called the plan “a vision for the future,” and said “the status quo doesn’t work in Los Angeles.” He didn’t say how he stood on a final plan, but noted that he was sure any solution would cause pain. “It will and always does,” he said.

Immigration was in the background when he was asked about the controversy over regulating street vendors. The issue, wrote Times reporter Emily Alpert Reyes, is “whether to legalize and regulate the bustling trade that is already widespread on many sidewalks, an idea that has heartened throngs of street vendors who make their living selling ice cream, hot dogs wrapped in bacon, and a slew of other goods.”

A large number of the vendors are immigrants and their presence downtown, around MacArthur Park, and in other areas give the streets and sidewalks a lively urban feel, and provide Angelenos a convenient place to buy an ice cream. But those who own ice cream parlors, hot dog stands and t-shirt shops say they pay taxes, rent and have insurance, costs not borne by street vendors.

Krekorian said it’s an “issue where there are different needs in different parts of the city.” He said he was concerned about the impact on bricks and mortar merchants if there are too many street vendors.

The dispute is a sign of the changing city and the needs of poor people trying to start their own businesses with little or no capital, and the desires of people like me who like a little life on the street. The bike lane controversy is another sign of change, this one of the LA where the motor vehicle may no longer be allowed to rule.