Homeless people.

Google all you want: You’ll find a lot of surveys about what housed people in L.A. think about unhoused people. You’ll find endless columns on what experts opine. But until recently, you’d be hard-pressed to find studies asking the people actually experiencing homelessness what they think should be done about the crisis.

Two recent surveys do just that—finally.

With a rise in homeless encampments, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, policy makers have implemented at-times scattershot efforts to combat the problem, with costs projected in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But such plans, said one researcher, were “formulated with no clear evidence on the housing needs and preferences of unsheltered people, information that’s critical to understanding the feasibility of these policies.”

The two new studies seek to bridge the gap between the well-intentioned plans and what unhoused people themselves say they actually need.

In both cases, homeless people overwhelmingly told researchers their first priority is—get ready for it—housing.

That seems like a no-brainer, but in fact is big news that should combat pervasive myths that suggest homeless people prefer to live in encampments, that it’s preferable to wait for more permanent housing, or that even if taxpayers funded shelters, homeless people wouldn’t agree to go there.

A recently released RAND Corporation survey, conducted from September 2021 to January 2022, interviewed 216 homeless men and women living in Venice, Hollywood, downtown, and at the Veterans Affairs complex near Brentwood. It reported that 90% expressed interest in finding housing, but that bureaucratic delays (41% of the unhoused never received follow-ups to housing applications) and inappropriate shelter offerings present serious obstacles.

The RAND finding that the overwhelming percentage of homeless people want to be sheltered tracks with another just-released study, conducted in February 2022, by the Santa Monica-based A-Mark Foundation, which I joined as CEO in June.

A-Mark teamed up with UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs to send graduate student researchers to L.A.’s Skid Row, where they asked 100 unhoused men and women living there what they would do about homelessness if they were mayor of Los Angeles.

Researchers asked unhoused people to list their top five priorities from a menu of options, which included healthcare, necessities, resources, sanitation/safety, and housing. Overwhelmingly, 92% of respondents chose securing temporary or permanent shelter as their first priority if they were, hypothetically, mayor of L.A., and as their answer to the follow-up question: “What kinds of things would you do in the short run?”

The fact that housing rated so highly in both the RAND and A-Mark studies punctures the myth that homeless people prefer homelessness. This directive should prod policy makers and activists toward immediate, if temporary, housing solutions. Because these studies make it clear: If you build it correctly, they will come.

I want to emphasize my use of the word “correctly” here, because that is where a lot of the misconceptions around the need to prioritize housing for people who are homeless takes root.

The RAND and A-Mark surveys offered helpful data to help policymakers understand what kinds of temporary shelter work, and how best to organize the bureaucracy around them.

In two focus groups that were part of the A-Mark Foundation survey, women said they avoided shelters that broke up families. Just 14% of the shelter units in Los Angeles serve families, according to a 2018 LAHSA count.

“The kids got to go with the mom,” one woman said, “and the dads got to go somewhere else, and then they can’t be together.”

Lack of security at shelters and concern over sexual violence were also named as top concerns. Men said curfews that made shelters feel like prison and prohibitions against dogs kept them away.

“If shelters or transitional housing require sharing rooms, have curfews and other rules, or reduce people’s sense of self-determination,” the RAND researchers echoed, “our research suggests these won’t be an effective approach to reducing street homelessness.”

On the bureaucratic side, the RAND study cited inherent problems with a multi-step system that requires caseworkers to enroll homeless people for housing, then go find them when housing becomes available. Encampment sweeps and the very nature of homelessness make that a challenge, and caseworker burnout itself is high. The result? The RAND survey reported that 75% of respondents had been continuously homeless for over a year, and 50% had been homeless for three years.

The RAND study also found that the majority of homeless people resided in Los Angeles County before ending up at their current location, and 75% reported residing in California—two data points that contradict the common notion that L.A.’s unhoused all come from somewhere else.

As the RAND and A-Mark studies revealed, despite concerns and circumstances that kept people away from shelters, they still wanted housing. “Walking around with pepper spray,” one unhoused man told the A-Mark team, “that’s my life.”

Said another unhoused man about what his approach would be if he were mayor: “Some people have given up hope, we have to give them hope.”

The RAND researchers acknowledged that Angelenos are tired of encampments and eager for solutions, but observed that “it will do no good to respond to this political imperative with policies that are ineffective.”

The voices of L.A.’s unhoused speak through this new research, and suggest productive paths forward. They point to the need for more shelters, especially those that take families, like Upward Bound in Santa Monica, and more private “tiny home” shelters with pet areas, like the Arroyo Seco Tiny Home Village in Highland Park.

We need to collect more research from people undergoing homelessness to learn what kinds of temporary shelter they would be most likely to successfully move into, and then transition out of into more permanent homes.

But we needn’t wait for more research to absorb the central lesson of these studies. The voices of our unhoused neighbors are clear: If a magic wand could be waved over the City of Angels, giving them mayoral power, the first thing they would do is provide shelter.

It’s a message our next actual mayor needs to hear.

The post What Do Unhoused People Want Most? Ask Them appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

With so many big issues looming—from the homelessness crisis to racial and economic inequality to climate-related disaster preparedness—the panelists agreed that this mayoral election will be pivotal for Los Angeles.

But what are we talking about when we say Los Angeles? KCRW’s Janaya Williams, who moderated the conversation began by getting a sense of which Los Angeles the panelists know. She began, sharing her journey, which began north of the city in Santa Clarita. She came of age in Santa Monica during the L.A. uprisings, and just returned back to Los Angeles after logging more than two decades on the East Coast. That history, she said, informs what she wants from the next mayor.

USC political scientist Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, came to L.A. after her sister moved out here, and then the rest of her family followed.

“The sense of Los Angeles that I’ve had is that it is a town of neighborhoods,” said Hancock Alfaro, “and a place where there are a lot of people who are committed to Los Angeles but committed to a lot of other things.” The need to balance the local with a sense of global issues is paramount for any leader of L.A.

Fellow panelist Rafael De La Rosa, who is from Ventura—“the 805”—has spent the last five years at California State University, Northridge, where he is the government and community relations assistant vice president. De La Rosa agreed that L.A. is made up of distinct communities, but he also insisted on its cohesion: “All the issues in the Valley are the same issues in Los Angeles. There is no longer this ‘over-the-hill,’ Valley-centric view.”

Taylor Bazley is CEO and co-founder of Green Qween, a cannabis retail space that prides itself as an incubator for ideas of social justice. Bazley said he followed the 405 North to L.A., coming up originally from San Diego. “I’m really steeped in the LGBT political world of Los Angeles, and that perspective is something that has really colored my relationship with L.A.”

Williams then turned to the issues, asking Bazley as a business owner what he’s looking for in the next mayor when it comes to balancing budget priorities alongside social justice. They shouldn’t be separate, said Bazley, pointing out that “a budget is a statement of your values as a city.” Take one of the biggest stories in Los Angeles and across the country: police funding. “That will be a litmus test” for the next budget, said Bazley—it will tell the story of how the city’s thinking around policing has or has not changed.

By Soobin Kim.

What issues have been overlooked in the mayoral campaign so far? Williams asked the panelists.

Their responses ranged from transportation—De La Rosa citing the mayor’s power to appoint seats to LA Metro’s board, whose Sepulveda Transit Corridor Project is the largest infrastructure project since the Hoover Dam—to issues that don’t have large and active stakeholder groups, like aging water pipes.

All the panelists agreed that Los Angeles hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics poses an opportunity to get things done under the spotlight. Hancock Alfaro pointed to a project she is working on with different neighborhood councils to alleviate some of the biggest racial equity issues around housing, education, transit access, and public safety. She said she would like to see the candidates address how they would approach these issues so that “we’re not just sweeping it under the rug like we did at the Super Bowl … that we’re actually making a difference.”

Prompted by an online audience question on mayoral power, Hancock Alfaro described L.A.’s weak mayoral system relative to the City Council, and said that a stronger mayor could have more leverage when it comes to issues from homelessness to transportation. They could say “not on my watch,” she said. However, the risk with a stronger mayor is that one person from one part of L.A. can “lose sight” of issues impacting parts of L.A. that they’re less beholden to.

The conversation, then, turned to the voters. When it comes to voter registration and turnout, everyone agreed that universal vote-by-mail, 11-day vote centers, and newer voting machines have all made a difference. When it comes to making a change outside of voting itself, De La Rosa called attention to community town halls and council meetings to give voters a more direct forum to participate and effect change on the issues they care most about.

The penultimate question of the night came from a student participant of Creating Our Next LA:

What is one piece of advice you’d give to someone voting for the first time to help them choose the right candidate?

The panelists agreed that it comes down to values. “Decide which candidate speaks to your particular values and inspires you,” said De La Rosa.

The post Not Your Average L.A. Mayor Voter Guide appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Angelenos may complain about state and national government like other Californians, but we also have a practice of using Sacramento and D.C. as training grounds for our local politicians. Only after they’ve proven themselves in the state legislature or Congress (or really, anywhere but here) do we feel comfortable elevating them to higher office.

The habit is holding this year, as Los Angeles chooses a new mayor and fills other top elected jobs amidst a continuing pandemic emergency and homeless crisis.

In the city of Los Angeles, for months, polls have shown former Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, now a member of Congress, leading or tied for the leader of the mayor’s race. City Councilman Kevin De León, who is better known for his four-year leadership of the state Senate during his 12 years in Sacramento, has been a strong contender, though recent polling suggests he is struggling to add support. Trailing them is former Assemblyman Mike Feuer, now city attorney, whose policy-focused campaign makes him an intriguing dark horse.

As for L.A. County, former Assembly Speaker and current State Senator Bob Hertzberg and State Senator Henry Stern are both seeking a seat on a board of supervisors that now includes Sheila Kuehl and Holly Mitchell (both former members of the Assembly and state Senate), Janice Hahn (a former member of Congress), and Hilda Solis (who served in the state legislature, Congress, and the Obama cabinet).

Of course, transitions from state to local office happen in other California places, in large part because of the games of political musical chairs term limits produce. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown became Da Mayor in San Francisco, and former State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is chief executive of the city of Sacramento.

But most of the time, California’s ambitious pols work their way up from the local to state level, as in Gavin Newsom’s rise from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to mayor to statewide office. Indeed, the last four San Francisco mayors came to the job from other local offices.

What makes Los Angeles different?

The answer to that question lies in our peculiar mix of ego and insecurity.

We see ourselves as a city of stars, drawn from across the universe to L.A.’s sunshine and spotlight. We see excellence as an import, and so we honor foreign film directors at the Oscars and celebrate the Lakers picking up LeBron or the Dodgers signing a free-agent first baseman.

This dynamic can be maddening for locals. It’s why, in the film La La Land, Ryan Gosling’s character, an underappreciated jazz musician, complains of his fellow Angelenos, “They worship everything, and they value nothing.”

The even darker side of this devotion to global stars is that it reveals a profound insecurity about ourselves. Los Angeles locals don’t trust our ability to produce greatness in our local communities.

Unfortunately, self-pessimism makes a certain sense, when you consider the poor quality of our schools and our lack of economic mobility. Given the high cost of living, this is no longer the place to come to make your fortune; moving to L.A., and to much of California, has become a luxury, possible mostly for those who have already made it elsewhere.

L.A.’s weak political scene doesn’t inspire confidence either. It’s true that the departing mayor, Eric Garcetti, came up through the city council (though he built his image on elite educational credentials acquired elsewhere, like his Rhodes scholarship). But today he is so unpopular that he’s trying to leave office early (to become ambassador to India). The most local of the mayoral candidates, councilman and former LAPD cop Joe Buscaino, is a heavy underdog. (Angelenos seem to have forgotten that L.A.’s late, great mayor Tom Bradley was also a cop-turned-councilman.)

In this year’s race, Bass seems to be the favorite in part because of the status she gained elsewhere—as a consensus-building Assembly speaker in Sacramento, and as a member of Congress influential enough to make President Biden’s short list for vice president. De León’s case for leadership is similarly grounded not in his recent work on the city council, but in historic labor, environmental, and pro-immigrant legislation he got passed in Sacramento.

But does this Angeleno bias for electing state legislative leaders (Antonio Villaraigosa was also Assembly speaker before becoming mayor) still make sense? Because, right now, L.A.’s biggest public need isn’t for legislative dealmakers but for excellent public administrators, who can re-engineer outdated departments and make faltering homelessness programs work better.

Unfortunately, the L.A. mayor’s race doesn’t seem to have such an administrator. The developer Rick Caruso, who has a high-profiled and self-funded campaign that has been gaining in the polls, is pitching himself as a managerial expert who can clean things up. But the reality is that developers are mostly promoters and dealmakers rather than tough administrators. And so for all Caruso’s savvy, his skill set is closer to that of his ex-legislator opponents than his ubiquitous ads might lead you to believe.

Caruso is making gains by talking about crime as an issue. But does his experience fit L.A.? His personal pitch to voters centers around his success in creating popular Southern California shopping-and-entertainment developments, like the Grove, next to the Original Farmers Market, and the Americana, in Glendale. That may prove to be a mistake, since such local successes seem unlikely to impress Angelenos.

After all, what has he ever done in Sacramento and Washington?

The post A ‘Peculiar Mix of Ego and Insecurity’ Drives the Race for L.A. Mayor appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This summer, two of our state’s most thoughtful mayors, Sam Liccardo of San Jose and Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, have been seeking to make themselves “strong mayors.” The term refers to a system where mayors have executive authority, and can hire and fire department heads, sign budgets, or even veto council legislation.

“Strong mayors” are rare in California; only five of our 482 incorporated cities have them. More typically, California cities are run by appointed city managers, and a mayor is just one member of a city council. And in the Golden State, our city councils are weak and have few members.

Ordinarily, politicians’ desire for more power isn’t news. But the current crises over COVID-19 and policing have created urgency around the debate. Constituents, understandably, are demanding swift action from mayors on the pandemic and policing. But Liccardo, Steinberg, and other mayors complain that they can’t meet such public demands because they lack the necessary mayoral authority. So Liccardo is pursuing a “strong mayor” charter reform for San Jose, and Steinberg is backing a “strong mayor” measure on Sacramento’s November ballot.

Both men would be wise to drop the idea, at least for now. And not just because the “strong mayor” idea has caused political conflict at a time when their cities, and the whole state, desperately need unity. The larger problem is that creating a single powerful leader won’t make California cities any stronger.

Our cities’ lack of power is a function of our state’s constitution, which centralizes power in the state government and severely limits the most important local power—the power to raise taxes. That’s why even our state’s handful of “strong mayors” like L.A.’s Eric Garcetti frequently bemoan their lack of power, often while begging for state help. If Liccardo and Steinberg do succeed in becoming “strong mayors,” they’ll be little more than small cypress trees in a vast municipal desert.

Voters imposed this weak local system through Proposition 13 and many related measures because they don’t trust their local officials. Which means that the only way for city governments to change this system and become stronger is to build trust with voters.

You don’t build trust by trying to turn mayors into tin-pot Trumps. You build trust by making local governments more responsive and representative. But how can a local government be responsive and representative if there are barely any representatives in local government?

It can’t. Which is why the first step toward meaningful representation is to allow city councils to have many more members.

California is a huge state with very small local elected bodies. In no other state are local elected officials so few, and thus so far from the people. Our most populous cities, in particular, have tiny councils.

San Jose, with more than 1 million people, has just 11 council members. Sacramento has nine for more than 500,000, and San Diego is even worse, with nine for its 1.4 million-plus residents. No place is less representative than L.A., with just 15 council members for more than 4 million people.

Such minimal representation means not just that our representatives are further from us and harder to talk to. It also means there are simply too few elected positions to reflect the kaleidoscopic diversity of California and its communities. With so few local representatives, there are fewer of the ideas that our city governments so desperately need.

If you look to some of the globe’s greatest cities, you are likely to see large and energetic city councils. The city council of Madrid, Spain, has 57 members, and might be the world’s most innovative, having created an online “Decide Madrid” platform for citizen ideas that has been copied by more than 100 local, regional, and national governments around the planet.

Vienna, a pioneer in using local democracy to foster housing and development, has 100 representatives in its local parliament. Paris, perhaps the world’s most beautiful city, has 163. Tokyo, among the most energetic and creative urban places on earth, has 127 councilpeople. Seoul, a leader in citizen engagement and participation, has 110. Some creative cities guarantee more representation by dividing themselves up into boroughs; Mexico City, for example, has 16 separate municipalities.

If California cities wanted to follow suit right now, they’d have to find many more candidates for office. If L.A. had a city council where each member represented 25,000 people—a good number to make our politicians truly representative of their neighborhoods—the body would have 160 members, the same as in Berlin, Germany. By the same formula, San Jose would have 41 councilmembers, and Sacramento 21.

But it wouldn’t be as hard to identify new local politicians as one might think, especially now. The thousands of people marching on our streets are the sort of civic-minded folks we need more of in local office.

Mayors Liccardo and Steinberg also might find candidates for expanded city councils in San Jose and Sacramento among the many activists and inside the many nonprofits and labor unions opposing their “strong mayor” plans.

Tellingly, the debates over “strong mayor” plans in those two cities surfaced complaints about a lack of representation.

In Sacramento, Steinberg modified his original plan in response to community and political opposition. He also paired his November “strong mayor” measure with provisions that are supposed to ensure more equity and representation in the development of city policy.

In San Jose, Liccardo backed off plans for a “strong mayor” ballot measure this November in response to objections from neighborhood groups, ethnic organizations, and Latino members of the city council. Liccardo instead announced he would pursue an inclusive charter revision process, with a vote on a broad package of reforms in 2022.

“In recent weeks, several organizations have urged that we slow the process of charter reforms designed to lead to a more effective, accountable, and representative government,” Liccardo wrote in a memo announcing the delay. He added: “At the end of the day, our city belongs to its residents.”

It does. Which is why more residents should be in office. With more of our neighbors campaigning for council, Californians would be more likely to pay attention to, and vote in, our local elections.

California mayors might also find that, with more colleagues and a more engaged citizenry behind them, they have more power.

The post Madrid Has 57 Councilmembers. Seoul Has 110. Why Does L.A. Have 15? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

No, he didn’t suddenly convert. Garcetti never hid that he contained multitudes. His father, Gil Garcetti, is Mexican-American with Spanish, American Indian, and Italian ancestry. His mother, Sukey Roth, is the granddaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants.

In this town, that makes Garcetti a pretty common blend of many ethno-religious flavors—an L.A. Smoothie. But by Jewish law, which is matrilineal, Garcetti is a full-on Jew. To those of us who tracked Garcetti’s career, none of this is new. But to that ever-shrinking demographic known as the L.A. city voter, it seems to have come as a surprise. “Most people didn’t know that during the election,” Councilman Paul Koretz told a reporter on election night. “I tried to get that word out.”

Part of the fault is in our own preconceptions. The most obvious way we assess a candidate’s identity is by his or her name and face. Yaroslavsky and Villaraigosa and Wesson are easy—Jew, Latino, black. But Jews are also a religion and a culture, and the big trend in Jewish life is just how much the old phrase “Funny, you don’t look Jewish” reflects the new reality of Ethiopian Jews, “Jewtino” conversos, and Chinese-born adoptees, not to mention Persian and Middle Eastern Jews. The garden-variety white Ashkenazic Jew is becoming as hard to find as a great Westside deli.

How many times this year did I have to remind people that Jan Perry, the black 9th District councilwoman who also ran for mayor, is also Jewish? When we sat together on a panel at the Autry National Museum in May, I inelegantly described Perry as “not a typical Jew.” She took offense. “Maybe not to you,” she said. Point taken.

But the other reason people assumed Garcetti isn’t Jewish is that as a candidate he spoke little about that side of his heritage.

“I always felt myself to be Jewish and Latino very comfortably,” Garcetti told Jewish Journal columnist Bill Boyarsky in a rare candidate profile that delved into his religious identity. “Weekends were both filled with bowls of menudo and lots of bagels.”

Garcetti told Boyarsky that growing up he celebrated Passover and Chanukah, and attended Jewish camp. In college he connected more seriously to his Judaism. As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University from 1993 to 1996, Garcetti befriended the charismatic rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who would go on to write the book Kosher Sex, minister to Michael Jackson, and star in his own reality show, Shalom in the Home.

While “Rabbi Shmuley” veers politically right—he ran unsuccessfully for a Republican Congress seat in New Jersey last year—the two remain close. It was Boteach who wrote a column in the Jewish Journal on Garcetti’s behalf just prior to the election, calling him “pleasant, humble, wise, sincere, and serious.”

Garcetti’s religious affiliations, like his political ones, are liberal. He is a member of IKAR, a mid-City congregation with a famously liberal rabbi, Sharon Brous. He attends High Holy Days and occasional Shabbat services—what we in the trade call a twice-a-year Jew. Garcetti’s wife, Amy Wakeland, is not Jewish.

By these measures, Garcetti is like a great many modern American Jews—the offspring of an interfaith couple, intermarried, liberal, and more culturally than religiously Jewish.

Contrast that with two of Garcetti’s opponents in the mayoral race, Perry and Wendy Greuel. Perry, a convert, identifies strongly with her religion. Greuel, Garcetti’s opponent in the runoff, is married to a Jewish man, Dean Schramm. She makes it clear that they are raising their child as a Jew, and people are genuinely surprised —maybe it’s the name— to hear she is not in fact Jewish.

It’s not fair to say Perry and Greuel played the Jewish card harder, if that’s what you do with a Jewish card. It just seemed to come more naturally for them both.

After the election, a small dispute arose among journalists over whether Garcetti was, in fact, the first Jewish mayor of L.A. It turns out that from November 21 to December 5, 1878 a businessman named Bernard Cohn was appointed interim mayor by the city council, the equivalent of a mayor pro tempore, a position Garcetti and other Jews have held. But it’s certain that Garcetti is the first elected Jewish mayor in L.A. history.

Cohn represented what the UCLA historian David Myers called the first phase of Jewish political life in Los Angeles, when, during the city’s pioneer days, Jews faced little prejudice. After 1900, the city’s influx of East Coast and Midwestern WASPs brought with them a dour anti-Semitism that nudged Jews away from the power structure, even as the Jewish population increased from 136 in 1881 to 315,000 in 1951. This second phase was spent in the political wilderness.

The 1953 election of Rosalind Wiener Wyman, a Jewish woman, to the city council heralded the third phase—complete acceptance. The coalition of African-American and Jewish communities that combined to elect Tom Bradley as mayor in 1973 created a liberal Jewish Westside power base that spawned politicians like Zev Yaroslavsky, Howard Berman, Henry Waxman, Joel Wachs, and one of Bradley’s young aides—Wendy Greuel.

Even as L.A.’s Jewish community grew to 600,000, though, Jews never held the highest offices. The last election changed that in a big, sweeping way, bringing into office a Jewish city controller, Ron Galperin; a Jewish city attorney, Michael Feuer; and a Jewish mayor, Garcetti.

Jews have finally reached the top job at a time when the idea of a pure ethnic voting bloc seems as timely as Tammany Hall. It’s not that Jews don’t vote—they do, disproportionately to their numbers. (Past Los Angeles Times exit polls have shown that Jews, who make up just 6 percent of the city population, constitute about 16 percent of the vote.) But if in the past that vote automatically defaulted to the Jewish candidate, that’s no longer the case. The Jewish vote tends to go to the candidate who best articulates and can best deliver on a socially progressive, fiscally prudent, pro- (or at least not anti-) Israel agenda.

Ethnicity alone doesn’t buy you votes or campaign donations—but familiarity and loyalty help loads. That’s why it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the first Jewish mayor of L.A. might have been a man who was a native of Boyle Heights, who counted a Jewish teacher as his first mentor, and who spent more time in Israel than most Jews: Antonio Villaraigosa. Love him or hate him, the man knew his way around a shul.

The election of Garcetti doesn’t even come with that swell of (often self-congratulatory) Jewish pride that accompanied, say, hearing that Sandy Koufax refused to play on Yom Kippur or that the flash drive was invented in Tel Aviv or that—best of all—Scarlett Johansson is a Member of the Tribe.

Maybe that’s because, in a city that has seen so many Jewish pols and powerbrokers, one more isn’t kvell-worthy. Or perhaps it’s because we want to see how he does before we embrace him.

After all, that early interim Jewish mayor, Bernard Cohn, was a dubious character. He pulled a fast deal on Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of California, which resulted in Pico spending his final years destitute. Cohn was married to Hulda Myer and had three children with her. But after Cohn died, a Catholic woman came forward and proved she was also his wife and had seven children and a house in Los Angeles Plaza with him.

“Claim them and blame them,” Stephen Sass, the historian of Jewish Los Angeles, once told me was his motto when it came to Jewish politicians who fell short of expectations. But if Garcetti does a great job, you can be sure the Jewish community will be bursting with pride.

Whether you take the position that Garcetti’s being Jewish doesn’t matter, or that it only does if he makes his People proud, there’s a deeper question underlying all of this: What, in a post-modern, post-ethnic age, does it mean to be a Jew?

Does it mean that your faith calls you to behave a certain way, to stand for certain things? Does it mean there are certain values and principles that you are charged to uphold? Is there a Jewish vision of social justice or of environmental and communal stewardship? What does it mean not just to choose to be labeled as a Jew, but to choose to act as one? This, of course, is a question that faces every Jew in the modern age, and it now faces Eric Garcetti, who, on July 1, 2013, became the first Jewish mayor of Los Angeles.

The post When Did Eric Garcetti Turn Jewish? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Find out what animal fills Eric Garcetti with terror and the most bruising campaign he’s ever experienced (hint: it wasn’t this one) here.

Find out how Wendy Greuel would defend herself from a SoCal zombie apocalypse and the biggest surprises from her time as city controller here.

The post L.A.’s 2013 Mayoral Candidates appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.