Half of California’s 10 Biggest Cities Are Choosing a New Mayor

Of California’s 10 most populous cities, half are about to choose a new mayor.

The races to lead Los Angeles, San Jose, Long Beach, Oakland and Anaheim will be decided when voters go to the polls on Tuesday. And in all of these contests, a dominant theme has emerged on debate stages and in candidates’ media interviews: California’s affordable housing and homelessness crises.

Perhaps it isn’t surprising, given that the Golden State has some of the nation’s highest rents and home prices, as well as more than 100,000 people living on its streets. But mayoral elections are typically characterized by unique, local issues, so the across-the-board focus on housing is somewhat unusual, said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. “It’s becoming an embedded issue in these cities — that’s a change,” he said.

Fueling the frustration around housing are most likely two-plus years of eviction anxiety set off by the coronavirus pandemic, spiking home prices and a growing inflation problem — on top of the state’s long-term affordable housing shortage. An increase in visible homelessness in California over the past several years may have also affected voters’ priorities, said John Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College.

“You go into many areas of Los Angeles, you see encampments, you see homeless people on the street corner and it makes an impression on people,” Pitney told me. “Whether or not the data indicate that homelessness is increasing, people perceive that it is. When you’re out for a walk, you’re going to a store, you’re driving somewhere, it hits you in the face.”

In the race for the next mayor of Los Angeles, where the number of people living on the streets continues to grow, the candidates, Representative Karen Bass and Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer, have been repeatedly grilled on their plans to ease homelessness as well as the city’s dearth of affordable housing. Caruso, who has spent a record-breaking sum on his campaign, frequently airs ads promising that his strategy for homelessness is better and “bigger” than his competitor’s.

In San Jose’s contest for mayor, “both candidates have listed housing, homelessness and police staffing as top priorities,” The San Francisco Chronicle reports. In a recent poll of Oakland voters about their mayoral election, 97 percent said homelessness was either an extremely or a very serious problem, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. In Long Beach, where the current mayor, Robert Garcia, has started a bid for Congress, both candidates vying to replace him “agreed that homelessness and public safety are among Long Beach’s top issues,” reports The Press-Telegram.

While policing and crime have been of high concern for decades, Sonenshein said, it’s the heavy emphasis on housing and homelessness that’s new.

Sonenshein said he thought that a generational shift in the electorate had helped make affordable housing more of a major issue, as renters make up an increasingly large share of the voting bloc in California. “At least in L.A., the housing issue looks a little different if you’re 25 and trying to decide if you can stay in L.A. while your rent is going up,” he told me. “That’s a different point of view, obviously, than longstanding homeowners.”

Then there’s the question of how much mayors can actually do to address homelessness and housing issues. It’s a long-term crisis that crosses jurisdictions and is extraordinarily difficult to solve, particularly for a local leader, experts say.

“Being mayor of just about any big city is a highly frustrating job,” Pitney said. After candidates run and win, they enter office “and then they’re gobsmacked by reality.”

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What you get

A Southern California designer wanted to create a home where “everything gets put away at night” — and she succeeded. Sort of.

Where we’re traveling

Today’s tip comes from Bob Newell, who recommends a Central Coast trip:

“My family started going to the Carmel-Monterey peninsula when I was young, and it’s a special destination for my wife and I to this day. I’m amazed at how friendly the residents are at this special place. The food, breakfast to dinner, is always extraordinary.

One of the can’t-miss visits is to Cannery Row and the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium. It’s a half-day affair on its own. Additional backstage tours are special ways to learn more about this amazing facility. You can come face to face with otherwise elusive marine life such as cute sea otters, giant ocean sunfish and hypnotic jellies. You can explore the very same tide pools that captivated John Steinbeck.”

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

Tell us

Have you visited any of the travel destinations that we’ve recommended in the newsletter? Send us a few lines about your trip, and a photo!

We’d like to share them in upcoming editions of the newsletter. Email us at CAToday@nytimes.com. Please include your name and the city in which you live.

And before you go, some good news

As it was for humans, 2020 was a challenging year for monarch butterflies.

That year, fewer than 2,000 of the insects were counted along the West Coast from Mendocino County to Baja California from November to March, when the butterflies typically overwinter. The next year, the butterflies enjoyed a comeback with over 250,000 monarchs counted.

Now, as winter approaches again, butterfly enthusiasts are hopeful that the monarchs’ population will boom even further.

On Oct. 21, the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History counted over 3,800 butterflies. On the same day in 2021, it counted only 2,593, The Monterey Herald reports.