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California Today

California Today: Los Angeles’s New Plan to House the Homeless

Homeless encampments in Los Angeles in December. A new program would set up temporary shelters on city-owned land.Credit...Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

Good morning.

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For California communities struggling with homelessness, the challenge has been to reconcile two demands: Moving encampments of people off sidewalks and into shelters, while dealing with neighborhood opposition that, to name one example, blocked Orange County’s attempt to build homeless camps.

There are few places where the crisis is as severe as it is in Los Angeles, where 25,000 people are living on the streets. Mayor Eric M. Garcetti on Monday will announce an aggressive $20 million program to work around neighborhood opposition and potentially build temporary 100-bed shelters on city-owned land in all 15 City Council districts.

To help speed the opening of the 1,500 beds, the plan includes an emergency declaration that would in effect override existing zoning, building and fire code provisions.

This measure comes as Mr. Garcetti, who is exploring a potential presidential bid in 2020 and was in Iowa this weekend, has come under criticism for the rise in homelessness.

The calculation is that as people confront growing encampments lining sidewalks from downtown Los Angeles to Venice their attitudes toward homelessness are changing.

Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Homeless Services Authority, said temporary beds provided a bridge for people to find permanent housing — either on their own or in housing Los Angeles is building with $1.2 billion authorized by voters in 2016. “The objective is not to shelter everybody, and that’s O.K.,” he said. “It’s not as if we have infinite resources.”

A district is not obligated to build a shelter, and could forfeit its money, though officials argued that was unlikely given the pervasiveness of the problem.

“We have no intention to force projects on any district,” said Matt Szabo, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff. “We are confident that there is sufficient consensus that we need these projects that you will see a lot of progress really quickly.”

Under the plan, city crews will clean up encampments after their occupants have moved to the temporary shelters.

“We’re not trying to say this will take care of the entire homeless population,” said Suzi Emmerling, the mayor’s director of communications. “But we do believe it will make a significant dent.”

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

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Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles, right, toured downtown Des Moines with the city’s major, Frank Cownie, left, on Friday.Credit...Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

• Mr. Garcetti’s visit to Iowa this weekend was an “all-but-unannounced” bid for the 2020 presidential candidacy. In an interview, he spoke about what running for president would mean — and his favorite jazz pianists. [Los Angeles Times]

• Antiwar activists protesting the U.S.-led missile strikes in Syria gathered outside the homes of Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco on Saturday. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• More local governments are resisting California’s efforts to defy the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. City leaders in Los Alamitos are scheduled to vote on Monday on a proposal to exempt the Orange County city from the so-called sanctuary state law. [Associated Press]

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Patrick Soon-Shiong, the new owner of The Los Angeles Times, at his biotechnology company in Culver City last month.Credit...Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

• The new owner of The Los Angeles Times dropped a bombshell on his employees on Friday: He is moving the newspaper from its historic Art Deco building in downtown to the suburban city of El Segundo. [The New York Times]

• Facebook took the punches for the rest of Silicon Valley as its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, testified on Capitol Hill last week. Google and other large tech companies seem to have avoided similar scrutiny — for now. [The New York Times]

• A year and a half after voters passed Proposition 64, one in seven California cities permits recreational cannabis stores; only one in three allows any kind of cannabis business at all, a new study found. [The Mercury News]

• Pay ratios between chief executives and average workers are being disclosed for the first time under a new federal mandate. In Southern California, some top executives make 450 times as much as the rank and file. [Orange County Register]

• The driver of the S.U.V. that plunged off a cliff in Mendocino County with her family aboard last month was drunk, the California Highway Patrol said on Friday. [The New York Times]

• The Mendocino County authorities were searching for another family that vanished during a road trip. Some of their belongings and parts from their car have been found in the swollen Eel River. [The New York Times]

• The Golden State Warriors shook off their late-season stumbles to defeat the San Antonio Spurs, 113-92, in the N.B.A. playoffs on Saturday. But can winning become fun again for the Warriors? [The New York Times]

• Newly found footage showing the extent of the damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was publicly screened for the first time at a theater in Fremont over the weekend. [The New York Times]

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The newly reinstalled Getty Villa, on the edge of Malibu, is a re-creation of a Roman seaside estate complete with Ionic columns.Credit...Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

• The renovated Getty Villa, the branch of the Getty Museum near Malibu that is dedicated to antiquities, goes beyond J. Paul Getty’s original collecting focus. Here are five must-see works of art at the museum, which opens Wednesday. [The New York Times]

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John Muir, conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club, pictured around the 1860s.Credit...Wisconsin Historical Society, via Associated Press

• Mayor Garcetti delivers his State of the City address at Los Angeles City Hall at 10 a.m. Monday Pacific time.

Saturday is John Muir Day, in honor of the Scottish-born writer and naturalist who helped preserve wildernesses including Yosemite National Park.

• The second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival concludes Sunday with performances by Eminem, Odesza, Cardi B, Miguel and others.

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Beyoncé‘s headlining performance at Coachella on Saturday.Credit...Larry Busacca/Getty Images

“Beyoncé is bigger than Coachella.”

She took the stage in Indio on Saturday night in a two-hour performance that reinvented the festival set, teaching history and sweating the details, our critic wrote in his review.

And she made history as well: A year after canceling because of pregnancy, Beyoncé became the first black woman to headline Coachella.

“Let’s just cut to the chase: There’s not likely to be a more meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical performance by an American musician this year, or any year soon,” our critic, Jon Caramanica, wrote.

And The Los Angeles Times’s critic called it “one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in 20 years of professional show-going.”

Beyoncé is part of the most female-friendly lineup in Coachella history, The Desert Sun noted. Most of the 167 acts are male, but 38 female solo artists or groups and more than a dozen bands with female members will have performed by the festival’s close this weekend.

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

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

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