Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, 47 – with his military background, part-Mexican heritage, Spanish fluency, Rhodes scholarship and progressive credentials – has seen his tentative steps toward a White House bid win encouragement from pundits and politicians alike.

But Garcetti has a disadvantage that doesn’t hamper politicians like Harris, Warren and Biden who don’t have daily responsibilities for making government work better: He’s a mayor who faces fresh scrutiny each day over how his administration is performing. This has yielded months of critical coverage on three major issues:

1) A Los Angeles Times investigation of a retirement program set up for police officers and firefighters showed rampant abusive practices likely costing city taxpayers “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Under the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), approved by voters in 2001, officers and firefighters can get both regular pay and a pension in their final years on the job.

The Times probe found that nearly half of the 5,000 men and women who signed up for DROP got substantial increases in their pensions by claiming work-related disabilities. The newspaper found broad evidence of workers’ compensation fraud – and no evidence the Garcetti administration ever acted to counter the fraud, even after being warned about it in 2016.

The newspaper also found no evidence the program has saved money, as voters were promised in 2001. And instead of keeping officers and firefighters on the job, DROP reportedly led to the loss of thousands of workers who filed disability claims.

Despite the findings, Garcetti earlier this month gave his blessing to a new police contract that retained DROP as is and gave officers a raise of up to 5 percent.

Recycling, homeless programs drew sharp critiques

2) A new 10-year contract with seven companies to improve recycling citywide has proven a public relations debacle for the Garcetti administration. Landlords have reportedly seen recycling bills go up three- to six-fold, leaving many scrambling to raise rents that are already considered sky-high. Many individual customers complain bitterly over extra fees added to their bills by the companies for services that previously were provided without additional charges.

City officials claimed to be blindsided by the problems. But as with the DROP program, there’s evidence that Garcetti and the Los Angeles City Council dropped the ball. The Times noted that former City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana had opposed awarding exclusive long-term contracts but was ignored. Santana contended that promoting recycling competition was more likely to lead to reasonable rates.

3) The city’s troubled efforts to respond to a burgeoning homeless problem. A 21-page report by Santana released in 2015 concluded that the city spent $100 million a year on homelessness in unfocused, marginally successful ways.

This year, a public backlash has built over the Garcetti administration’s slowness in responding to nearly 6,000 requests to clean up homeless encampments. City statistics released in February showed that 2,400 of the complaints had gone unaddressed for more than 90 days.

In an interview with the Times, City Councilman Jose Huizar, who represents a downtown district with a heavy homeless population, depicted City Hall’s response as having failed Angelenos.

On the homeless cleanup front, “How can we go to our constituents and say with a straight face, ‘We will get to this’?” Huizar told the newspaper.

Garcetti has plenty of time to make up his mind about a presidential bid, in terms of qualifying for the ballot in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary in early 2020. He also has some leeway in gearing up fundraising and organizational efforts. The last “outsider” candidate to win the Democratic presidential nod – then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama – didn’t publicly signal his intention to seek the 2008 nomination until October 2006, after spending much of the year saying he would not run.

Both cities cite the same reasons they are epicenters for homelessness: mild climates and extremely expensive housing. But knowing what’s driving the problem isn’t the same as having an answer for it.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti and City Council leaders in 2015 declared a “state of emergency” over the homeless crisis and announced $100 million in funding for homelessness relief in 2015-16, a big increase over previous years. In 2016, city voters followed up by approving a $1.2 billion bond to ramp up plans to build housing for the homeless, and in fiscal 2016-17, homeless funding went up to $138 million.

But since the emergency declaration, the average number of those homeless on a given night according to city tracking has gone up by nearly two-thirds. In 2015, the average number was 21,338. In 2016, it was 28,464. In 2017, with half the year still to go, the number has grown by 18 percent to 34,189.

Not only are efforts to get more homeless into shelters failing, a Friday report in the Los Angeles Times concluded that a $14 million program to clean up homeless encampments was ineffective because as soon as one camp area was closed and cleaned, another popped up nearby.

City officials argued they were making progress in addressing an immense problem. Residents weren’t buying it.

“[Work crews] clean up and they come right back. It’s just a never-ending cycle,” a North Hills hair salon owner told the Times. “You’d think they would come and find a place for them, but they don’t. They just tell them to move.”

Heavy spending producing weak results

In San Francisco, residents – and elected officials – face even worse frustrations. The city spends far more than Los Angeles to deal with a smaller number of homeless people, without the gains one might expect.

In 2015, Mayor Ed Lee was re-elected to a second four-year term after a campaign in which he promised to tackle what was unanimously seen as a humanitarian and civic crisis. But eight months later, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a rare front-page editorial declaring city efforts to have failed.

The number of homeless people on an average night was estimated at about 7,500 in January 2015. By late 2016, city officials’ estimate had jumped to about 10,000, with some homeless advocates saying the number was closer to 12,000. Different counts have different methodologies, leading to disputes over whether the problem is significantly worse than it used to be. But the Chronicle’s front-page editorial came down squarely on the side of those who argue some official counts are much too low.

Meanwhile, as in Los Angeles, attempts to clear homeless encampments that San Francisco voters had blessed by approving a measure prohibiting tents on public sidewalks in November 2016 were depicted by news coverage as more symbolic than substantive. Mayor Lee agreed with the assessment.

City spending on homelessness has gone from $241 million in fiscal 2015-16 to $275 million in 2016-17 to $305 million in the fiscal year that began Saturday. In May, a local nonprofit group also promised to provide a $100 million grant to tackle homeless.

But this may not affect the problem except on the margins. Local governments have long noticed that a relative handful of homeless people – those with serious mental illness – consume a disproportionate share of homeless funding with constant trips to emergency rooms and confrontations with police and residents. In San Francisco, this category of homeless people makes up 3 percent of total homeless but uses one-third of resources. A June 2016 Chronicle story suggested the tab for this group alone could eat up far more than one-third of all funds if its severe problems were addressed with the comprehensive approach that advocates want.

That would leave little to go around for the most common category of homeless person – those who lost shelter after losing a job or after a rent increase or a life emergency such as heavy medical bills.