President Joe Biden has nominated Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti as ambassador to India. Assuming the Senate confirms him, Garcetti, who would leave office early (his second term ends in December 2022), might find India familiar in certain respects. Like Mumbai or Delhi, Los Angeles now has massive homeless encampments throughout the city, even increasingly in posh neighborhoods like Brentwood and throughout the middle-class strongholds of the San Fernando Valley. Late last week, as Garcetti prepared to leave town, homeless advocates, angered by a city ordinance against indiscriminate camping on city streets, vandalized Getty House, the mayor’s official residence.

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