With his years on City Council and the state Assembly, Kevin McCarty brings more than two decades of elected public service to the mayor’s office.

He says being mayor requires a different perspective.

After 15 months in his new job, McCarty invited me to City Hall for what he called a “one-year check-in.” We discussed homelessness, Downtown’s recovery, government efficiency and what surprised him most about being mayor.

We began with homelessness. “There’s no question it’s the issue I deal with every day,” McCarty says.

Not long ago, I read a Washington Post commentary on how to get more housing built. The author was Howard Husock, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

Husock has written several books on housing and is one of the country’s leading thinkers on the issue. I wondered how his ideas could apply to Sacramento. He was happy to talk.

My first question was, what’s right and wrong about California’s approach to solving its affordable housing crisis?

Homeless crises are nothing new in Sacramento. The first one happened in August 1850, when outrageous real estate prices caused people to camp on land that didn’t belong to them.

Everybody had guns in 1850. The guns went off when city officials tried to clear camps around Fourth and J streets and Tahoe Park. Five people died and six were wounded before things calmed down.

Sacramento County’s District 1 supervisor June primary election has four candidates. Question is, are they qualified?

Each prospect offers a version of leadership that sounds reasonable in isolation. But elections aren’t about isolated promises. They’re about tradeoffs, priorities and the complex realities of governing a large, diverse and financially constrained bureaucracy.

Then there’s Senate Bill 802, introduced by state Sen. Angelique Ashby. If it becomes law, the management of homelessness and affordable housing will change significantly.

The bill proposes a joint powers authority to oversee homelessness and housing policies, shifting decision-making away from the county into a regional body.

Where do the candidates stand?

The term “beloved” gets thrown around too much with small businesses. Lou’s Sushi and Vic’s Ice Cream earned it.

Lou Valente worked 30 years behind local sushi counters. Regional publications called him the best in town a decade ago. But disagreements with partners closed his restaurants.

Now Valente is back. His new place, next to Low Brau at the MARRS building in Midtown, lets him sling his boundary-breaking hand rolls and present a phenomenal cocktail program developed by his Low Brau partners.

Camille VandenBerge’s sculptures seem to step from a story in progress. Elongated figures tilt their heads, lift an arm or lean toward an unseen companion. They are human yet otherworldly, poised between motion and stillness, imagination and memory. Listen close. Their presence begins to speak.

“Words are not my medium,” VandenBerge says. “Clay is and paint is.”

That instinctive clarity guides her life’s work. VandenBerge grew up in a household where art was a daily language, not an extracurricular activity. She’s the daughter of ceramic sculptor Peter VandenBerge, a respected figure in Sacramento’s nationally influential clay community.