Everything you need to know about the latest executive directive regarding homelessness issued by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was summed up by her chief of housing and homelessness, Mercedes Marquez.

“I’m not looking at building shelters,” Marquez said.

So Friday’s directive from Mayor Bass, ordering city officials to spend the next three weeks coming up with a list of surplus and unused city-owned properties that might be suitable for homeless housing, cannot result in a rapid temporary solution to the crisis of tens of thousands of people living on the streets of Los Angeles. It can only result in  — let me see if I can make this printable in a family newspaper — bureaucratic equine droppings.

The mayor has demanded that city officials evaluate each of the sites on the list by March 31 to see which ones would be best suited for housing. She could just read the January 2022 report by then-Controller Ron Galperin titled, “City Properties Available for Homeless Housing and Services.”

You’d think the City Hall crowd that is so enamored of plastic grocery bags that can be reused 125 times (it’s the law) would find some virtue in reusing a list that happens to be the same list they’re ordering city officials to draw up again.

No, said aides to Mayor Bass, when asked about it. The new list will be a “deeper look.”

They’ll have to shovel down to that depth pretty quickly, given the mayor’s March 31 deadline.

It’s easy to say city-owned properties should be used for housing, but there are “challenges,” as Galperin called them, in making that happen. He divided these into categories that he labeled “Asset management system,” “Departmental operations,” “Community opposition,” “Site characteristics” and “Proprietary departments.”

Allow me to translate that diplomatic language into English.

• “We thought it was, but our records are wrong.” The General Services Department maintains the city’s property database, but the GSD relies on other city departments for information. As a result, Galperin explained, the data “can contain errors” and isn’t always up-to-date.

• “Hey, we’re using that.” The task of repurposing city-owned land “becomes markedly more challenging,” Galperin reported, when “the affected department would need to modify its operations” if the site was turned into housing.

• “Not here, you don’t.” Community opposition has many facets. City-owned property that’s suitable for housing may also be suitable for commercial development that would produce local jobs and tax revenue, or it might be a site that has been identified for development as a park in an area that doesn’t have enough of them. Communities have opinions about land use.

• “It will cost how much??” Galperin wrote that there are many reasons why a “vacant or underutilized city property may be deemed infeasible.” Problems include “regulatory hurdles” such as wildfire risk, pollution problems and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Then there are major infrastructure issues, such as the need to have power, water and sewer service on the site. This can make the project “cost prohibitive.”

• “We don’t work for you.” Properties controlled by the city’s “proprietary departments” — LAX, the Port of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — are subject to more “regulatory constraints” than city properties controlled by “Council-controlled departments,” Galperin wrote. In other words, it’s nice that the mayor issued a directive. That and seven dollars will buy you a cup of coffee at the airport.

The true opportunity to end the crisis on our streets can be found in the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 ruling in Martin v. Boise, which held that cities may enforce an anti-camping ordinance if they have enough shelter beds available for everyone who wants one.

But shelter beds and enforcement are two things that are opposed vehemently by activists, who fight ferociously to keep tent encampments on the streets until taxpayers give free apartments to all, with no requirements for sobriety or anything else.

Build shelters. Fund addiction-recovery programs and residential psychiatric care facilities. There are not enough beds, and there are too many bureaucrats. The streets should be safe and secure for all residents. It’s time to stop holding the entire city of Los Angeles hostage to the irrational demands of a few.

Susan Shelley can be reached at Susan@SusanShelley.com. Follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley