Amid rising homelessness and mounting outcry from residents and business owners, a Los Angeles city councilman said Wednesday he wants to take a hard look at the way the city responds to the increasing presence of encampments and recreational vehicles.

“What we have isn’t working,” Councilman Mitchell Englander said.

In recent months, the issue of homelessness has become inescapable, with residents encountering more homelessness in their neighborhoods, according to the councilman, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley.

“There’s not a conversation I have – whether it’s fixing a street, trimming a tree, walking to school or going to a grocery store – where we don’t talk about homelessness,” he said.

Out of Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino’s office: “Ditto,” said spokesman Branimir Kvartuc.

“We’re very, very conscious of it,” Kvartuc said. “It’s a battle every day.”

Englander also has been hearing concerns from city officials tasked with enforcing rules around encampments and recreational vehicles, he said.

San Pedro has battled similar issues, with encampments rooted around the community’s historic post office and waterfront overlook park, though Kvartuc points out that other parts of the city, such as Venice, have much bigger problems with homelessness.

Robert Nizich, an attorney with offices inside San Pedro’s main post office, sends out a round-robin email featuring daily photos of the sidewalk and park scene outside his office windows.

“The condition grows worse daily, and nothing is done to permanently solve the issue,” he wrote in a recent email. “New faces pop up just like their tents. Whack a mole does not work. A consistent and sustained effort on a daily basis is required.

His intent with the emails, which go out to city and business leaders every day, is to keep the issue front-and-center until authorities find a permanent solution to a situation he and others say is ruining the town.

“Basically, they occupy the street,” Nizich told the Daily Breeze in a January 2016 interview. “If they’re told to move, they move to the park (across the street), then back again – it’s an ebb and flow, like the ocean.”

According to Englander, Los Angeles police officers, along with transportation and sanitation officials, say “the resources we have and the ordinances we have in place need help and fixing.”

Los Angeles voters recently passed a pair of tax measures expected to bring in more money to build housing and provide services to the city’s growing homeless population. But some say changes are happening too slowly.

Residents and business owners have taken to social media, such as the Saving San Pedro Facebook page, and in some cases submitted petitions and organized protests to demand that city leaders enforce existing city policies that are aimed at removing illegally erected encampments and hauling away large vehicles that are improperly parked on city streets.

Saying he wants to treat the issue of homelessness as a crisis, Englander on Wednesday responded with four motions that will take a “comprehensive look at current rules and methods” for addressing homelessness in Los Angeles.

He said he wants to pair this examination of the city’s enforcement policies, with efforts to get more homeless people into housing and set up with jobs.

Two of the motions introduced Wednesday are aimed at re-evaluating a recently adopted policy for regulating homeless encampments.

The city last year began enforcing an ordinance known as 56.11, which sets up rules for “the storage of personal property in the public right of way.” It requires that city officials give advance notice before taking down homeless encampments and removing other personal property that blocks public sidewalks and areas.

That ordinance was “enacted to create a balance of the needs of the public to access clean and sanitary public areas consistent with their intended uses” with the needs of people who are homeless and “have no other alternatives for the storage of personal property,” according to one of the motions.

Some city leaders have complained that under the 56.11 regulation, homeless encampments are merely taken down in one place and set up soon after in another location nearby.

An effort to set up a storage facility near an elementary school in San Pedro failed last year amid an uproar of protests. The issue, at the request of LAPD’s Harbor Division, will be revisited soon, Kvartuc said, with the police station in San Pedro offered as a potential location.

Englander and Buscaino are calling for sanitation and Police Department officials to give “an overview of which aspects of the ordinance have worked, which aspects have not worked as well” and the effect that ordinance has had on “Los Angeles city communities.”

In a second motion on the issue, Englander says he wants to look into making HOPE teams, which are made up of police officers who work with sanitation workers to remove and cleaning up encampments areas that are illegally set-up, a permanent LAPD program.

Similar complaints also have been made about a city ordinance that allows people to live out of recreational vehicles. The city earlier this year began enforcing an ordinance that bans living out of cars and recreational vehicles along residential streets and near parks, schools and day cares. RVs used for dwelling purposes can only be parked in commercial and industrial areas.

With this ordinance set to expire early next year, Englander and Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez say it should be evaluated.

Meanwhile, Englander and Councilman Bob Blumenfield, whose district includes the West Valley, are looking into other methods to regulate recreational vehicles.

In their motion, the council members are calling for an “analysis of the best practices and ordinances of other local municipalities regarding the permitting, restricting and/or banning RV parking on public streets.”

Since 2010, city officials have responded to complaints about RVs by posting signs on certain streets to prevent the parking of “oversize vehicles” during the early morning hours from 2-6 a.m.

“When oversize parking restriction signs are installed, however, the vehicles often move to nearby streets until they are also posted,” the motion reads. “Communities continue to experience a proliferation of these vehicles, and the current program has provided a piecemeal approach to the problem.”