California State AssemblyCandidate for District 9

As I addressed affordable housing in a prior response, I will focus on homelessness.

First and foremost, we must stop criminalizing the way unhoused people survive. Immediately, we must stop arresting, confiscating the survival gear of, and ticketing people who have no choice but to sleep outside. Safe ground is the first step. We can provide sanitation infrastructure and services to people where they are it. Outreach to people experiencing homelessness should be done by health workers and social workers, not the police.

We should create a very high vacancy tax. There should not be one vacant home while so many sleep outside. I’m inspired by the commitment and power of #Moms4Housing in Oakland!

We need strong tenant protection and emergency assistance programs to keep people in their homes. We need more domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse funding, including wrap-around supportive services for people who are struggling. We need the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes so we can build the social housing and create the services we need to help our communities thrive.

I believe that housing is a human right and that we should create a legally enforceable mandate that would force municipalities and the state to house people, comparable to the laws in California on providing for education.

We must treat homelessness like the crisis it is and fund solutions accordingly. There is no one solution to homelessness. Every solution to homelessness should come from a place of empathy.

My plans are to:

Protect and expand upon current reform legislation

In 2016 and 2018, after three decades of ‘tough on crime’ policies that led to over-incarceration and devastated marginalized communities, California voters passed Proposition 47 and Proposition 57 by wide margins. Both ballot initiatives served as a referendum on California’s failed approach to public safety. Proposition 47 reclassified certain theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. Proposition 57 created opportunities to earn parole consideration for people serving prison sentences for nonviolent offenses. It also incentivizes participation in rehabilitation and education programs by creating a credit earning system for inmates who reach certain milestones, like earning an academic degree or graduating from a substance abuse course.

A ballot initiative that aims to roll back much of the progress made by Propositions 47 and 57 will appear on the November 2020 ballot. The Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act of 2020 is premised on the falsehood that crime is on the rise in California, and that recent criminal justice reforms are to blame. In fact, according to the Public Policy Institute of California overall crime rates are at near historic lows.

As a victim of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse, I believe that the ‘nonviolent offenses’ category should be expanded, however this measure would also make theft of $250 a felony on the third offense,  and allow law enforcement to collect DNA samples from misdemeanor drug and property ‘suspects’ for future use. The measure is capitalizing on the ‘nonviolent offenses’ category to reintroduce a lesser form of the 3 strikes law and override DNA privacy protections.

Support the reduction of Recidivism through Justice Reinvestment

Justice reinvestment is a two-step data-driven approach to improving public safety and reducing long-term criminal justice spending: First, recalibrate state and local corrections budgets to reflect decreasing prison and jail populations. Second, reinvest the savings from California’s decreasing incarceration into evidence-based strategies that decrease crime and reduce recidivism. When Governor Brown signed AB 109 (Public Safety Realignment) in 2011, he implored that "California must reinvest its criminal justice resources to support community-based corrections programs and evidence-based practices that will achieve improved public safety returns on this state's substantial investment in its criminal justice system."

Support Juvenile Justice Reform

Early interventions for at-risk youth is a national best practice for keeping them from entering the criminal justice system, including trauma-informed mental health support, restorative justice-based accountability, education support, and family therapy. Research also demonstrates that justice-involved youth are best served closer to their homes and communities in small, therapeutic environments. Unfortunately, children in California, especially African American and Latino children, still spend a disproportionate amount of time in detention facilities.

Lowering rent costs requires a multifaceted solution. We must focus on rent caps and tenant rights as well as building not only housing, but affordable housing. For the short term, my policy priorities include the construction of affordable housing. However, what is truly needed is social housing - to decomodify housing and make certain that everyone has a comfortable and secure place to call home in their community.

Affordable housing is generally divided into three categories: low (50-80% AMI), very low (30-50% AMI), and extremely low (0-30% AMI) income housing. The more deeply affordable housing becomes, the more expensive it is to build and operate. We should be spending our resources to build for the most vulnerable.

To be clear, market rate housing must also be built. However, planning and zoning for all housing types is important to ensure that housing for low, very low, and extremely low-income people is distributed equitably, including in neighborhoods with high opportunity, good schools, parks, libraries.