California State AssemblyCandidate for District 53

My top priority as a representative of my assembly district is to protect renters, particularly those who are cost-burdened or at risk of displacement or eviction. Although housing is an incredibly complex issue for our state, the specificity of my top priority comes from direct experience knocking on thousands of doors in my district, where you cannot escape from stories of eviction, landlord abuse, or out-pricing. Additionally, if and when elected, it is likely that I will be the only renter in the entire assembly, where there is only one current renter in an assembly of 80, with over 25% of the assembly being landlords.  

In my first term in office, I will begin to build a coalition with other legislators like State Senator Maria Elena Durazo who have stated that they are unafraid of turning over the Ellis Act, which currently allows for the eviction of tenants so that the landlord can go out of business. The Ellis Act has been used as an opportunity for speculative real estate corporations to buy out lots in the name of development. Although landlords may authentically want to go out of business, unlike any other business for which displaced employees might be able to benefit from unemployment services, we do not have a temporary substitute for becoming unhoused and being unable to afford the rates of housing in our communities. We must find other options for landlords wishing to retire and/or residents who might enter housing markets incongruent with their means.

Additionally, tenants deserve the right to counsel, state-wide, and this is a priority. When regular people are charged by the criminal justice system, they are entitled to a public defender if they cannot afford one. Similarly, when residents are evicted, most evicted residents lack personal legal counsel to help them understand their rights. Studies of right to counsel in other parts of the country have shown an immediate decrease in the number of evictions, as exploitation of the eviction process also decreases.

Most of all, we must center the urgent need for 1.4 million affordable rental units for our most cost-burdened communities, as this is not only a production issue or renter issue, but this is about stopping an increasing population of those who are unhoused as well. We cannot create or pass housing proposals that produce only a percentage of affordable units; we have to create proposals that focus on our communities in most need. Assemblymember David Chiu demonstrated this type of incentive with his 2019 “density bonus” bill that provided certain flexibilities for developments that were intended primarily for affordable housing, as opposed to just partially for affordable housing. We should continue to ideate legislation that provides incentives and flexibilities like this for affordable housing developers; for communities that begin to welcome this type of development en masse; for property-owners willing to take on ADUs meant to serve section 8 vouchers, unhoused folks in need of transitional housing, or other cost-burdened low-income tenants; and for organizations that help ease property-owners into those responsibilities.  

As we more and more seriously feel the impact of climate change, we will need to be more strategic, smart, and coordinated as a state to ensure and protect clean, sustainable water sources for all Californians. Currently, our water sources are divided into surface water and groundwater. Almost all of our surface water is in the northern third of California, while almost all of the demand occurs in the bottom two thirds of our state. Additionally, scientists, policy-makers, and community members are just beginning to align on what possible groundwater management systems could be implemented in order to conserve water for the state, while enabling agricultural needs to be met and support the livelihoods of our farming families. Most groundwater basins are in the Central Valley or along the Central and South Coast, and too many are known to be in overdraft, meaning that we are depleting those water sources too quickly. All of this will demand that (a) we put in place data collection systems that help us understand and compare water quantities and movement throughout the state, that (b) these data systems limit disruption to agriculture and families, that (c) these data systems maintain basic privacy needs of folks whose properties contain or are built atop of water supplies, and that (d) we legislate the funding to be able to implement these systems. We cannot regular water and make the strongest decisions around how we can protect and conserve our sources unless we create the infrastructure to understand our water sources (and their users) first.

I support the national and state iterations of a Green New Deal. In district 53 in particular, our density of life and infrastructure -- along with the multitude of freeways that bring non-district 53 residents in and out of district 53 neighborhoods, tourist attractions, and places of work -- contributes to the deadly smog that clouds our city. The National Air Toxins Assessment has created a map of cancer risk for the country and almost exactly over the gerry-mandered puzzle piece shape of district 53 rests a dark red indicator that we are at the 95th-100th percentile nationally in cancer risk due to our quality of life. Battling this impending environmental injustice against communities that are predominantly immigrant and people of color requires that (a) we ensure residents access to healthcare and also (b) plan for long-term changes in the ways we build and operate the second largest city in the nation, such that we curb and ultimately eliminate environmental determinants that are a hazard to our health:

• First and foremost, we must accelerate a transition into a world of zero emissions technology to counteract the pollution left hanging over our district. This means not only building the infrastructure to incentivize travel and transportation without gasoline or diesel, but also accelerating the uses of zero emission technology in public transportation, delivery transportation, and buildings (which many people forget also contribute to carbon emissions).
• At the same time, we must increase green space to counteract pollution in our district. Almost the entirety of our district experiences the hazards of pollution that exist merely by living, working, or going to school within 1000 feet of a heavily-traveled road (like a freeway). My own neighborhood in Koreatown has some of the smallest parkland per capita of any area in Los Angeles; the long-term health costs of this quality of life, in an area high in population density, are not in line with the quality of life that the second largest city in the nation and the fifth largest economy in the world can provide. As we think about possible increasing density closer to the transit lines that criss cross our district, we cannot forget to include a plan for greenspace.   
• Lastly, we must halt the fossil fuel industry and its contributions to smog, global warming, and other fracking-related pollution. We can’t transition to a zero emissions world if big business continues to make possible a world dependent on gas, coal, and oil. I refuse to take fossil fuel money as a small show of my commitment toward this end, and the incumbent should do the same.

Safety and justice for all must begin with those who disproportionately experience injustice and lack of safety at the hands of the state itself. We know that we must lower criminal justice outcomes for LGBTQIA+ folks, people of color, women, immigrants, and non-English speakers before our communities reach the criminal justice system.

First, we must seek longer-term community strategies that pivot away from incarceration being our primary mode of dealing with any sort of difference or deviant behavior in our society, as a way to reduce engagement with the criminal justice system at all. We know too much now about the necessity of basic community services like health care (physical, mental, sexual and reproductive), housing, and jobs that help people to manage their lives independently and in community, and the lack of these services and opportunities produce behaviors that we then police -- leading to inequities in the criminal justice system that exist on lines of race and class because of the ways in which institutional racism has influenced the planning of neighborhoods, cities, and their services.

On the other side of things, we must also ensure that public employees, law enforcement and justice system personnel, and correctional peace officers engage in ongoing diversity and cultural competency development and reflection. Too many marginalized communities (including LGBTQIA+ communities) experience (at best) microaggressions and (at worst) explicit hate crimes when others -- particularly others with positional power (such as public employees, who are gatekeepers to services, or enforcement officers, who can exert harm or fatal power) -- are ill-equipped to understand their identities, expression, or traumas. Moreover, diversity training cannot be a one-and-done deal to satisfy a policy or requirement; in order to actually have its effect, diversity training must be ongoing and work not only deepen one’s understanding of a more marginalized community, but also develop stronger, authentic, and more vulnerable relationships with members of that community.

Lastly, we will not appreciably build a more just world unless we diversify our state judiciary, much of whom are elected by an electorate who don't know a whole lot about their choices, or appointed by those already in power. We must diversify those entering the law profession (and one of the ways I am supportive of doing so is finding a way to repeal prop 209, which blocks our abilities to implement affirmative action in our public universities), and we must do a better job supporting the public to make educated decisions about judgeships that are elected, which serve as a prerequisite to appointments for higher judicial positions. Information about judges aside from their names is difficult to find, and those who are running for positions must also navigate the cost of campaigning for their positions, rather than exist on the terms of their merit and potential as a judge. We must find a way to better democratize the selection of our judges, whether that means campaign finance reform, required information in voter guides, or some other form of igniting informed public consent.