Priorities
Housing & Homelessness
Public Safety & Addiction
Our Climate Crisis
Housing & Homelessness
The number one cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing. Portland is falling behind comparable cities in keeping up with expanding demand. As a result, unsanctioned camping has become all too prevalent in our city.
Portlanders have repeatedly voted to raise our own taxes to pay for solutions to the homelessness crisis. But you wouldn’t know it when you look around. Already available funds can make visible and meaningful differences literally overnight.
Making sure everyone, regardless of income, has housing options is good public policy and it’s the right thing to do. We must work intentionally to build more housing that is affordable on a working-class salary. We must bring a focus to speeding up the permitting process and lowering the city’s fees for those working to build Portland out of our homelessness crisis.
It’s time to get the work done to ensure every Portlander is housed. We will do a better job in partnering with other governments. The lack of that is the single biggest institutional barrier to our ability to begin to heal as a city. The city is poised to contribute over $40 million this year to the joint city-county Joint Office of Homelessness Services, yet there we don’t even have a database of the resources at the organizations we are funding.
Keeping Portlanders in their homes is the most humane, cost-effective way to ensure our homelessness crisis doesn’t expand. We will work to ensure tenants’ rights are bolstered. The cost of expanding rental assistance programs is worth every penny to prevent the trauma of sleeping in a tent.
Public Safety & Addiction
Portlanders have lost a sense of safety in our community. Public drug use is prevalent throughout our city, crime rates are up, 911 has record-breaking wait times and our ability to solve crime seems to have ground to a halt.
We are experiencing labor shortages for paramedics, dispatchers, and patrol officers which limits the ability to respond when our neighbors are in need. As someone who completed Oregon’s basic police academy, served three years in uniform as a Reserve Deputy Sheriff for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and had my closest friend alive shot and killed by a police officer, I will bring an unparalleled depth of knowledge about public safety issues to City Council.
As we work to manage the triple crisis of homelessness, addiction, and mental health, we also need to expand non-law enforcement services like Portland Street Response, a nationally recognized program that assists people experiencing mental health and behavioral crises.
If elected, I will have no higher priority than opening a sobering center in Portland. The city has not had one for years. And there are far too few beds in detox centers and rehabilitation facilities. With Measure 110 money, there is an opportunity to work toward solutions, but it has been stymied by a lack of focus on training a qualified workforce. The city needs to be a better partner in shifting that conversation, and having somewhere other than jail for police to take those in need.
We need to begin the process of restoring community policing in Portland. To achieve the goal, we need to start a generational shift within the Portland Police Bureau, and begin to reconsider how – and who – we hire. We should hire from within our community first and we should incentivize officers to live in Portland. All of this will work toward a culture of accountability within the Portland Police to that everyone feels safe in our city.
Climate Change
Global climate change is an existential threat to our existence and the most vulnerable among us are the ones that suffer the most. As a city, we need to prepare for the realities of climate change - because they are already here. We must act now a city to do our part.
Voters passed the Portland Clean Energy Fund as a first step to our city becoming a leader in addressing climate change. Because of that measure, we have the funds to begin the work and the plans to be leader.s What we need is the political willpower to act in a way to that best protects the climate, and not bow to special interests. A 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and complete carbon neutrality by 2050 is possible.
Through the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund, the city will have over $750 million to spend over the next five years. That’s more than $3 every day from every Portlander going to combat climate change. We should be proud of our willingness to pay that, but we should demand our leaders spend it in a manner that maximizes the amount of funds available.
Portland is Worth Fighting For.
I want to hear your ideas too!
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