Prioritize green transportation:
Securing funding for safe walking and cycling routes should be a priority for our region. We must legislate with urgency to create more green transportation options in our urban areas and rural communities.
Prioritize just and equitable transition:
Living wages jobs matter. Facing climate change, we have an opportunity to create green living wage jobs for our future. I am committed to ensuring jobs opportunities are inclusive and support a diverse workforce.
Prioritize workforce housing and ownership:
Home ownership was historically the only pathway to financial assets for the middle class. As we expand assistance for exiting houselessness and providing subsidized housing, we need to provide equal efforts to the creation of workforce housing.
Here in the 40th we face a staggering housing crisis. It affects not only groups that quickly come to mind as traditionally disenfranchised and who certainly face the worst of it, like the the un-housed population, the elderly, the disabled, and minorities (especially agricultural workers). It also affects the vast majority of the working class! Having a job, or even two in many cases doesn't ensure the ability to have safe and stable housing for working people. Housing prices have outstripped wages by a LOT for a LONG time.
For so many people owning a home has become a pipe dream along the lines of "if I won the lottery". Rentals are even more expensive than house payments in most cases. I pay almost $1,000 less to own my home than my neighbors do to rent a similar place to live. Housing availability is at an all time low as well, often dipping below 1.5% driving prices even higher, and far beyond the means of the average income. Worse still, it becomes a Catch-22 for so many! Ever increasing rental costs keep people from ever saving up the money necessary for a down payment on a home of their own and leave them forever subject to rental price increases. That means if you can't save for a home this year, you certainly can't next year.
We must find a way to address housing equity not only for our most vulnerable in the form of low-income housing, but also address the idea of affordable work force housing. Cashiers, entry level professionals, trades people, and office workers all need and deserve safe, stable housing in our community.
Crisis prevention, stabilization, and recovery:
We must strengthen our federal, state, county, and community partnerships to address the mental health and substance abuse crisis. Decades of underfunding of services has put the pressure on our local communities to heal a national problem. We must partner from the top down to fund and create more services for community members in crisis.