Tacoma General Election 2023

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My top priority for addressing homelessness is getting more people off the street, out of  the dangerous and unsanitary unsanctioned encampments, and into managed shelters  where they can begin to have the root causes of their situation addressed. I will  continue to support the successful camping ordinance and would like to see it expanded  to areas around schools. Finally, we must continue to focus on building housing at all  levels, especially affordable housing, to move people onto a path of stability. Funding  must be priorities of the city’s general fund but with accountability and benchmarks to  measure success. 

Public safety is the paramount duty of municipal government and it’s the primary issue  of my campaign. Our community is suffering because the city has not prioritized  reducing crime in recent years and this is simply unacceptable. I will increase staffing  levels at the police department and commit to budgeting for officers and alternative  responders at levels needed for a city of our size. Additionally, I will ensure our law  enforcement has resources to prevent, solve, and prosecute crimes. Finally, we must  invest in therapeutic courts to address the root causes of crime. 

I will be voting no on Measure 1. I believe we must find a balanced approach to this  issue and the ballot measure imposes such onerous requirements that I believe it will  have a chilling effect on the market and drive “mom and pop” owners out of the market,  reducing the supply of rental housing. I believe the council’s recent rental housing  package struck a better balance. Ultimately, we need to make changes that strike a  better balance of protecting renters while ensuring we continue to incentivize growth in  the availability of housing.

I would like to focus our current efforts on emergency homeless shelters, mental health services, and drug addiction treatment.  The 9th Circuit’s decision Martin v. Boise states that no city can enforce any camping ban unless there is shelter space available, a decision that I agree with, because you cannot make simply existing illegal.  We need to ensure that we have enough shelter space to accommodate everyone who needs it.  By focusing on emergency shelters, we will be able to accommodate six times as many people as we can with tiny homes or hotels. 

My top priority, in the immediate time frame, is to cut the 911 response times in half.  Our average priority 1 response times are 10 minutes, and our average priority 4 response times are about 2 hours.  We have homicide detectives working 3 cases at a time, and we have so many stolen cars that the department has had to resort to taking reports over the phone.  In the short term, we need more officers.  In the long term, we need to re-shore manufacturing jobs from overseas into the Port of Tacoma and increase training and vocational programs.

I will personally be voting against the measure.  I believe that provisions like the 9-month eviction moratoriums and the required relocation assistance will be far too onerous for the mom-and-pop landlords, which will result in further corporatization of the rental market.  If there is a safety violation in a rental unit, I would prefer to address it through code enforcement with the required fix, rather than just allowing the renter to stay in that dangerous situation with protection against eviction.  I want to build starter homes so that we can turn Tacoma renters into Tacoma owners.

There is no one solution to solving homelessness. We need more shelters, more case workers, and more programs designed to help those who are on the cusp of homelessness stay in their current housing. We must expand affordable housing options, but also do what we can to reverse displacement and years of lost generational wealth by making home ownership possible for more people. This is why I sponsored a disparity study which led to larger investments in the Black Homeownership program. 

During 2020, we saw the intense impact COVID-19 was having on both our houseless population and working people’s ability to pay rent and stay housed. We invested our ARPA dollars into rental assistance, shelter beds, and affordable housing. In the most recent budget cycle we invested more than $100 million in these areas. I led an effort in 2020 to councilmatically pass 1/10th of 1 percent for affordable housing which has led to leveraging nearly 7,000 new units of housing in 4 years. 

Every Tacoman deserves to be safe. Crime rates in Tacoma are unacceptably high. As Deputy Mayor, this is a high priority and I commit to implementing the Chief’s crime plan, developing the community safety plan, and ensuring our police department is staffed to keep response times low (including our new community safety officers). At the same time, I am committed to continuing our newly implemented Alternative Response Team and investing in programs that divert, especially young people, out of our criminal legal system. We must build a public safety system that truly ensures every single community in our city feels safe. My commitment is to continue setting Tacoma on the path towards true community safety.

Tacoma City Council just passed a rental code ordinance that supports tenants. It is important that tenant protections be in place, and that they do not negatively impact an already unstable housing market. I believe the council’s ordinance does that by including 120-day rent increase notices, new shared housing standards that protect renters, standardized tenant screening criteria, standards for fees & deposits, business license, health, and safety requirements, and rental agreement regulations. The ballot measure takes many of these measures too far. In addition, if the initiative passes it will tie our hands and the City Council won't be able to address any issues for two years. Therefore, I will not be supporting it.

 In the short term, my continued focus will be on maintaining and expanding our current shelter options in our city along with addressing the ongoing impacts of encampments. In the longer term, it is continuing to invest in and support permanent supportive housing and affordable housing for people in our community, along with substance use disorder and mental health services. Paying for these services continues to be a primary responsibility of our general fund, but with increased services and housing options, along with a focus on accountability for those investments, we can reduce those ongoing costs over time.

 The safety of the community is the primary responsibility of our municipal government. In order to address crime we need to first have a fully staffed police department to respond to criminal activity in our community. Next, we need to invest in communities experiencing the impacts of crime, which could mean more streetlights, graffiti removal and addressing nuisance properties, or investing in community groups to work with neighbors in addressing criminal activity. Finally, we need educational and workforce opportunities in communities, to make sure more of our residents have access to opportunity and can avoid becoming engaged in criminal activity.

  No. I was a sponsor of the package of rental housing protections passed by the city council.    We added to our already broad set of renter protections, and what we put in place addresses the important issues in the ballot measure. The ballot initiative contains further elements that are unworkable and will lead to fewer rental housing options and fewer housing units being built in our city. We need more housing of all types in our city to address the needs of our residents and the ballot measure will move us further from meeting those needs.

My top priority is sort of a two-piece. We need to increase our supply of available housing while also making immediate investments in getting those who are currently unhoused into supportive housing. The Tacoma City Council enacted a "camping ban" that has only continued to exacerbate the issue and increase tensions. As we prioritize getting people housed, we need to not only look to creating new forms of revenue--like through further development of Tacoma's creative economy for example--but we need to also be working to build out our community partnerships, and work to consolidate parts of our budget that are going to various initiatives that impact housing so we can effectively and equitably encourage and incentivize more creative housing solutions.

The safety of the Tacoma community is of the utmost importance. A community that does not feel safe to the people living there is not a community that can grow and thrive. The highest indicator of crime in any community is poverty. As we work to make sure our justice system is transparent, restorative, and truly just, we must also look at what steps we need to be taking to disrupt cycles of crime altogether. As our community struggles, more and more people have turned to desperate acts of survival. Though we all must take accountability for the choices we ultimately make, we must also be using data and the lived experiences of our community members to create a comprehensive safety plan for our city. This will allow us to more equitably spread the work of tending to Tacoma's safety needs, so we're not continuing to overwhelm our first responders. 

Though I know it is not without its concerns, I believe Measure 1 is a step in the right direction as we look to make progress in combating our housing crisis. It is simply too easy for people to end up without a home. Because we do not have the ability on the City Council to make all of the changes needed to fix all of the broken policies that have negatively impacted tenants, we owe it to folks to do what we can to make sure they have access to the tools and resources they need to help them maintain housing stability and/or fight unfair or predatory practices by landlords and developers.

As a public defense attorney representing a disproportionately unhoused population, I believe we need solutions that are rooted in a philosophy of opportunity for all and accountability from all.  Tacoma spent more than $100 million on the homeless crisis just last year alone.  It didn’t feel like it.  The status quo clearly isn’t working and to solve it, we need to treat people as individuals in crisis and meet their specific needs.  This requires both creativity and a data-driven approach with prioritization of programs proven to actually work.  In addition to saving lives, this would also reduce costs.

Crime is a top priority.  Long term, we need to move away from crime fighting to crime prevention, which will take many different forms, including changing how we invest in our young people (something Washington is notoriously bad at).  In the short term, we need to have sufficient law enforcement to protect the most vulnerable member of our community who are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the pandemic-triggered surge in crime.  Non-police responses are also necessary supplements to conventional law enforcement.  We must bridge compassion and common sense, and I have the unique front-line experience to do that.

I have represented tenants in unlawful detainer actions and suffered an eviction myself 15 years ago.  I signed the initiative to help force action from the City Council and am glad that it worked.  While I broadly support many of the provisions in the initiative, I believe others will backfire, making it harder to access housing in Tacoma – especially for families with children.  Because initiatives can’t be easily amended, I will be voting “no” but hope to work with Tacoma for all to craft a more inclusive ordinance if elected.  Tacoma needs affordable housing, and pragmatic tenant rights.