Key issues

I have spent my career working on progressive policy that impacts our community every single day. On homelessness, housing affordability, public safety, climate change, and liveability, there are things we can do right now to make our city one that works for everyone. Here are some of my ideas—and some of the solutions that inspire me to run for office:

 
 
 

We must treat the homelessness crisis as the humanitarian crisis that it is, one that disproportionately impacts Black Angelenos and other vulnerable communities such as domestic violence survivors and LGBTQIA+ youth. To do that, we need an “all of the above'' approach, where we move people into interim housing with a robust pipeline into permanent housing. And, we can ensure accessibility of our public spaces without criminalizing the unhoused by implementing a comprehensive street engagement strategy that prioritizes trauma-informed services that actually build trust with those living in encampments. This approach is proven to work, we just have to be willing to invest in it.

We also need to protect more people from falling into homelessness, by instituting a uniform right to counsel for renters, establishing a right to housing in which housing is treated as a human need instead of a commodity, and targeting those on the brink of housing instability and flooding them with services.

Read Kate's full plan for homelessness

Housing

Read Kate’s full plan for making housing affordable in LA for everyone.

 

Los Angeles has obscenely high rents because we haven’t built enough homes to house everyone who lives and works here. Those high rents, combined with stagnating wages, mean that too many families are scraping to get by. Today, we need to add about 57,000 new units of housing each year for the next eight years, or about 500,000 units, in order to address our unmet housing need. Nearly 200,000 of those units must be set aside for lower-income residents.

To solve our housing crisis, I will focus on six key solutions:

  1. Building housing faster

  2. Prioritizing the building of affordable housing

  3. Preserving existing affordable housing

  4. Expanding and enforcing tenant protections

  5. Making it easier for Angelenos to find a home

  6. Creating transparency and accountability.

Read Kate’s full plan for making housing affordable for everyone in LA.

Public safety

 

Every Angeleno deserves to feel safe in their neighborhood and community. Period. Right now, when you call 9-1-1, there are limited options for the types of services you could receive. But most calls do not require an armed police officer, which far too often leads to escalating tensions and dangerous outcomes for far too many and further exacerbates the city’s long and painful history of racist over-policing. We need to invest far more resources into experts and alternative forms of crisis response—whether for domestic violence, overdoses, psychotic episodes, mental health crises and more. And, we must invest in our communities to provide the support they truly need, which will help to prevent violence before it starts.

Environment

Read Kate’s plan for transportation that safe, accessible, dignified, and sustainable.

 

Across our city, we can already see the impact of climate change. And, if we don’t act boldly and quickly, it will only get worse, particularly in low-income neighborhoods too often exploited by corporate polluters. We must hold the city to its commitment to move to 100% clean energy by 2035, while making sure no one is left behind in the process. That means creating living-wage, green-energy jobs—particularly those that expand our city’s union workforce—with the job training and re-training needed to ensure no one is left unemployed while creating new career pathways for those just entering the workforce. To get there, we can move buildings off of fossil fuels, end all oil and gas drilling and extraction in our city, and continue to electrify our bus fleet. Let’s treat climate change as the public health and racial justice issue that it is by capping abandoned oil and gas wells, address our poor air quality to mitigate the adverse health impacts like asthma, and create new green and park space where it’s needed most.

Creating a
liveable city

Read Kate’s plan to remove the fence around Echo Park Lake and make the park safe and enjoyable for all.

Or Kate’s plan for transportation that safe, accessible, dignified, and sustainable.

 

Right now, Los Angeles is not a liveable city for many. People are priced out of buying a home and renting in neighborhoods near their jobs, social networks, and opportunities. To make this city work for all people, there are many steps we can take, many of which are actually quite simple: build bus stops that provide real shade and a place you can plug in your phone; plant more shade trees and maintain the trees we have; maintain our parks and other shared spaces; bring back child care services to our rec and parks facilities; develop a robust network of well-maintained public restrooms and other hygiene facilities; continue to build reliable bus and subway service; invest in infrastructure like sidewalks, roads, and dedicated bike lanes; and make sure bus transit remains free for all riders.

Economic mobility for all

 

For too long, the city has put up barriers to small businesses, street vendors, and budding entrepreneurs who are trying to make a living for themselves and their families. From departments not collaborating on permits, to outdated land-use restrictions that prioritize parking spots over people, to bureaucratic processes that are near impossible to navigate for immigrants, and arbitrary policing of vendors already on the margins, it is time that we make the city actually work on behalf of all its residents.