California State AssemblyCandidate for District 58

First and foremost, the State should encourage and support the cities to strive for their own individual solutions to address their housing needs. However, the reality is that between 2009 and 2014, California added 77,000 more households than housing units. The housing it has produced is often located far from jobs and transit, or is too expensive for low and sometimes even middle-income people to afford. California homes cost 2½ times the U.S. average and just 54 percent of California households own their homes, the third-lowest rate in the nation.

In the 58th AD, opportunities exist to create affordable developments near city centers as we have seen in Cerritos, Artesia, and Downey. We need to encourage and promote housing development by diversifying housing product types to enable a broader reach of availability, streamlining approvals for developments that include an affordable component, forming partnerships to create multiple sources of financing, and designating planning areas for affordable housing to allow increased density and height.

The reality is that well laid plans will never come to fruition unless we have consensus on how we address density and height requirements for housing development, as your state legislator, I will convene all the main key players to the negotiating table to address concerns around affordable housing, especially equity and “not in my backyard” sentiments before drafting legislation.

For many in our district, the lack of affordable housing has become a roadblock to the American dream. We need to create opportunities for safe and affordable homes for all our hard-working residents in our 58th AD.

I would start with what the survey captures as recommendations from respondents on how to attack the issue: 1) Almost half recommend civility training classes in schools and colleges and I would add ethnic studies to learn about immigrant cultural similarities/differences and contributions that make us unique as a nation; 2) Encourage social media sites and search engines to curb fake news; and 3) Seventy-five percent of Americans believe, in order to improve civility in our nation, it starts with us. We are the role models, we must lead by example. As a nation, we need more empathy, not cruelty!

Water is essential to our survival as a nation and in California, agriculture uses most of our available fresh water while water availability is becoming increasingly limited. Helping to create a healthier relationship between people and food includes protecting the environment and finding sustainable ways to produce more food and increase water supplies.

As the population grows, the demand for water and energy will also rise. And if we continue with the pattern of business as usual, leading global organizations expect that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will increase in the coming years, further accelerating climate change and putting crops at potential increased risk. Alongside these complex environmental problems, by 2050 it is expected that, to meet the rising demand for food, society will either need to increase food production by 70 percent or drastically reduce the food that is currently wasted or lost.

We can’t afford a business as usual mentality, we need to explore and advance creative environmental efforts that satisfy our water, food and people needs while protecting our environment and business sector such as:

1.    Protect and conserve water supplies, especially in water-stressed areas, and help to provide access to safe water by using green infrastructure techniques, such as rain gardens, permeable soils or pavements, and green roofs, mimic natural processes to capture storm water, slow it down, absorb some of it into the ground, and filter out pollutants before releasing the remaining runoff to storm sewers or waterways.

2.    Collaborate with business sector and support their goals to achieve an absolute reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

3.    Support sustainable agriculture by identifying and sharing best practices with our growers and suppliers.

Poverty affects education success, health, relationships, and most of all it affects the ability for humans to develop to their full potential. Thus, it is not surprising that nearly 80 percent of people in prison cannot read at an 8th grade level. The programs or strategies that I support are a comprehensive community-wide approach, culturally sensitive, and address the needs of a family that is in crisis.

For example, Head start programs (early childhood education), before and after school care assistance, free breakfast and lunch programs for all to remove poverty stigma, partnerships with businesses, organizations, and individuals in the neighborhood who can help. It is important for school districts to create a “full resource backpack,” an inventory of who in the community may be able to assist families move out of poverty. A child can’t learn if they are hungry, scared of going to school because of gang violence on their streets, afraid of abuse in the household, etc. We must operate like NASA - failure is not an option.