Ciudad de OaklandCandidato para Alcalde

I will immediately work to get every single unhoused person off the streets and into transitional housing. To do this, we need to look at alternative housing options like tiny homes on public land, city-owned warehouses that can be partitioned and equipped with toilets and showers, and closed school buildings that can provide immediate shelter.

After the passage of Prop 10, we will develop and pass a radically progressive rent control policy that includes rent control on all units. We will close landlord loopholes and also work to pass a resolution similar to Measure F in San Francisco that ensures every person facing eviction has a city-funded attorney to accompany them through the process.

We will purchase and refurbish blighted and rundown properties and ensure they are converted to low-cost/workforce housing. We will also work to grow land trusts in the City to ensure people with lower incomes have the ability to secure permanently affordable homes.

We will ensure that new developments are geared toward providing low-income/workforce housing, and that any market rate development comes with inclusionary zoning and community benefit agreements. Finally, we will impose a tiered real estate transfer tax that makes it less lucrative for people to buy and flip properties in Oakland.

Our failure to adequately fund public employee pensions must immediately be remedied. The decision to continue to allow for a budgetary shortfall with respects to these health care retiree pensions does not show the type of respect or appreciation for our city’s workers that they deserve.

Kicking the can down the road guarantees a future crisis in which city workers will be pressured to renegotiate their pensions due to the city’s own mismanagement - that is unacceptable. Instead, we need to recognize that we have a responsibility to allocate the necessary funds and do so during the 2019 budget cycle. There are too many moving parts to speculate where exactly that money would come from at this time - if I become Mayor, what I can guarantee, however, is that we would get it done - I would never set up workers to be left without the proper funding for their health care plans during retirement

Oakland has fallen far behind in fire safety inspections, putting our community at increased risk. We have a backlog of building inspections (including inspections for non-fire-related issues), making it harder to open or operate a business, delaying project completion, and sometimes passing over hazards.  As Mayor, I will make these changes:

• Filling vacant positions in vegetation management and fire inspection.  Much of California experienced devastating fires over the past year, and Oakland is at high and growing risk. With vacancies and under-staffing in vital positions, this problem is increasing the risk of a devastating fire. We must have the personnel needed to inspect for overgrowth and debris that increase the risk of fires. We need both to improve clearing brush and other hazards from publicly-owned land, and improve the timeliness of inspections and follow up to ensure clearing privately-owned properties. These are budget-funded positions and as Mayor I will both ensure that these positions are filled and address retention in the department in order to improve public safety.

• Building inspections.  Oakland’s current system has made it possible for seriously dangerous buildings to go uninspected (Ghost Ship), while in other cases, even when there has been an inspection and hazards have been identified, they remain unrepaired (2551 San Pablo Ave). At the same time, some small, non-hazardous businesses are inspected over and over again. I will change our inspection system, to reduce the continuous re-inspection of places that are abiding by safety requirements, saving time, money and hassle for small businesses, directing those resources to properties that are more likely to be at risk, making sure that ALL properties are inspected. The current  practice of relying on the recording of business licenses to identify which properties to inspect allows for some properties to be overlooked entirely. This means risks are not caught in time to prevent tragedies like the Ghost Ship fire. I will immediately include a geographic tracking system, that covers all properties, even those that are vacant and those without a current business license. I will also expand and improve our response when hazards are detected, so we not only find the risks, we also ensure they are fixed. We will consider all options to improve public safety.

• Combining and coordinating inspections.  Currently, people working on a project or building may encounter multiple inspectors from multiple departments, scheduling multiple appointments and sometimes giving different and contradictory feedback about what actions the person has to take for their property or business. As Mayor, I will work with the administration to streamline this process and ensure coordination among the different departments so that property owners will get one coherent list of required steps after the inspection.

In addition to inspection processes, it must be noted that Oakland Fire Department is woefully underfunded.  We need to invest more city resources and ensure that the department has the what it needs to keep up with these inspections. Any conversations about public safety must include the participation of our fire department.