Significantly increase investments in housing, including neighborhood appropriate density and renters’ rights

We must invest in housing options of all types; helping build inclusive, livable, and greener communities less reliant on commuting and fossil fuel infrastructure. The 36th District has examples of rapid growth that will help welcome light rail to vibrant neighborhoods and commercial centers. Let’s continue to chart a path toward greater affordability, density and livability.

Housing affordability is a collective problem and it needs collective solutions

The housing crisis will have a huge impact on our lives and the economic viability of the future of Washington. Washington has the fewest units of housing per household of any state in the country, and some of the highest costs for building homes in the nation. That puts enormous pressure on rents and housing prices, spurring unsustainable competition for what few homes are available, not just in Seattle but statewide. We need flexibility to build every type of housing in cities – market rate, middle income, affordable housing, and permanent supportive housing for people with specific needs.

As a person in their mid-30s, I see so many of my friends and peers struggling to stay in Seattle. They want to put down roots here, they love this city like I do, many of them were born and raised here like me, Some of them are trying to help their aging parents find homes they can live in safely and comfortably, near family support. However, the severe shortage in available housing, and the unaffordability of the housing they can find, leaves them stuck in limbo and their futures in doubt. If we don’t do something to increase the supply of homes, our state’s future is in jeopardy.

Inclusionary zoning means the ability to build housing that allows people’s children, parents, and working families to stay in Seattle and in their home neighborhoods. It means having cities that are vibrant and walkable, and protecting our natural environments from urban sprawl. We can do this and still have welcoming, environmentally friendly, beautiful communities. But it will require that we allow modest home types like duplex, fourplexes, mother in law apartments, ADUs, and DADUs city and statewide.

We should prioritize building up along transit and commercial corridors and in urban villages, but ultimately to provide the level of housing we need to make our state a viable future home for most people and to ensure we fight urban sprawl and have climate-friendly cities, we need to also create inclusionary zoning for modest-sized home choices city and statewide.

Industrial land planning, cargo access and cargo movement are needed for the viability of our port

We must strike a balance between a waterfront people can access for health and recreation, and a working waterfront that provides middle-class, family wage jobs and are part of the unique economic heritage of our region. As a former Seattle Sea Scout, that heritage is important to me. We need to keep industrial jobs and ensure we are maximizing the use of our lands for transit, commercial spaces, and community recreation. I’ve worked on industrial lands planning during my time in the Mayor’s office, and want to pursue a balanced approach that preserves both a healthy waterfront and strong maritime communities, freight mobility, and balances that with community needs.

Fully fund public education

As the daughter of public school educators, I believe that every child in Washington has the right to an equitable, fully funded education, in a healthy and safe school, with qualified teachers, small class sizes, and a well rounded curriculum that teaches 21st century skills. After a traumatic and challenging pandemic school year, that includes ensuring every student has access to social-emotional learning supports, in school nurses, and counseling services.

Fully funding public education also means fully serving students in special education and students with IEPs, who deserve to have their educational needs fully met at their local schools. We should be ending the expensive and harmful practice of sending students with disabilities to out of state schools, and meeting their needs at home.

Fully funding public education also means investing in our educators and paraeducators, and ensuring education can be a viable, family-wage profession that attracts and retains educators who are passionate about our young people, and who reflect the populations of their local communities. We should be investing in helping more people of color in particular become educators.

Supporting pathways to credentials, apprenticeships, and post-secondary education A credential beyond the high school diploma is essential for almost all good paying jobs of the future. But fewer than half of recently graduated high school seniors in Washington State are projected to earn those credentials by the time they reach age 26.

I’m passionate about turning that statistic around, and I think a key part of helping young people earn the credentials they need to have a good future – whether that’s a four year degree, 2 year degree, apprenticeship credential, or certificate credential – is ensuring every young person has robust opportunities to learn about and prepare for careers while they are still in school. That includes investing in counselors who can help guide students to career and education pathways.

At the City of Seattle, I established an internship program for Seattle Promise community college students, lowered barriers for community college students to land internships with City government, and led a top to bottom refresh of the City’s Youth Employment Program. As a consultant, I’ve worked extensively with Career Connect Washington, helping to strengthen our state’s work-based learning and apprenticeship systems. I even helped design the State of Innovation Challenge, a statewide virtual problem solving challenge to engage young people in careers during virtual pandemic learning.

As a legislator, I will invest in our community and technical colleges – critical engines for economic mobility for everyone – and in our skill center system to ensure we are providing opportunities for high school and adult learners to build critical career skills.

Investing in our people, and protecting the rights of workers

Workforce development and workforce investments have been an essential part of my career, as well as in my work as a board member for the YMCA Social Impact Center, which helps young adults transitioning out of foster care and homelessness. To keep Washington’s economy vibrant, we have to invest in creating an innovative, highly-skilled, and green jobs-focused workforce.

For our early-career workers, we can massively expand work-based learning opportunities at the K-12 and community college level, fund salaries for pre-apprenticeship trainees, expand apprenticeships and apprenticeship-style learning across all industries and fields.

For adult workers in fossil fuel dependent industries, we can ensure just transitions to connect workers with jobs of the future that provide dignity, income, and fulfillment. We should especially be helping workers dislocated by the pandemic connect to jobs in our key industries that are facing significant retirement waves and worker shortages – including state employment, nursing, teaching, advanced manufacturing, skilled trades, and maritime jobs. This can be especially impactful for women, workers of color, and other workers who are currently underrepresented in our family-wage, unionized industries.

We must also continue to hold employers accountable to provide living wages, benefits, and safe conditions that people deserve.

Increasing community resilience

Climate change has made severe weather part of our everyday lives – hotter summers, colder winters, heavier rains, seasonal wildfire smoke. As we work to reverse climate change, we need to help communities cope with these weather impacts today, which disproportionately impact people of color and low income people. As a policy advisor in the Seattle Mayor’s office, I organized the first ever regional Smoke Ready Communities Day event to get communities across King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap county ready for the threat of seasonal wildfire smoke. As a legislator, I would advocate for a statewide grant program to help cities retrofit critical infrastructure like libraries, community centers, schools, and senior centers to serve as extreme weather shelters; to educate communities and provide home air filters, and develop coordinated plans for resilience.

Clean waterways and protecting our marine ecosystem

The 36th includes some of Seattle’s iconic waterways and significant parts of Washington’s maritime industry. We have to make investments that protect waterways from wastewater overflows and industrial pollution, which harm our marine ecosystems and endanger the future of our maritime jobs.

Make zero-carbon transportation available to every Washingtonian Transportation is one of the major drivers of carbon emissions in our state. As a legislator, I would increase funding to support electrifying buses and ferries, expanding our state’s network of electric car charging stations, and onshore power to reduce emissions at our ports. As an avid cyclist, I will also advocate for new solutions like subsidizing the purchase of electric bicycles that can put zero-carbon mobility into the hands of young people, parents, working people, and seniors.

Fighting Climate Change

We must invest in ending the use of fossil fuels across our economy, which is a critical step to stopping and ultimately reversing climate change. I will help lead just transitions as part of our green jobs revolution to sustain our people, state, and planet in the future.

Addressing environmental inequities

We must also address environmental inequities that shorten the lifespan of people of color in our state and region. Together, let’s fight for an environmentally just future and a livable planet for every Washingtonian.

Protect access to reproductive healthcare and reproductive rights

Washington is already seeing a migration of women – those who can afford it – coming in from other states to exercise their legal right to reproductive healthcare. With Roe v. Wade under threat nationwide, Washington likely will become a future haven for people seeking to exercise their legal reproductive rights. Whether or not we can provide that care in the future will depend on who sits in our state legislature.

Even with our state protections, there are areas of Washington state with no abortion clinics, and areas only served by religious hospital systems that restrict abortion access. That means there are too many women in Washington with the legal ability, but not the actual ability to exercise their right to reproductive freedom.

We must both continue fighting attempted rollbacks of protection here at home, and do what is needed to send a message of hope and care to vulnerable women everywhere.

Treating “human infrastructure” — including physical and mental healthcare, affordable childcare, high-quality public schools, and access to healthy food and green spaces — as essential infrastructure

The human infrastructure of our state is just as important as roads and bridges, and deserves just as much investment. For some Washingtonians, this is a reality. But for too many, especially Washingtonians of color, this type of health is out of reach, because of gaps in our public policy and investments. A healthy state begins with people who are mentally, physically, and spiritually healthy; who can look forward to a long life expectancy because they can afford to seek preventative health care, including mental healthcare, and have access to healthy, locally grown food.

Ensuring affordable childcare

The pandemic has done tremendous harm to Washington’s childcare economy. We did not have enough childcare slots to support families before COVID-19, and in the wake of a pandemic many childcare providers have closed or gone out of business, creating increased competition and prices for the remaining childcare services.

At the same time, childcare workers are some of our most underpaid workers. Their wages do not reflect the immense responsibilities they shoulder and the the tremendous value they bring to our communities.

As a legislator, I will support capping childcare costs at 7% of household income, ensuring our childcare workers are paid a living wage, and investing in the growth and expansion of childcare providers.

Advocating for universal healthcare

Every Washingtonian, regardless of age, race, gender, income, or immigration status, deserves high-quality, affordable healthcare. It’s a basic human need. We’ve made some progress in our state, but there is more to do. I’m ready to support the work of the Washington Universal Healthcare commission and implement their recommendations for bringing healthcare to everyone in Washington.

Prioritizing families staying together, protecting children in foster care, and providing young adult specific support to help them transition to healthy, healed lives

Let’s allow young people who have experienced foster care to help shape the solutions and the system that impacts them, while prioritizing and increasing support for kinship caregivers, and ensuring accountability in our state systems for children who are the state’s responsibility.

Secure funding for young adults

As a long-time board member of the YMCA Social Impact Center, I see how young adults are especially vulnerable at slipping through the cracks in our system. Particularly for young adults who are in state care – whether foster care or the juvenile justice system – they find themselves transitioning to an adult world with few supports to help them get started on a healthy, healed path. Dedicated funds for young adults – separate from funding for youth or older adults – will ensure they can establish healthy and healed adult lives.

We must provide specific funding for young adults transitioning into the workforce to ensure that young people transitioning out of foster care and other state systems can access education, training, healthcare, and housing.

Addressing rising crime

Every city in America has faced rising crime during COVID-19, including a rise in hate crimes against Asian communities. Everyone deserves to feel safe in their communities. Our small business owners who have poured their hearts into keeping their businesses alive during this pandemic deserve to not come to work to find windows and doors smashed in.

Unfortunately, our current system of addressing crime – cycling people in and out of jail, years-long backlogs before a case is heard, violent crimes not being addressed because detectives are being pulled off of cases to do street patrol, limited access to counseling, mental healthcare, and community-based rehabilitation programs – is not working, and we see the evidence of that on our streets every day. We can’t just double down on more of the same and expect different results.

We should invest in not only addressing but preventing criminal activity, by scaling effective solutions like the work of Community Passageways and Choose 180 right here in Seattle.

We should invest in more advocates and victim services for victims of rape, sexual assault, and domestic and partner violence, fast tracking those cases to ensure people have protection and real access to justice.

And we should address the scarcity and poverty that is at the root of so much low-level crime. Lack of access to jobs, education, housing, mental and physical healthcare, food, lead to increases in crime in our communities. The legislature’s responsibility is to address scarcity in our state, and as a legislator this will be a priority.

Police reform and community safety

As a Black woman, this is a very personal issue to me. I know what it’s like to watch my Black father, brother, boyfriend walk out the door and worry about what might happen to them. I know what it’s like to worry about my own safety.

I understand why communities have strong feelings about what they need to feel safe. The legislature needs to look at this at a community level and work through the implementation to a level that is most impactful to members of our communities — centering communities of color that are the most disproportionately impacted by police.

We need to have a deliberate, proactive approach to address community safety and community-police relations. And when communities make it clear — as they have already done time and time again — what they want and need to be truly safe, we should fight for that, even when it's politically inconvenient.

Common sense gun safety reforms

Weapons of war have no place on our streets, at our schools, or in our homes. Guns make our communities and each other less safe, and we need to be doing everything we can to stop gun violence. We must also engage in more education and intervention to prevent guns from entering our communities, the hands of young people, and those experiencing crisis.

Balancing our tax code

Washington cannot thrive long term with the most regressive tax code in the country. We’ve made positive steps forward, but must continue to work to relieve the burden on low income families, seniors on fixed incomes, veterans, and middle income households being squeezed out of our city. Representing one of our state’s most progressive and wealthiest district, I will be a champion for ensuring that we all pay our fair share so that all can share in our state’s prosperity.

Expanding Washington’s creative economy

As the daughter of an artist and as a recipient of public school arts education, I know how the arts can transform lives. The creative economy can be a thriving economic sector in our state, on par with agriculture and manufacturing. The 36th District is home to many of the state’s largest and more powerful cultural, arts, science and heritage institutions. Let’s bolster our creative economy and bring jobs, investment, and celebration of Washington’s heritage to the world.