Re-Imagining What is Possible in Government

No matter how you vote, we all sense deep down that something is fundamentally “off” about the times we live in. Our Social Contract has been broken. Corporations and Government currently collude for short-term profit. Greed has infected our democracy. The Golden Rule (treating others as you wish to be treated) and the Hippocratic Oath (do no harm, work for the wellbeing of all) are missing from our political infrastructure.

As a Healthcare provider, I live by the Hippocratic Oath. I will work to shift our government toward maximizing the people's wellbeing by:

• Convening a task force of economically and ethnically diverse Portlanders to reimagine a New Social Contract that lifts up ALL who call Portland home.
• Completing a full audit of city finances to weed out corruption, holding mishandlers accountable.
• Supporting initiatives like “Your Two Cents” that would place budgetary decisions directly in the hands of the people.
• Rebranding “Neighborhood Associations” to “Neighborhood Community Boards” to clear confusion with “Home Owner's Associations”.
• Empowering each neighborhood to uniquely shape itself by increasing Neighborhood Community Board investment and deregulating complex permitting processes.

Cultural Connection

We need to think long term to combat xenophobia and sow the seeds of cross-cultural connection. We can start by:

• Funding free Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian (the top 4 most spoken languages in Multnomah county after English) language classes at PCC.
• Allocating a portion of Arts Tax funding to intentionally highlight work by immigrants.
• Bringing back public payphones to improve public safety for emergency use and promote interacting with our neighbors in real life without being tied to the internet.

Environment

Climate change is perhaps the greatest existential threat facing humanity today. Portland needs a Green New Deal. I will make this a reality by:

• Proposing an increased PCEF surcharge to accelerate renewable energy projects, decrease fossil fuel reliance, and offer job transition support for those in the fossil fuel industry.
• Investing heavily in re-wilding concrete lots for public urban food forests.
• Increasing tree shade to cool heat islands, particularly in low-income zones.
• Implementing a moratorium on AI data centers to stop the takeover of natural resources.
• Restoring Portland's Black & Brown communities by supporting groups like Albina Vision Trust, which is looking to bring back neighborhoods systematically ruptured by I-5 expansion.

Public Bathrooms & Sanitation

Everyone deserves the dignity of a place to pee and toss their waste! A huge expansion in public restroom and trash disposal access will help address city sanitation. I propose:

• Paying city janitorial staff a living wage to keep park restrooms clean and open 365 days a year.
• Incentivizing local businesses to open their restrooms to non-paying customers by funneling some of the city's sanitation budget their way.
• Expanding the Portland Loo project city-wide.
• Offering our houseless neighbors the dignity of living wage paid work for collecting trash in public spaces.

Local Government Accessibility

The process of running for public office has enlightened me as to how difficult it is to figure out what one actually needs to do to run. And when it comes to following local legislation, watching the hours'-long city council meetings is not realistic for the majority. Government is for all of us. Let's cut barriers for participating by:

• Creating a clear, accurate, 1-page checklist of To-Do's to run for office in plain language.
• Offering on-site childcare for government employees to make it easier for parents to be public servants.
• Revamping the City website to be more intuitive and neurodivergent-friendly.
• Posting brief summaries of key points of city council meetings that can easily be found.

Most small business owners simply cannot afford to provide their employees with benefits. Portlanders are currently incentivized to either work for large businesses, or remain unemployed, in order to have healthcare. Healthcare is a human right. Let's make that statement a real practice by:

• Expanding OHP eligibility in a State collaboration, to include owners and employees of small businesses under a certain revenue threshold.
• Committing to a timeframe to realise Healthcare for All Oregon's (opens in new tab) goals.
• Supporting our healthcare unions in advocating for fair working conditions and thriving wages.

Introducing “Holistic Zoning”

Current zoning policy in Portland is complicated, inflexible, and fails to treat our city as one functioning whole. This approach is at the heart of the housing crisis. We can help our city work as a healthy body rather than separate parts by introducing “Holistic Zoning”. Holistic zoning simplifies policy into easy-to-understand categories that will create the conditions for small businesses to grow, improve city walkability, and reduce cost of living.

Resolving Houselessness (not just sweeping it - quite literally - away)

This is perhaps the most hot-button issue in Portland right now, and the most complex. Housing is no longer affordable for the majority of Portlanders: only 37% of spaces for rent in the city cost less than $1500 a month - more than what Portland Housing Bureau states 65% of Portlanders should reasonably pay for rent (sources: RentCafe (opens in new tab), Portland Housing Bureau (opens in new tab)). Inflation, combined with wage stagnation, is at the root of our housing crisis. Let's humanize our unhoused neighbors and take a targeted approach by:

• Directing focus toward long-term housing stability for our highest need houseless neighbors, through a combo of housing + health and/or substance treatment, rather than focusing on overnight-only shelters.
• Redirecting efforts away from practices like city sweeps and hostile architecture, which are inhumane, fail to address the root of the issue, and sow distrust.
• Revamping affordable housing approval criteria to reflect today's cost of living, so community members can qualify for support before being forced onto the street.
• Expanding affordable housing development and accelerating Social Housing initiatives, establishing a bold timeline for making social housing a reality.

We must also acknowledge the financial risk local landlords accept when taking in tenants at high risk of being unable to make rent, including the financial realities of maintaining a clean, liveable residence. This is why I propose we:

• Establish a vacancy tax (see the Local Economy section of my platform) and channel these funds to guarantee security deposit, first & last month's rent for landlords taking in tenants with a history of being unhoused.

Property Tax Reform

Portland consistently ranks in the top 5 most expensive property tax cities in the country, lending to the property ownership disparity crisis. Current property taxes rise dramatically with building renovations and expansion, incentivizing owners to keep lots undeveloped, and properties aging. This is unsustainable. We can alter this by:

• Transitioning to a Land Value Tax, in which only the value of the land is taxed, not the value of the property resting on the land. This means that someone who builds an apartment building on a lot will pay the same amount in property tax as the owner of a vacant lot.
• Coupling a Land Value Tax with Holistic Zoning reform, which would radically transform our cityscape and city affordability.

Invest in Our Artists

Music and the arts are one of the core pillars of our local economy, yet you wouldn't know it given how little our government invests in our artists. Art is how we keep our minds open to beautiful possibilities and expand community connection. Let's actively stand up for our artists by:

• Exploring a universal basic income for career artists.
• Regulating AI theft of original artwork and establishing protections for artists' jobs.
• Reforming zoning capacities for art and entertainment venues in collaboration with Portland Fire Department, to accurately reflect modern day use.
• Reforming the Arts Tax to be rolled in with other tax processes, so less is spent on administration and more is funneled to local artist unions and the Portland Street Art Alliance.

Vacancy Tax: Commercial and Residential

By taxing landlords with empty commercial and residential spaces, who are holding out for tenants willing to pay outrageous rents, we can incentivize them to lower rent and expand the potential tenant pool. Vancouver BC (opens in new tab) has implemented such a tax for over a decade and has the data to show that it has helped keep rents from increasing while providing money for affordable housing. I propose we:

• Establish a residential vacancy tax for corporate landlords that will subsidize down payments for tenants with a history of being unhoused.
• Establish a commercial vacancy tax specific to high-profit, large corporations that will directly fund small business rental assistance.

Note: The City of Portland just concluded a study that recommended not proceeding with a vacancy tax because it would disproportionally affect small local landlords. My policy would only target large scale landlords.

Fair Deal for the Moda Center

Tom Dundon and the Blazer's ownership have not come to the negotiating table in good faith. The current proposal presented by Dundon et. al. lacks either transparency of use or a guaranteed return on investment for our taxpayer dollars. I support a fair deal: one that is mutually beneficial for the city and the team. This would include items such as commitment to hiring union-operated local contractors, excluding use of PCEF dollars from the project, increasing ticket sale percentage directed to the city, and instituting a significant rental fee, guaranteeing a net positive return of taxpayer investment.

Community-Oriented Public Safety

Portlanders have spoken clearly over the last several years: taking a policing approach to public safety does not make us safer. Portland Police Bureau needs to acknowledge the harmful practices it has utilized to target marginalized groups and actively work to de-militarize their operations. This is fundamental if we are to open up a healthy dialogue between PPB and the public. I believe this is possible. Let's start with the following:

• End practices like Civil Asset Forfeiture, which currently allows police to keep anything they find while investigating potential criminal activity for the bureau.
• Clarify the role of police rather than asking officers to play mental health managers. We can offload this burden by expanding the Portland Street Response.
• Fully fund Portland Street Response so they can provide 24/7 city-wide coverage.
• Mandate officer training in de-escalation, nonviolent communication and self defense techniques, while simultaneously decreasing the number of lethally armed responses to calls. We can do this by increasing support for PPB's unarmed public safety support specialists.

Responding to ICE, and Standing Up for Immigrant Safety

Like many cities in our country, Portland residents have recently been terrorized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers operating with near complete immunity from the law. I have personally witnessed the use of tear gas at peaceful protests. I have watched my immigrant neighbors retreat from public spaces for fear of being violently taken without warning and held in detention centers under inhumane conditions, without respect for their constitutional or human rights. ICE agents have murdered 10 innocent people in 2026 as of me writing this.

As the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant, this moment particularly calls for me to take a firm stance to get ICE out. While we need more than the power of city council to do this, we can expand city actions further by:

• Revoking the ICE facility permit and expediting charges of the ICE facility owner for violation of land use agreement.
• Drastically increasing the annual impact fee (until the permit is revoked) that the city levied against the owner of the ICE detention center in December 2025.
• Funnelling a sizable portion of the impact fee directly to immigrant support organizations such as Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition and the Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization.
• Incentivizing contractors working for the City to step back from aiding ICE.

Transportation is not only a matter of public safety, it is at the heart of issues of equitability and inclusion. We need to create spaces that are human-first: car dependency hurts Portlanders by not only worsening the climate, but demanding a certain level of income just to get from place to place. We can shift this through:

• Expansion of the protected bike network, using the recently opened “4th Ave” bikeway/busway Downtown as a model.
• Expansion of the car-free plaza initiative, installation of speed-calming concrete planters near schools and residential areas, and personal bike rack space.
• Collaboration with Metro to create a regional funding mechanism for TriMet that supplements dwindling State funding. Our goal must be to create the best public transit system in the country.
• Expanding bus and light rail hours to past bar closing time to decrease the risk of drunk drivers on the streets and make night life safer.
• Saying NO to Waymo (the self-driving car conglomerate): let's keep public transit, taxis, and ride share services in the hands of our human labor force. Let's also stand up against any organizations that make mass surveillance easier.