Portland doesn’t have enough housing, what we have is too expensive to call home for too many people, and those without homes need support. We can:

• Support policies like Inner East Side for All that would (in part) allow 4-story mixed units by right in inner SE, bringing more density and neighborhood amenities to neighborhoods like mine. Over time, this change would allow developers to have more projects pencil out financially and create more housing, make our neighborhoods more vibrant, and encourage density in a mature area of the city already well-served by transit.

• Go further to cut zoning restrictions across the entire city that prevent the very kinds of mixed-use, mixed-density developments that not only house more people, but create more interesting, safe, and walkable neighborhoods. Another benefit of these kinds of neighborhoods: more people walking, rolling and biking, safer streets, and more chance for community members to interact with each other where they live.

• Build on Portland’s 2016 Housing Bond with a new housing bond with more aggressive targets for deep affordability. Passed nearly 10 years ago, the 2016 bond has depleted its funding and exceeded its goals for affordable housing. When something works well, we should keep doing it.

• Push harder to reform creaky bureaucratic systems (and help the hard-working public servants who ALSO want them to work better!) to get more and better housing built faster. Eliminating homelessness isn’t simple, but the most powerful step is having enough housing for all people.

• Have local government invest in social housing to provide housing options with rent not controlled by market forces, but rather managed publicly and kept affordable. There are plenty of successful examples of social housing initiatives that Portland could learn from.

• Greatly expand the $500K Workforce Development Program pilotfor those experiencing or recently experienced homelessness and make it permanent. We know these programs - especially over time - generate jobs and support both people and businesses.

• Juice up local incentives for developers (such as tax deferral benefits and direct funding) to build more deeply affordable housing. While market-rate housing is needed too, we can make it more financially viable for profit-driven developers to build units they otherwise couldn’t secure financing to build.

• Invest more in short-term rental assistance programs. The easiest, most cost-effective, least-disruptive way to prevent new homelessness is to make sure people can afford to stay where they already live. The City has an $8.6B budget, yet provided $0 toward direct rental assistance in the last fiscal year. This is not acceptable, especially when cities like Portland cannot rely on consistent Federal support. Even and especially in difficult budget environments, the City needs to open its pocketbook and spend money on the front end to keep people housed and avoid spending even more money later when those same folks no longer have shelter.

Families won’t move to and stay in a city they can’t afford to live in. We need to do everything we can to make Portland more affordable and improve quality of life for families and working people.

This can include:

• Raise the limit on a tenant’s “Right to Repair” from $300 to $1000 to allow renters to work with professionals to make necessary repairs to their homes if landlords fail to act.

• Do what we can to protect Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program - and ensure it gets implemented quickly and effectively - to help families. As a father of a very young child, the time will come that our child will also be in preschool. Making this access universal is critical to allow working families to provide for themselves and their loved ones and ensure their children are taken care of, learning, and developing.

• Work with the Portland’s Office of Government Relations to lobby the state to increase the minimum wage in Portland. According to MIT, a living wage in Multnomah County for a single adult is $27 per hour. I have never heard a compelling argument that the minimum wage ought to be anything less than a living wage. It's also true that cities and counties operate in a larger business ecosystem: businesses can and will leave if they feel enough financial pressure. Therefore, Portland leaders should support as part of its government relations agenda a long-term (10 years or more) plan for the state to raise the Portland metro area's minimum wage to a living wage, using that time to lobby lawmakers and develop local incentives (particularly for smaller businesses) to ease the financial burden. This is not something that can happen overnight, but we also cannot make transformational change for working people without setting specific goals and working at them consistently over time.

• The City needs to do its part directly, and it already has successful programs with full-time, part-time, and seasonal work. Those jobs should be expanded to not only provide work to those who need it most, but provide critical services our community needs, such as innovative, experimental, community-level (litter pickups, sidewalk clearing and plant trimming, landscape beautification, and tree planting, among others). Short-term and seasonal work is also better investment in the job skills of our community, rather than over-relying on contractors, and these jobs allow more people to leverage them into full-time and permanent work, preferably with the City. The City should invest more in this kind highly visible, high-impact work that is immediately noticed and appreciated by folks who live, work, and play nearby, and provide valuable income for those performing that public service.

If elected, I will a have a full-time labor liaison on staff to make sure our office is accessible at all times to unions large and small, is accessible to those on the ground doing the work our city depends on, and is thinking about new and creative ways to support working families and individuals.

We must also:

• Raise the lowest wage the City of Portland pays workers to a living wage, which as mentioned before is $27 per hour, according to MIT. We can do this tomorrow, and we don’t need to wait. The City’s largest union recently advocated for tracking the City’s lowest pay scale to MIT’s analysis of a living wage. I will fight to make sure all City staff are paid what they deserve so they can live in the City whose government they work for.

• End the practice of the City contracting out work wherever possible, and instead invest in our own workforce. In multiple public service jobs, I have seen firsthand the problems with contracting out. While it may seem less expensive at first, the institutional knowledge lost alone makes hiring more staff the smarter choice. The City also needs to build its own capacity to help solve community problems

• Encourage rank and file staff to communicate directly with City Councilors. Leadership is an important part of any organization, but I firmly believe that the people doing the work understand that work best. This shouldn’t be controversial, yet even under the old form of government, the City of Portland had pockets of workers who were implicitly or explicitly told not to communicate with elected officials. This is wrong, and it’s still happening today. Our office will have open doors for any City staff to voice their observations and concerns, and no City staffer should be retaliated against for sharing valuable insight to their elected officials.

• Let doctors and nurses do their jobs without being harassed by the Federal government or their bosses. As of early February, there is legislation I support in the Oregon legislature (SB 1570) brought by the Oregon Nurses Association that would limit where Federal agents can be in a health care facility without a warrant, and protect health care workers who provide their patients with information about their rights. This is especially important to me as my wife is a doctor in a facility that serves east Portland. Health care workers need to be able to care for their patients, no matter their perceived or real immigration status.

We need to make sure Portland’s sidewalks, neighborhoods, and business storefronts are clean, safe, and navigable for all people.

It should come as no surprise that different people in different parts of Portland experience the city much differently: even the word “livability” can spark intense conversation and disagreement about root causes, funding, and solutions.

I believe by addressing the areas discussed above - more deeply affordable housing, streets that work better for everyone, helping small businesses, supporting working families, functional and well-maintained outdoor public spaces - that we will be addressing livability. And all of those areas should be seen as critical components of what we talk about when we talk about public safety.

But those may not address needs in a given hour or day. To that point, programs like Portland Street Response are critical in addressing moments of crises for those experience extreme duress. Having enough safe, dry places for people to sleep on a given night should also be a ground floor expectation for any city, including Portland. And shelter programming needs more funding to offer wraparound support, including information and guidance around where folks can go to seek care and resources in the morning when they are leaving.

It’s also important to say that when we talk about this stuff, we need to center the most basic needs of people, including having shelter, clean water, plumbing, heat, and access to mental and physical health care. We cannot arrest our way into a more livable city, and all people deserve dignity and autonomy. Neither can or should we ignore human suffering.

I am committed to learning more about the daily experience of those without shelter, and the people and programs who are tackling this critical work to step in where it’s useful, but knowing when elected officials need to play a support role and let other leaders push those efforts.

I’ve been a Portland Trail Blazers fan since I was four years old. I had nearly every basketball card for every Blazers player throughout my childhood, wore 44 in high school in honor of Brian Grant, and I was in the Moda Center - in the standing room only section deep in the 300s - for Dame’s 0.9 shot to send the Blazers to the second round for the first time in a generation.

The Blazers need to stay in Portland.

The City should do everything possible to make sure that happens, including:

• Tentatively supporting SB 1501, the Moda Center financing bill in the Oregon Legislature, with the understanding that Blazers ownership needs to step to the plate in meaningful, binding ways. It’s not good practice to publicly subsidize billionaires. It’s also true if the Blazers leave, thousands of jobs (including those of people I know personally) will leave with them. It’s also an exciting time for the Blazers to do more to support Albina Vision Trust (via their partnership, Albina Rose Alliance) to help center Black Portlanders and those whose homes were bulldozed during urban renewal in redeveloping Lower Albina.

• Continuing to work with the City’s government relations team to lobby the state and federal level government for support for the funding renovations at the Moda Center, which is located in Portland but serves as Oregon’s largest indoor venue.

• Hold regular meetings convening the Mayor, interested members of City Council, new majority owner Tom Dundon, and minority owners to make sure both the Trail Blazers and the City and its elected leaders understand each other’s needs, and so that City officials can be informed ambassadors with their constituency about the importance and economic impact of the Blazers and the workers and businesses they support.

• Commit City Councilors to hold listening and information sessions with Portlanders to understand how fans and non-fans alike think about the Blazers and the likelihood of having public dollars support a major arena renovation.

• Work with TriMet and the Trail Blazers to allow a Blazers ticket to serve as valid fare for Max line and bus service in the hours before and after home games.

• Ensure expedited development of new affordable housing and neighborhood commercial development in the Albina neighborhood in and around the Moda Center, in collaboration with the Trail Blazers, the 1801 Fund, and Albina Vision Trust.

I am certain the Blazers will stay in Portland if - and only if - the 30-year-old Moda Center receives a renovation that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. That is not a small lift. City officials should also be clear with themselves and the public that taxpayers will be asked to foot a large part of that bill. There is no need to hide that, and we should start conversations as early and openly as possible about the specific funding mechanisms to make that happen.

We also need to support other pro sports in and around Portland, including our new WNBA team the Portland Fire, our soccer teams in the Thorns and Timbers, our hockey team the Portland Winterhawks, and our baseball team the Portland Pickles, to name a few.

We should also think bigger: the City needs to act as both convener and leader to bring Major League Baseball to Portland. Sports aren’t just about culture, fandom, and tourism: it’s an economic driver, a way to bring people together for a common purpose, and an activator of shared social spaces.

Public service is about fighting for the common good and working together to get stuff done.

My career has taken me around Portland, around Oregon, and around the US and the world. Like many of you, I have met, hung out with, and worked with different people who all had different stories, different backgrounds, different political ideologies, and different things that mattered most to them.

My campaign - and my office, if elected - will focus on bringing people together across the political spectrum to make lives better for Portlanders.

Our campaign will not focus on other candidates unless it is to work together.

I admire anyone wanting to get into elected policymaking, and I appreciate and respect those on Portland City Council today. I do not think they are perfect. I am also not perfect, though my grandmother might have said otherwise.

I want to be clear: I am very likely to support policies that make Portland better for my daughter. I am very unlikely to support policies that don’t. Collaboration does not imply an unwillingness to fight for the future of our city and our people.

Thinking about the world we are leaving my daughter’s generation has been very sobering. While I have always deeply cared about being of service, I now feel more urgency for this important work.

No artificial intelligence (AI) will be used in my campaign. Full stop.

Everything you hear me say, everything I write, and all of my opinions will be created, developed, and executed by humans.

If elected, I will refrain from using AI until effective guardrails and policies are created - at the very least at the local level - that assure me that union represented jobs are protected and it can be used in a way to increase trust in government, not erode it.

It’s important to make this point, especially when trust in public officials is at an all-time low: what happens when the public no longer trusts you’re speaking or writing from your own brain?

Further, this is a labor issue. The more AI is used to generate speeches, statements, images, or other things, the less work there is for humans.

We desperately need national (and frankly global) agreement on AI regulation. I am not confident this will happen any time soon.

The benefits of AI need to be shared with all people, including working class folks and those who don’t have many resources: not just the wealthy and large corporations.