Californians pride ourselves on our progressive policies. We’re proud of our values of diversity, equality and equity. We’ve made great strides towards improving our broken criminal justice system. We’ve reformed drug policies that targeted low income black and brown communities, overwhelmingly passed Prop 57 to emphasize rehabilitation over retribution, and severely limited abusive solitary confinement for juveniles.

But we still have a lot of work to do. Prison overcrowding is rampant, with many facilities operating at nearly 150% of design capacity. Over 60% of inmates return to prison within three years of being released. Our broken bail system incarcerates people simply for being poor. Women’s incarceration has increased 700% since 1980.

Our justice system is far from equal; we can’t talk about criminal justice reform without talking about its racial disparities. People of color are disproportionately targeted for arrest, face harsher sentencing, and are less likely to receive parole. One in seventeen white men will face incarceration in their lifetime, but for black men that number is a shocking one in three.

Justice demands a more holistic approach to dealing with crime, one which looks at crime’s root causes and seeks to address these issues at their foundations. Many law enforcement leaders themselves understand that we cannot simply arrest and incarcerate our way to safety: we must ask difficult questions and discern the underlying causes of crime so we may reinvest in our communities to address those causes. This will mean investing in community-based approaches that ensure everyone has access to preventative health care and mental health care, quality education, job training, trauma recovery and affordable housing. Crime is a symptom of these disparities; it cannot be solved until its causes are addressed.

What can California do? Here is a starting point:

Reform Starts in the Classroom

California’s prison costs have steadily risen in tandem with California’s falling education spending. In the last 30 years, we’ve built 22 new prisons but only one new University of California campus. On average, we spend annually less than $10,000 per pupil for K-12 education, and over $70,000 per prisoner. The solution is to reinvigorate education both for our children and for those involved in the justice system.

The classroom is where we teach California’s future leaders what good citizenship and good governance looks like. We must make good on the vision of California as a state of opportunity by teaching students from day one that they can learn from their mistakes instead of being held back by them.

We must end the school to prison pipeline. This means reducing police presence on school campuses by investing in school counselors, nurses and teachers, decreasing suspensions and expulsions that disproportionately target children of color, and prioritizing restorative justice over zero tolerance policies.

We must also build a prison to school pipeline. This means we need to fund vocational and academic education for incarcerated individuals, support second chance programs, and strengthen programs like Project Rebound and the Underground Scholars Initiatives — programs at higher education institutions, including UC Berkeley and East Bay community colleges and CSU’s that empower formerly incarcerated individuals to receive college degrees.

The classroom should not be a doorway to incarceration, and a past conviction shouldn’t be a life sentence to poverty and joblessness. We need to seriously invest in second chances, revitalize compassion and increase educational funding to meaningfully combat these critical barriers to safety and prosperity.

Redirecting Young Lives Instead of Incarcerating Them

There are about 6,000 young people currently incarcerated in the state, costing about $1 billion a year. Three out of four are incarcerated for non-violent behavior and 57% haven’t been convicted of a crime. These young people are disproportionally people of color (80% African American or Latino). African Americas and Latinos are more likely to be incarcerated after arrest while white youth are more likely to be sent to diversion programs. Incarcerated youth are much more likely to have been victims of trauma and over half have mental health issues. Locking them up will not address these underlying issues and will certainly not make our communities safer.

We must hold our young people accountable for crimes committed but incarceration is not the answer — it is the least effective, most expensive and most harmful approach. Instead we should support community-based services, which produce better outcomes for youth and reduce recidivism. We should support restorative justice programs like Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth and preventative programs like RYSE in Richmond. And we should promote individualized treatment enabling young people to have access to a diverse set of community-based options thereby allowing them to create a tailored treatment plan.

While holding people accountable for crimes committed, we should also strive to decrease recidivism and enable young people to make permanent exits from the revolving door of crime and incarceration. By build healthy communities, we will experience less crime.

A Public Health Approach to Drug Policy

With the opioid crisis dominating national headlines, California has a responsibility as a pioneer of progress to set the standard for how this country approaches drug policy. We’ve made headway with the decriminalization of cannabis, but we need to start emphasizing rehabilitation over retribution across the board for drug use. We must address substance use disorders as public health problems rather than criminal justice issues.

This public health approach starts by eliminating stigma and discrimination towards individuals with substance abuse disorders. Those suffering from drug dependency sometimes commit crimes such as theft and battery in connection with their addiction. Punitive measures may satisfy someone’s desire for retribution, but they fail to address the root cause of the problem and they don’t actually make us safer. We need to approach drug-related crimes from an understanding of addiction as a neurological disease and symptom of environmental pressures.

We can better address drug crime and dependency by prioritizing drug treatment over punitive prison sentences, and by expanding innovative, harm-reduction approaches that help addicts on their road to recovery. We also need to support drug-related research to create evidence-based rehabilitation programming, particularly for chronic users. For patients of treatment programs, we need to ensure access to scheduled medications, such as buprenorphine, for therapeutic use.

A public health model will help mitigate prison overcrowding and reduce excess corrections expenditures. We need to transform the way we think about and legislate drug ‘crime’ to create a system built on empathy and pragmatic solutions rather than ineffective punitive approaches.

A Public Health Approach to Homelessness

It’s no secret that California is currently suffering from a dual crisis of scarce affordable housing and unprecedented levels of homelessness. Part of the solution to this crisis is building more affordable housing, as well as more housing at all income levels. But we cannot begin to address this crisis without having a conversation about how we can better care for our growing population of homeless individuals.

All too often, California tries to incarcerate its way out of homelessness. The National Institute of Health found that approximately 15% of incarcerated individuals had dealt with an episode of homeless in the year prior to their incarceration. Homelessness often involves a vicious mental illness cycle: those who lack mental healthcare services are more likely to become homeless, and homelessness often causes serious mental illness. A person dealing with severe mental illness in California is four times more likely to be in prison than in a state mental healthcare facility.

We need to create a public health approach to homelessness. This approach begins by eliminating stigma against homeless individuals and recognizing that they are human beings deserving of attention and care. I support Gavin Newsom’s proposal to create a “homelessness czar” in Sacramento, a state secretary who will be specifically focused on ameliorating the crisis of homelessness.

Instead of arresting homeless individuals, we need to provide them with permanent supportive housing and clinical care. These services must include mental healthcare, counseling for substance use disorders, and job training. When formerly homeless individuals are released from incarceration, these services must be available and accessible to prevent the continuing cycle of homeless arrests. We also need to expand the use of behavioral health courts that hold people accountable for harms they committeed but steer people struggling with mential illness out of the criminal justice system and into treatment and support services.

Eliminating the Death Penalty

I don’t believe in the death penalty, full stop. The death penalty does not deter crime, is racially biased and may result in the execution of innocent lives. There is a disproportionate application of the death penalty to people of color. Even when people are properly convicted of a crime, people of color are more likely to get harsher sentencing, including the death penalty.

Eliminating Solitary Confinement

Solitary confinement is the practice of isolating people in closed cells for 23 hours a day. It leaves individuals almost completely devoid of human contact for periods of time ranging from days to decades. Placing people in solitary confinement has often been used as an unjust preventative measure to manage anyone with a suspected affiliation to gangs. It also been used to quell political activism in prisons.

Solitary confinement imposes unjust psychological and emotional trauma on incarcerated individuals, especially those with pre-existing mental health issues. California has already begun the process of phasing out indefinite solitary confinement — the population of those in solitary confinement has decreased more than 60% since 2012. But we have to do more than simply reduce the numbers. We need to end the practice of solitary confinement as a whole to protect the basic human rights and dignity of incarcerated individuals.

Reforming and Informing Our Police Force

Following the tragic and preventable deaths of many black individuals — Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, and countless more — police forces have faced warranted increased scrutiny. Now is precisely the time to reform police practices to end systematic police brutality that disproportionately affects black and brown individuals and to build trust between police and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve.

The first step to accomplish this requires reforming the police bill of rights. State Senator Nancy Skinner has introduced a bill that would require the disclosure of investigations of serious uses of force, including police shootings. In Sacramento, I want to expand this by creating a mechanism for state-funded, independent investigations for all police officer involved shootings. This will allow local agencies to bring in outside investigators for use of force situations. In addition to a fair analysis of events, data collected through this process can help us develop policies to prevent future tragedy. We also need to expand the Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 to include not just collecting data at the agency level, but at the officer level so problem actors can be identified early. We can’t reform police practice from a purely external standpoint. We also need to introduce systemic internal reforms and change the culture of policing from a warrior mentality to a guardian mentality.

We can begin to internally reform police practices by incorporating mandatory implicit bias, procedural justice, and de-escalation training into police academies and promote re-training throughout policing careers.

Throughout California, there is an immediate and serious deficit of police officers. When policing staff is low, police experience excess stress and demoralization, and police hiring practices necessarily become less stringent. We need to increase funds to hire diverse police officers from underrepresented backgrounds who are compassionate, capable, and well-trained, so that California’s police forces can lead the way for the rest of the country.

We need to work together to rebuild trust. Having a diverse and educated police force makes possible meaningful community policing, whereby police are no longer threats but integrated members of neighborhoods across California. Only through these measures can we begin to prevent incidents of police brutality and meaningfully move towards a compassionate policing system that protects and serves all of our communities.

California once had the best public schools in the country. Families moved west in search of better opportunity and quality education for their children. Unfortunately, California now ranks 47th out of 50th in standard of living for children. One in four children go hungry every day. We rank 41st in the nation on spending per child. More troubling, access to quality schools all too often is determined by where a child lives. Thus, there are glaring racial and socioeconomic inequities.

We are failing many our children; especially children of color. It is unconscionable. We urgently need a “kids-first” agenda, one that prepares our students for the changing workforce of the future. An educated workforce is not only critical to our economic growth, but essential in our ability to combat the growing wealth inequalities that are so pervasive in California.

Here’s what I will fight for:

More Funding For Schools

We must invest in our children by investing in our schools. California has only recently dug out of the deep hole created by the recession, and we remain woefully behind other states when it comes to ensuring our public schools have the resources they need to prepare our children for college and careers.

The quality of a school depends on the teachers in the classrooms, and therefore we must ensure teaching is a profession that is desirable and viable. We should provide more professional development, coaching, mentoring, and resources for continued education. We should pay our teachers more. In areas with a high cost of living, like Assembly District 15, we need to provide housing assistance so our educators can live within the communities in which they work.

We have a significant teacher shortage, particularly for science and math, and have the highest teacher to student ratio in the country. We should reinstate recruitment and incentives programs to attract and retain racially and culturally diverse teachers.

Address the Needs of the Whole Child

We know learning in the classroom is significantly impacted by circumstances outside of the classroom. It’s critical we look at the whole child and address their social, emotional, and behavioral growth to provide each child the opportunity to thrive. Children living in pervasive poverty and experiencing trauma need schools with more resources to address their social and emotional needs. These resources should include school psychologists, nurses, librarians and an investment in restorative justice programs where it makes sense.

Children who are socially and emotionally developed handle challenging difficult situations better; they create positive relationships, learn to check their emotions, and can calm themselves when upset. The ability to hone these skills enable children to learn and achieve at higher levels.

Learning Starts on Day One

Since children begin to learn from the day they are born, we should think of early child care as education and as an entitlement, like elementary school, social security, unemployment benefits or Medicare.

To this end, we should subsidize quality child care on a sliding scale and fund universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds. We should professionalize the care industry by unionizing the workforce, providing professional development and apprenticeship programs and increase their educational requirements so early caregivers can receive the same pay as elementary school teachers.

Early childhood educators should have access to free community college as well as housing assistance as a way to live where they work. The more affordable and quality early education our children get, the better a society we are.

High Expectations and Accountability for All of Our Schools

Every school should be great. We should expect the best from all of our public schools, both traditional public schools as well as charter public schools. Along with increased funding and support for our public schools, we should set high standards informed by multiple measures for accountability — academic achievement, dropout rates, rates of suspension, graduation rates, etc — and clear transparency in how resources are spent.

We should support and model the successful elements of high performing public schools so other students can benefit. For consistently low performing public schools, increased funding should be coupled with clear accountability and a focus on supporting and developing strong school leaders.

Charter public schools can serve a need in our community, but we need more transparency and accountability in how they are run. Charter public schools must be subject to the Brown Act, the Political Reform Act and the Public Records Act, as this would enable parents and the community at large more insight into how taxpayer dollars are being spent.

We need to make it easier to identify poor performing charter public schools and to take action to quickly fix or shut those schools down. We need to find ways for charter public schools to work with district schools. Collaboration requires both the district as well as the charter to both come to the table in partnership. Lastly, we need to outlaw for-profit charter schools and under no circumstance should we consider vouchers for private schools.

Preparing Students for Life

We should be preparing students with tangible skills for life. I believe we need more project-based learning opportunities, where students learn by completing inter-disciplinary projects that solve complex real-world questions. Kids learn through doing and collaborating, and hands on projects are a vehicle for gaining skills traditionally taught through lectures and worksheets.

Project based learning emphasizes higher-order learning skills — critical thinking, synthesis, and evaluation — over comprehension or memorization skills. For instance, we should start financial literacy at a young age, and teach our kids the basics, like how to save, how to spend within their means and how the stock market works.

Research has shown that students who engage in regular project-based learning demonstrate better problem-solving and critical thinking skills, and do better on standardized tests than their peers. In order to successfully implement this model, teachers need training, coaching and high-quality planning materials. Partnerships between secondary schools and higher education should be strengthened to leverage resources and provide additional opportunities for students through mentorship programs, professional development for teachers, curriculum materials, and early college preparation instruction.

Reinvent Higher Education

The California Master Plan of 1960 established significant public investments in our higher education system — laying the framework for University of California, California State University, and California Community College schools. This set California on the path to becoming the 6th largest economy in the world.

Over the course of time, most notably since the early 2000s, we have significantly reduced public funding to our higher education institutions. We are transferring that cost to students, many of whom now face significant student debt. I believe we need to return to the spirit of the California Master Plan and prioritize our higher education system, making higher education accessible to all.

Students today deserve to have the same opportunities as past generations. Specifically, we need to make college debt-free for low-to-middle income students, not only covering the cost of tuition but housing, food and books. This means generating stable, predictable revenue as well as prioritizing higher education in our state budget process.

Since 1980, we have built one new UC campus, while at the same time adding 22 new prisons. University of California, Berkeley currently receives only 11% of its total budget from the State, but it continues to be a major economic engine for the state and one of the top universities for upward mobility. The state investment in our colleges and universities more than pays for itself through their contributions to innovation, job creation and increased incomes for graduates. At UC, within five years of graduation, the majority of Pell grant recipient students will earn more than their family. As the state grapples with the growing income inequality, investments in education can advance social and economic mobility while supporting state workforce needs. But we must invest more public dollars.

Our community colleges should be free to all, and we should support programs that aim to help students graduate or transfer. We need to create incentives for students to attend under-utilized campuses, which would help alleviate overcrowded campuses.

We should also promote concurrent enrollment across campuses to create flexibility for our students as well as leverage online learning. Lastly, we should create a higher education system that promotes lifelong learning and seeks to help non-traditional students gain the educational credentials necessary to compete in the modern workforce.

Feeding our Children to Create Lifelong Nutritional Habits

We have tragic paradox — a quarter of our kids go hungry every day, and yet 33% are obese. We add to the problem by not feeding our children appetizing, nutritious food nor are we giving them enough time during lunch to eat in our crowded urban schools. No school should be serving chips, pizza, soda and candy for lunch.

We need to prepare our kids to make good nutritional habits starting at a young age in order to combat our obesity, heart disease and other weight-related illnesses. Studies show that nutritional school lunches raise student achievement. We should be incentivizing and bringing to scale ideas like the Edible Schoolyard Project, born right here in AD15, which interweaves student-led urban gardening with nutritional lunches to serve healthy meals to our students. We should increase public funding for Farm to School programs. As it does on many issues, California should be leading the way nationally on providing the most nutritious school lunches available.

So how are we going to fund these principles I believe in so strongly? One way to provide more revenue, is to close the Proposition 13 commercial property loophole. By doing so, we will add $9–11.4 billion into our state budget every year. This would mean that big corporations like Chevron, Transamerica, and Disney would be required to pay their market-rate fair share of property tax. This would infuse the critical resources our state needs to ensure our children have the quality education they deserve, and these corporations would benefit from a better educated workforce.

The greatest threat to our prosperity, diversity and equity in the Bay Area is the skyrocketing cost of housing. Neighborhoods with access to good schools and public transportation are now out of reach even for middle-income families. Our housing crisis is part and parcel of our broader struggle with growing wealth inequality — California has the highest concentration of billionaires and millionaires, while at the same time 40% of population is living at or near the poverty line. Housing is a fundamental human need and our current status quo is simply not meeting that need.

Forcing people from all walks of life to move further and further away from their jobs and spend hours on the road commuting is not a Bay Area or progressive value. Our severe housing shortage is pushing away the very people that give our communities their strength, vitality, and character. Teachers, first responders, restaurant workers, seniors, artists, and activists find themselves increasingly excluded from the Bay Area’s thriving urban centers, disproportionately impacting communities of color.

Bay Area cities that refuse to build enough housing for the people who work there do real harm to individual and public health, to our environment, and most of all, to the people who are left homeless by the housing shortage. As I work to address California’s housing crisis, I will never forget there are people for whom our decisions can mean the difference between being housed and being on street.

As the next Assemblymember for District 15, I would fight for progressive and practical solutions that focus on creating homes for everyone who wants to be a part of our community. I firmly believe that we can achieve sensible policies that create housing, strengthen our neighborhoods, and help the Bay Area live up to its values of welcoming newcomers and sharing prosperity.

The California legislature — with leadership by the Bay Area’s very own Senators Skinner and Weiner, and Assembly Members Thurmond, Bonta, and Chiu — took a significant step in the right direction last fall by passing a set of bills called the “Housing Package.” The Housing Package provides funding to house the homeless, helps communities better plan for new residents, and speeds up homebuilding in places that aren’t building their fair share of homes. But we have to do more.

Here’s what I will fight for as your next Assemblymember:

Build more homes for folks at all income levels — and build them quickly.

We need more housing across the board. We need affordable housing for families and folks threatened by homelessness. Our homelessness crisis is squarely a result of our housing shortage. To fix this, we need to expand upon the affordable housing funding measures passed in the legislature last year to increase the production of subsidized housing for low income people. This means we need to pass the $4 billion dollar statewide housing bond. In addition, we should consider creating the California Public Infrastructure Bank, devoted to financing more affordable housing. We also need more homes for our teachers, nurses, non-profit workers and other middle-income folks. To this end, we should create workforce housing and reclaim public lands like parking lots for housing. We should also support alternative ways to promote more housing like incentivizing limited equity housing cooperatives and accessory dwelling units. Building more homes at all income levels — low income and market rate — will ease the pressure cooker nature of our market and get Bay Area people into the homes they need.

Protect existing tenants from displacement, especially seniors and people with disabilities.

We have to guard aggressively against displacement and create a safety net for low income families, who are our most vulnerable residents on the brink of instability. Two out of five Californians live in or around the poverty line. Three out of four Californians can’t weather an emergency expense of $700 or more. Nearly half of renters spend 35% of of their income on rent. We can create policy and provide relief in a few potential ways.

One, we should fix Costa-Hawkins, the state law which outlaws rent stabilization for any unit built after 1995. One potential fix could include a rolling date for buildings to come under local rent stabilization laws, as opposed to the 1995 fixed date. This would ensure new housing can be financed and built to support community needs while still empowering local municipalities to implement appropriate rent stabilization measures.

Secondly, we should significantly increase and expand the Renters Tax Credit (RTC) and set rates based on metro area. The RTC is currently only $60 per person or $120 for a family. Homeowners get the financial benefit of deducting their mortgage interest. Renters need relief too. Putting real money into the pockets of our renters can go along way to helping those out who are $700 away from falling over a precipice and spiraling into poverty.

Lastly, to prevent unscrupulous landlords from wrongly kicking tenants out of their homes, I would also push for legal services for folks facing unfair eviction. We know this works. We’ve seen success in the Sargent Shriver Civil Counsel Act pilot program designed to help low-income Californians facing high-stakes civil cases. The results were a drastic increase in the likelihood of settlement, the majority of which reduced back-owed rent or helped protect tenants’ credit by keeping eviction notices off the public record. Among Shriver program clients, 67% of cases settled, as compared to 34% of people who represented themselves. While all Shriver clients received eviction notices, only 6% were ultimately evicted from their homes. Let’s bring this to scale and really help those that need it.

Grow in a sustainable way by building more homes in walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods.

As progressives, we know that welcoming new people to our country and our communities does not mean sacrificing our quality of life. Our cities are far too dependent on cars, roadways, and interstates. As we build new housing, we need to do so in forward thinking ways that makes walking possible and incentivizes use of public transportation and bike commuting. Consequently, we should be linking our housing goals with transportation funding so we can create incentives for cities to build. Creating walkable neighborhoods along transit corridors is critical to meet our climate action goals and support safe and healthy communities.

Tackle Our Homelessness Crisis Head On

We can’t talk about housing without addressing our growing homelessness crisis. We see it everyday and it’s time to act. We need to do three things: one, we should provide a safety net to prevent homelessness before it starts. Those most vulnerable are folks who are exiting from criminal justice, health care, child welfare system and military institutions. They should be discharged into stable housing, rather than onto the street. We should provide mental health services, substance abuse counseling, education and employment assistance. Secondly, we need to prevent chronic homelessness by responding quickly to those newly on the streets. Folks need access to shelters with low barriers of entry and rapid rehousing with short term rental assistance. Lastly, we need to invest significant resources for the chronically homeless and those with severe disabilities. This means permanent supportive housing without any preconditions, which is a necessary foundation to begin treating health issues. This should be housing with no time limit and wraparound supportive services that promote residents’ recovery and maximize their independence.

I believe in — and am committed to fighting for — an East Bay that is sustainable and accessible to all. This is why Assemblymember David Chiu, chair of the Housing Committee, and State Senator Scott Wiener, a member of the Housing and Transportation Committee, have endorsed my candidacy. We need practical, pragmatic policies to get us there. I know from talking to you and your family, friends, and neighbors that you expect a representative who not only cares about your issues, but who is dedicated to achieving workable solutions that can win statewide support. I believe that I am the candidate who can meet those expectations, and I hope you’ll join with me as I work to bring California home.

Aside from my service on the Richmond City Council, I work as a full-time children’s wrap-around mental health specialist for Contra Costa County. Every day I see the effects of poor health and rediscover the needs of our children and families in my day-to-day work. I will bring my ground-level experience to discussions and legislation in Sacramento aimed at improving Californians’ physical, mental, and economic health. I believe California needs to focus on five aspects of the healthcare problem right away: (1) working for a single-payer healthcare system, (2) retaining access and affordability even while working on single-payer, (3) preserving and enhancing healthcare access and delivery for all California residents, (4) promoting provider coordination, and (5) emphasizing preventive and community healthcare approaches.

1. Single Payer Healthcare

In April 2011, long before introduction of the current single-payer bill (SB 562 and its analogue in the Assembly), I co-authored a resolution adopted by the Richmond City Council supporting Senate Bill 810, the California Universal Health Care Act of 2011. In the intervening years, as single-payer has moved to the center of national debate and become supported by a majority of Americans, its urgency for California has only increased.

As a State Assembly member, I will do everything in my power to enact single-payer health coverage for all Californians as would happen with adoption and implementation of SB562. The Assembly should move ahead with its own hearings and draft legislation to implement a single-payer system. Few if any policy changes could do more to protect the health of our communities, lower costs and boost our economy than universal, single-payer healthcare.

If we instituted single-payer Health insurance coverage, we would not only reduce the costs of medical care, we would absolutely improve the health status of our communities. We could also begin to redirect money to prevent illnesses, rather than just waiting to treat people when they become chronically ill.  We not only have a moral obligation to heal the sick, we also owe it to ourselves to improve the health of all of our residents. As somebody who works with the mentally ill, I see every day the consequences of the Health disparities in our communities that could be dramatically improved with equitable health insurance coverage for everyone.  As the opioid epidemic claims and victims every day, we do not provide adequate funding for treating those with drug addiction disorders. Instead of criminalizing these victims, we could be providing appropriate and necessary treatment to help them overcome their addiction.

Physicians for a National Health Care Program (PNHCP), a physician-led organization, states, “We already pay enough for health care for all – we just don’t get it. Americans already have the highest health spending in the world, but we get less care (doctor, hospital, etc.) than people in many other industrialized countries. Because we pay for health care through a patchwork of private insurance companies, about one-third (31 percent) of our health spending goes to administration.”

PNHCP explains that single-payer

. . .is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health care financing, but the delivery of care remains largely in private hands. Under a single-payer system, all residents . . . would be covered for all medically necessary services, including doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. The program would be funded by the savings obtained from replacing today’s inefficient, profit-oriented, multiple insurance payers with a single streamlined, nonprofit, public payer, and by modest new taxes based on ability to pay. Premiums would disappear; 95 percent of all households would save money. Patients would no longer face financial barriers to care such as copays and deductibles, and would regain free choice of doctor and hospital. Doctors would regain autonomy over patient care. [http://www.pnhp.org/sites/default/files/faq_2018.pdf]

While I favor a national health-care system, California is certainly a large enough economic unit that we could embark on such a system even before the federal government does so. As in so many other areas, California could lead the country to better health. As the PNHCP says about the US as a whole, in a state system, “Replacing private insurers. . . would recover money currently squandered on billing, marketing, underwriting and other activities that sustain insurers’ profits but divert resources from care. . . .  Combined with what we’re already spending, this is more than enough to provide comprehensive coverage for everyone.” 

2. Retaining Access in Advance of Single-Payer

The Assembly and Senate will likely take some time to hone a single-payer system, and if experience with the current governor is any indicator, even passage would not guarantee rapid implementation. There are tremendously important things we need to do to retain broad access to healthcare for all Californians as we fight for, devise, and transition into a single-payer system (whether this takes place at the federal or state level).

Even as we seek improvements, our citizens are threatened by US Congress H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act, which seeks to repeal and replace President Obama’s effort to improve health coverage for Americans, the Affordable Care Act.

California can protect its citizens from these federal misdeeds. Rather than destroying Medi-Cal by underfunding it, as the federal government is attempting to do, we must preserve Medi-Cal. Legislators need to establish protections and continue to expand services regardless of federal proposals as we continue our statewide mobilization for a single-payer system.

While working for single-payer, I will fight to ensure that workers’ wages cannot be continually cut to make up for rising healthcare costs. Employers’ cuts to employee healthcare benefits highlight the need for single payer healthcare.

California healthcare workers are facing understaffed departments and are forced to work overtime, putting patients and employees at risk. We must make sure healthcare employers commit to providing safe staffing levels and paying competitive wages to prevent a healthcare provider crisis. Sacramento needs to pay more attention to conditions of and compensation for our healthcare workers, including helping healthcare workers to find and afford housing within reasonable distances from their workplaces.

Nurse/patient ratios are established for patient and nurse health and safety; they must be followed or people will die. Nurses put their lives on the line to save other’s lives, and they have every right to refuse unsafe assignments. I would initiate or support legislation that upholds and strengthens these standards by increasing the number of inspectors and mandating stiff penalties for facilities that violate them.

3. Preserve and enhance healthcare access for all California residents

Throughout California there are healthcare deserts, communities that lack access to vital healthcare professionals and institutions. We must establish and preserve clinics, hospitals and transportation options to make sure that all Californians have the healthcare access they need.

The consolidation and centralization of healthcare providers – one of the consequences of corporatized health systems – is part of the reason hospitals and clinics have closed down in rural and outlying communities and even in locations in major cities that, for some reason, the big health companies find undesirable. California needs to develop compensatory financing systems so that all its citizens are close to needed healthcare services including clinics, urgent care and hospital facilities. In my own district, I’ll fight to preserve Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley.

4. provider coordination

Especially because healthcare has become a profession of usually dispersed specialties that individuals have to figure out how to navigate just at the worst time – when they need help – I believe it’s vital to improve coordination between the institutions that come most closely into contact especially with our neediest citizens in helping to determine individuals’ healthcare needs and ways to serve them. Community colleges, school districts, cities, counties and other agencies need to develop coordination and cooperation routines for the delivery of social, health, and mental health services.

5. Prevention and community health

Beyond trying to fix our very flawed sickness care delivery system, we must think about individual and community health in a very different way. Let’s think about preventing illness and keeping communities healthy in the first place. Even then-Senator Barack Obama voiced concern in 2008 with these very stark words: "Simply put, in the absence of a radical shift toward prevention and public health, we will not be successful in containing medical costs, and improving the health of the American people."

So what would preventing illness actually look like? Here are two examples that California could easily implement if the political will was present:

First, a state-funded public health media and nutrition campaign to counter the obesity epidemic, much as HIV has been addressed in the past. The obesity epidemic is causing catastrophic premature illness and mortality but it is entirely preventable!

The elements of nutritional health are well known. Whatever the fad diets of the day, the vast preponderance of scientific evidence shows that diets rich in fresh vegetables and fruit, with substantial protein (whether meat or vegetable) and whole grains and nuts, consumed in moderate portions and without significant amounts of added sugar or refined carbohydrates reduces obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. But on a day-to-day basis, many of California’s citizens don’t follow the experts’ advice. Advertising, ready and cheap availability of processed foods and sugar-laden treats are levying huge healthcare costs and individual suffering on our citizens. What can we do? Our schools can help with nutrition education; our state can adopt taxes that raise the prices of unhealthy foods just as they did with cigarettes; our healthcare providers can be urged to address their clients holistically and preventively, not just therapeutically. The state can help make Californians healthier!

Second, much as California has decriminalized marijuana, it should consider decriminalization of the use of illegal drugs. Drug addiction and use must be addressed as public health issues, not matters of criminal justice. This would improve outcomes and hugely reduce pressure on our justice and incarceration systems. Think of all the lives that could be saved, the needless victimization of addicts that could be avoided, and the billions of dollars that could be saved by dramatically reducing the prison industrial complex. With drug addiction considered a health problem within a framework of preventive healthcare built upon principles of benefit for patients rather than benefits for insurance companies and huge healthcare companies, drug treatment facilities could replace prisons for many people whose prospects now are being crushed by inappropriate punitive, rather than curative or maintenance approaches.

A third point, now embedded in California state law, is the requirement of vaccinations for entry of children into public schools. I support universal mandatory vaccination except when medical conditions -- such as immunological insufficiencies -- preclude immunization.

Corporate-free politics and California’s Health

Right now, legislation and legislative initiatives in California are dominated by lobbyists. These people have the expertise, the funding, the longevity in Sacramento and the dedication to delve deeply into their policy areas and to craft legislation that serves their employers. Unfortunately, their employers are mostly large corporations that have interests in legislation that protects their profits.

I’m running for Assembly District 15 as a corporate-free candidate. Having worked steadily in my day job as a mental health wrap-around specialist for children, spending much of my remaining time engaged in Richmond politics seeking to improve life in my community on the basis of grassroots, ground-level upward mobilization of people’s talents, I’m convinced that California as a whole could vastly improve its residents’ health by pursuing a single-payer, state-defended, highly accessible, coordinated and significantly preventive healthcare system.

These aren’t the innovations that the big corporations view as important to them. They aren’t necessarily profit centers. But for California’s people, they are vital and they are attainable. That’s what I plan to work on in Sacramento as a representative of Assembly District 15.

I will fight to win housing for people, not for profit:

• Expand rent control at the local and state level to protect housing affordability.
• End harmful Costa-Hawkins limits and allow strong, universal rent control by winning Yes on Proposition 10 in November.
• Protect working homeowners against foreclosures and predatory lending.
• Support strategic rezoning with local control to prevent displacement and build affordable housing near transit corridors.
• Build Housing for All, with several hundred thousand units of new affordable social housingstatewide in ten years through a mixed-income, high-quality public or not-for-profit model.
• Raise taxes on housing speculation and vacant investment properties to fund affordable social housing.

California has an unprecedented housing affordability crisis driven by the failures of the for-profit housing system. While corporations and housing speculators make record profits from our homes, working tenants pay the price in skyrocketing rent, and homeowners face growing vulnerability to market bubbles and foreclosures. Nearly all of us have seen families and communities torn apart by housing speculation. Luxury housing developers see no profit in building the affordable housing we need.

I am proud of our housing justice accomplishments in Richmond. As a City Councilmember for the past eight years I helped win the first new rent control law in California in 30 years, supported a major redevelopment plan, and developed a nationally-leading program to protect homeowners from foreclosure. If elected to be your Assemblymember, I will be a leading champion for working renters and homeowners.

I strongly support Yes on 10, the Affordable Housing Act, on the ballot this November. Prop. 10 will repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act of 1995, a state law passed due to real estate corporation lobbying and campaign donations. This law prevents cities from setting the strong rent control they choose. Costa-Hawkins blocks rent control on single-family buildings, on buildings constructed after the 1980s or 90s (depending on the city), and any rent control for new tenants after a vacancy. Costa-Hawkins was a huge giveaway to the real estate lobby and housing speculators. In just one year after it passed, average market rent increased by 40% in Berkeley alone. We must end harmful Costa-Hawkins limits on rent control. By winning Yes on 10 this November, we can take back control of our homes and put a stop to the price-gouging and displacement destabilizing our communities.

If elected, I will vigorously advocate for expanding rent control across our state. If we win Yes on 10, then I will use my state position to support efforts to cover single-family homes, buildings constructed after the 1980s, and new tenants after vacancy. I will lead the effort from Sacramento to support local expansions of rent control and will work toward a statewide rent control policy that sets a reasonable baseline of protection for all. I will be a committed leader in the fight against housing corporations' further attempts to block rent control at the state level.

To expand rent control across our state while also encouraging housing expansion, I will support careful local control exemptions. Until we have our Housing for All plan in action, private development is likely to play an important role in new housing construction. Our efforts to expand rent control must protect the security of working homeowners who live in their homes. Along with new incentives for affordable housing construction, I will support local measures for an 8 to 15-year exemption from rent control for new housing units, to be reviewed again when social housing construction is well underway.

With careful measures to expand rent control, all working people in California will be able to benefit from security, affordability, and control over our homes.

Between 2010 and 2016 the Bay Area added 500,000 jobs, but only 50,000 homes. In Oakland in 2017, the for-profit housing system built 3,960 high-cost market-rate housing units, and only 324 affordable housing units. At the same time, on an average night, 2,761 people lived unhoused on the street and over 5,000 homes stood vacant as investment properties. The for-profit housing system focuses investment on maximum profit opportunities and luxury market-rate housing, not affordable housing for working people. We need to move beyond the trickle-down, for-profit housing system to the bold, publicly-supported models that can provide affordable homes for all.

I will advance a Housing for All plan to fund construction of hundreds of thousands of new affordable social housing units across our state within ten years. We will provide state funding for local governments to build a new generation of social housing: homes built through high-quality public, non-profit cooperative, and community land trust models. We will learn from the successes of cities across the world with active input of community members statewide, as we build a not-for-profit social housing system with beautiful facilities, density near public transportation, and strong mixed-income communities.

Once in Sacramento I will push for building hundreds of thousands of units of social housing within ten years. Serious policy planning by state agencies and local governments will be guided by this goal. I will push for state laws to support expansion of community land trusts that can provide not-for-profit, affordable housing.

Working homeowners in the Bay Area are becoming more vulnerable every year to runaway housing speculation and financial manipulation. I will be a legislative leader for protecting working homeowners through foreclosure prevention, credit counseling, and pre-purchase assistance. As an elected leader on the Richmond City Council, I helped lead the nation with a public program intended to keep foreclosed homeowners in their homes by using eminent domain to take foreclosed homes from the big banks and turn them back to their residents. As housing bubbles and financial speculation loom as a greater threat to the security of our homes, I will work creatively to use every public tool available to protect the security of working homeowners.

Abandoned housing creates risks for homeowners and tenants, and I will draw on my experience with in Richmond to lead on state policy. Derelict homes pose a fire danger to surrounding homes and can create safety hazards for a neighborhood's children. We need to pass legislation allowing communities to quickly take over abandoned buildings, renovate them with public and non-profit support, and make them available for those who need housing.

We need a serious, studied response to the housing affordability crisis. I support many existing efforts, and I'll vigorously build and participate in legislative alliances for innovative housing solutions. I support these goals from housing bills introduced in the Assembly this session:

• AB 2065: To advance the use of surplus public land for affordable housing.
• AB 2562: To provide $500 million in low interest state loan funds to affordable housing and community development projects, to replace federal funding cuts.
• AB 3152: To provide property tax relief for affordable rental housing.
• AB 2162: To fast-track approvals for supportive housing for the homeless.

On the ballot this November, I also support Proposition 1 to approve $4 billion in new state bonds for building and renovating affordable housing, and Proposition 2 to allow a transfer of existing tax revenue to support homelessness prevention programs.

For-profit evictions are rampant in our state. We need to repeal the Ellis Act of 1985 to ensure that cities can limit landlords' abilities to evict renters or change building purposes through bankruptcy or conversion to condominiums.

I am critical of the recent Senate Bill 827. I strongly support building more affordable housing near transit corridors. However, as it was written, SB 827 gave major benefits to for-profit developers while restricting communities' ability to shape their own development. SB 827 would have cut the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) impact statement requirements for many new developments, putting local communities at risk. SB 827 would have removed height restrictions and municipal parking capacity requirements for "transit corridor" developments. I believe such changes should be made with local community participation, not under a state mandate designed to benefit for-profit developers. We need to build high-quality, affordable housing near transit, and we can best do so through a not-for-profit, social housing model driven by local community planning.

To fund strong public programs for affordable housing I'll work to eliminate the tax credits, loopholes, and subsidies that benefit for-profit developers, housing speculators, and luxury property owners. As I explain in fuller detail in my Just Economy plank, I will work to raise taxes on housing speculation, vacant investment housing, and luxury home sales. Working people create California's great wealth. We should use that wealth to provide the good housing we all need.

To protect moderate and low income residents, while encouraging high-quality, mixed income housing developments, I support laws to allow income averaging in affordable housing credit properties. This reform will allow the 60 percent of area median income (AMI) occupancy ceiling to apply to the average of all apartments in a property rather than to each individual apartment.

Teachers in our communities have been especially hard hit by out-of-control rents and housing costs. Too often, this has forced educators to leave their communities or undertake punishing long distance daily commutes. I will support affordable housing programs that place a priority on providing good housing for teachers in the communities they serve. Both our immediate and long-term housing plans can be designed to prioritize housing security for public educators and thus strengthen our education system.

To immediately increase affordable housing construction, I will work to enable state-supported loans to single family homeowners who build an in-law unit on their property, so long as they rent the unit at affordable rates. Like an existing state solar installation program, homeowners will be able to pay back these loans as a deductible through their state property taxes. This program will help working homeowners build equity while providing new affordable housing where working tenants have a need.

In the Assembly I will fight for violence prevention through social programs, gun control, and stronger police accountability, and for an end to mass incarceration:

•        End cash bail and onerous court fines.
•        Abolish private prisons and private employment of incarcerated people.
•        Social programs for violence prevention with ceasefire mentorship systems, reentry job training programs and violence prevention stipends.
•        Win Medicare for All, along with comprehensive social work and public health programs, for violence prevention through mental health care.
•        Implement an automatic, independent investigation process for police violence cases.
•        Repeal California's "three strikes" law and end mandatory minimum sentencing.

California and the country at large face crises of police violence and mass incarceration. In 2017 alone, California police killed 172 civilians. If our state were a country, its incarceration rate would be among the highest in the world, higher than that of Russia or Iran. The state has begun reforming its criminal justice system, and I will push for further reforms. My approach to criminal justice and public safety rests on two principles: preventing violence by providing people with the means to live safe, healthy lives; and reforming our justice system to rank the needs of people over profit.

I put these principles into practice as an elected leader on the Richmond City Council. In my first term, I assisted in the creation of workplace anti-bullying legislation. I helped establish a municipal identification card for all residents, so that everyone could participate fully in our community regardless of immigration status. This effort was strongly supported by our Chief of Police to improve police-community interaction. I also spearheaded the successful effort to "ban the box" for municipal employment and housing so that people returning from incarceration could settle productively back into our community. Richmond's homicide rate has significantly declined as we have implemented these programs.

SOCIAL PROGRAMS AND GUN CONTROL FOR REAL VIOLENCE PREVENTION

As an Assembly member, I will work to prevent violence through policies that empower individuals and strengthen communities -- not through militarized policing and mass imprisonment.

In Richmond I promoted reintegration programs for formerly incarcerated people into our community, and I will do the same at the state level. Having served their time, returning residents should be able to obtain housing and jobs. I will press for strong statewide social programs for violence prevention, including ceasefire mentorship programs, reentry assistance, job training programs, and violence prevention stipends. I helped lead the design and implementation of these programs in Richmond and I am ready to develop legislation to bring these effective public safety innovations to communities statewide.

Adequate mental health care is an important element in violence prevention. We must recognize that those suffering from chronic mental illness or substance abuse are human beings and deserve dignity, care, and the resources necessary to survive in our increasingly unequal society. I will fight for a single-payer, Medicare for All system to provide excellent mental health care for all California residents, no matter their ability to pay.

Research shows that community-based psychiatric treatment is more effective and significantly less expensive than in-prison treatment in preventing crime and reducing incarceration rates for people with mental disorders. Community treatment options in California are vastly underfunded. Our state can and should provide adequate funding for a community-based continuum of mental health care. This should include permanent supportive housing, job training and subsidized employment, effective substance abuse treatment, educational opportunities, and access to highly-skilled treatment professionals. Medicare for All would make available these kinds of care regardless of wealth, thus contributing to violence prevention.

We need to dramatically reduce gun violence. I strongly support serious gun control measures including ammunition sale and clip size limits, a ban on assault weapons, and a statewide voluntary gun buyback program. The state should tax firearm industry profits as it does alcohol and tobacco sales to discourage purchase and to fund gun control and public safety programs. The safety of our communities should come before corporate profits.

STRONGER PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY FOR POLICE

When we improve relations between communities and their police forces, our communities become safer. I support creation of local police accountability mechanisms. Guidelines for peace officers' use of force need to be tightened, as proposed in Assembly Bill 931, and the California Attorney General should fully enforce existing state laws on peace officers' use of force. I support community policing initiatives, like those we developed in Richmond. Police training, staffing, and procedures need to be directed to violence prevention and helping community members avail themselves of social services rather than suffering incarceration.

I will fight to repeal the Peace Officer's Bill of Rights, which shields police officers' disciplinary records from the public and makes it extremely difficult to fire officers for misconduct. I support Senate Bill 1421 as part of this process. I support creating an automatic, independent investigation process for cases of police violence, like the process I helped establish in Richmond.

I will fight for the end of civil asset forfeiture for private police gain. Under civil forfeiture laws, the police may permanently seize and profit from the property of anyone suspected of criminal activity, without ever charging the person with a crime. We must end this practice which unjustly places police profits over people.

END MASS INCARCERATION

We need to dismantle the system of mass incarceration that has destroyed lives and devastated communities. Our criminal justice system should be re-oriented toward rehabilitation, away from punishment and incarceration.

Far too many Californians have been imprisoned for possession of illegal drugs. This has driven up our incarceration rate and destroyed people's chances for productive lives. I support drug use decriminalization. Drug possession and use should be responded to as health problems, not criminal acts. Rehabilitation, counseling, expansion of life opportunities, and a health maintenance approach are more humane than criminalization, and will reduce costs and improve outcomes.

One way to vastly reduce our prison population and the pressure on our court system is to decriminalize drug possession. I want to work with other legislators to study the feasibility of and best practices for moving in this direction.

From my long experience as a children's mental health professional and based on review of scientific research about cognitive development, I passionately believe that we must end the prosecution of children as adults. Incarceration of children leads to further harm, not rehabilitation. We need to break the school-to-prison pipeline, care for our children, and thereby make their lives more productive and our communities safer.

I will fight to repeal California's "three strikes" law and to end mandatory minimum sentencing. Sentences should be determined on a case-by-case basis, attending to the individual circumstances of a crime and the particular characteristics of an offender. Ending mandatory minimum sentences will allow us to avoid needlessly cruel prison sentences and reduce inhumane overcrowding in our prisons.

I will also work in Sacramento to abolish the death penalty. The death penalty is a cruel and inhumane punishment. It is hugely expensive to house death penalty convicts during long appeals processes, it results in the killing of the innocent and mentally ill, and it is disproportionately applied to people of color. Moreover, the death penalty has not been shown to deter crime. I support measures that reduce violence, not those that simply reproduce it.

Our current cash bail system is an affront to justice. Wealthy suspects don't have to suffer pre-trial detention, while poorer suspects spend long periods of time in jail. Sometimes people spend months in jail awaiting trial, and innocent suspects sometimes plead guilty just to temporarily gain freedom. I will work to end cash bail in California and nationwide. We should determine pre-trial detention according to the suspect's flight risk and threat, not how much money they can pay for freedom. I oppose attempts to replace the cash bail system with more prosecutorial discretion. Release should be the rule unless the prosecutor proves that the person is a flight risk or a significant danger to the community.

Everyone deserves the right to a strong legal defense, regardless of ability to pay. California's public defense programs have been drastically underfunded and overburdened for decades. Some public defenders' offices face lawsuits from the ACLU based on their insufficient ability to meet Constitutional requirements for fair and adequate defense. We must provide stronger state support for public defenders, fully supporting them to make sure our criminal justice system works for the many, not just the few.

Our criminal justice system should serve the needs of people, not the profits of corporations. When society considers someone's imprisonment necessary, it should be responsible for carrying out the duties of custodianship, care, and rehabilitation. Private prisons create corporate incentives to keep people in jail and to minimize assistance and services to them. We must abolish private prisons.

Private corporations should no longer employ prisoners. Private prison labor is exploitative and creates large profits for business while paying prisoners minimal wages, often giving them little in the way of useful training, and unfairly undercuts the wages of non-incarcerated workers. The state should provide prisoners who want to work with training and good, fairly-paid jobs that can prepare them for successful re-entry into their communities.