What should the city do when confronted with homeless individuals who refuse to go into a shelter or temporary housing? 

I know how important it is to have stable housing. My family frequently moved to places where my mom found job opportunities. This experience led me to become a homeowner as a young adult because I wanted to put down roots and establish generational wealth for my family.  We have too many who find themselves one missed paycheck away from an eviction notice. As a city, especially in a pandemic, we need to do everything we can to help people stay in their homes and ensure access to the services they need to get back to stability. 

Homelessness is a humanitarian crisis that our city needs to address with urgency. We cannot simply prosecute our way out of this problem. Our city will need to commit to expanding our capacity to deal with the root causes of homelessness, mental health and substance abuse and poverty. 

I’m proud of my record of bringing forth solutions that are already impacting the city. I spearheaded building our city’s first municipal homeless shelter with supportive bridge housing located in North Long Beach. We are already seeing results since the facility opened at the start of the pandemic, helping hundreds of residents find their way off the streets, while paving the way for programs like Project Room Key. I advocated for our city to localize our mental health and substance abuse services to address the root causes of homelessness directly. I also helped to create our Long Beach REACH Teams, coordinated outreach teams who focus on physical and mental health to address the needs of those experiencing homelessness. I pushed for our city to make it easier to convert nuisance motels into transitional and supportive housing. 

I will continue to find creative solutions that leverage funding from the county, state, and federal governments to help our unhoused population and those vulnerable to falling into homelessness. 

How would you address crime in the city? 

The most challenging moment I’ve experienced as a councilmember is the phone call from a watch commander telling me there’s been a shooting and loss of life. Early in my tenure, three young men were killed in different parts of our community. At their age, I would have been on a college campus. If they had more access to opportunities, would they still be with us right now? 

Economic and educational opportunities lead to safer communities. 

Yes, we need a well-resourced police department to respond to criminal activity and emergencies. I support the development of Long Beach’s comprehensive Safety Recovery Plan, and I support hiring police raised in our community and understanding the neighborhoods they seek to serve. 

But we also need to invest in what creates healthier and safer neighborhoods—mental health services, parks, youth programs, schools, libraries, and workforce development programs.

That’s what we’ve done in North Long Beach. I spearheaded the effort to build the Michelle Obama Library, which has provided a venue for afterschool programs and increased literacy rates. We built the Doris Topsy-Elvord Community Center and the Ron Arias Health Equity Center to provide youth, mental health, and workforce opportunities and family preservation programs like the Fundamentals of Fatherhood initiative. 

I’ve supported youth on their path to college by creating a fund for scholarships and championing the North Long Beach Higher Education Center. I brought President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative to Long Beach. I collaborated with the city prosecutor to create the Promising Adults Tomorrow’s Hope (PATH) program that allows young first-time non-violent offenders the opportunity to pursue job training or educational opportunities and get back on the right track. 

As mayor, I will invest in community policing, violence prevention and a data-driven approach to community safety. When gun violence increased last summer, our police department reviewed the data and launched a neighborhood walk program in areas with the highest number of violent and property crimes. Their community engagement led to reduced calls for service and an 80% reduction in shootings. 

I’ll also place a focus on neighborhood quality of life, by eliminating nuisance sites in the city that drive violence, human trafficking, and crime, including nuisance motels or liquor stores, to make neighborhoods safer and more stable and freeing up valuable public safety resources for responding to community needs and reducing response times. Ensuring everyone remains safe and healthy in their neighborhood will be my priority as our mayor, and we can achieve it by working together. 

With oil revenue dropping, and the city facing the possibility that Measure M revenue could disappear, what will you do to balance the budget in coming years? 

Residents count on our city to continue providing high quality, public services, no matter the economic circumstances. When Long Beach has faced tough economic times, we’ve found ways to grow revenues that enable us to protect jobs and services, like public safety and libraries. 

For the long-term health of our city, I will work with the city to identify ways we can diversify our tax base for a more sustainable budget future, ensuring our city’s health does not boom and bust, along with the economy.

Here are some solutions that I would explore: 

• Attract new economic opportunities by prioritizing ease, speed, and predictability, when doing business in Long Beach. By becoming more business-friendly, we can grow our local economy. 
• Growing our existing revenue by expanding our property and sales tax base. To do this, we need to ensure that small businesses are thriving in every part of town, not just in a few areas. If small businesses in every council district in Long Beach thrive, that means more revenue that can be invested in city services. 
• I would advocate for a modern state tax code that prioritizes growth. Cities across California face deficits, while the state has generated a $90 billion surplus last year. Our tax code’s reliance on sales taxes effectively rewards cities that build car dealerships and shopping malls, and penalizes cities that build housing. 
• I would explore alternatives to declining oil revenue, by investing in aerospace and new and emerging technologies. 

I believe in empowering our residents to have a voice in local decision making. I’ve hosted community budget meetings and facilitated participatory budgeting processes that help residents understand the impacts of the decisions the city council makes. At times like these, civic engagement is critical. I’ve seen the power of residents uniting to create change from the ground up. We have proven that when we work together, we can overcome any challenge. 

We will work together to deliver the resources our residents need to thrive by prioritizing budget decision based on three major areas of focus: 

• Addressing the root causes of homelessness 
• Creating safer and healthier neighborhoods 
• Navigating our way out of the pandemic with an equitable recovery

These strategies, along with a strong collaborative spirit, are how we will maintain a balanced budget and a thriving economy in our city despite changes in revenue from sources like Measure M. 

The state is requiring Long Beach to make room for 26,502 new housing units by 2029. How should those housing units be distributed throughout the city? 

Housing has become too expensive for too many Long Beach families. We need to do everything we can to address the rising cost of living in our city. 

Our city’s existing Land Use Element already accounts for locating opportunity sites within our city for the approximately 26,000 units of housing that are required to be built. However, those units will not be realized unless we identify a local source of revenue to build housing that is affordable for the average Long Beach resident or family. 

I have long sought solutions to our housing crisis. In early 2020, I proposed a housing bond to generate $4 billion in affordable housing production in Long Beach. A coalition led by my opponent, Councilwoman Suzie Price, voted it down. 

As mayor, I intend to continue my track record of advocacy for building new housing. By working together, we created housing opportunities for all income levels sustainably while preserving the character of established neighborhoods. 

Policies such as inclusionary housing and permitting Accessory Dwelling Units are already making a difference. I will continue advocating to build along transit corridors, increase mixed-use development, and partner with neighborhoods to identify opportunities. 

I will partner with our schools and colleges to identify opportunities to build student and educator housing, which will add to our units. I propose establishing a Long Beach Housing Promise that could help uplift those who need it the most while utilizing land already zoned for housing or education. 

Finally, we must consider community needs in any of our housing decisions and make all efforts to involve residents at every step. Hosting roundtables and listening sessions is not enough. We must empower the organizations on the ground to make a collective vision. 

The Queen Mary will require at least tens of millions in repairs to just remain in the state that it’s in currently. Is this a wise investment for the city, or should something else be done with the ship? 

The Queen Mary is a historical landmark that is a part of our city’s history and still an iconic asset for the city. Like any asset, it requires investment and upkeep in order to continue to ensure an extended life and profitability. 

The Queen Mary and its adjacent land presents a rare opportunity to develop 40 acres of our Downtown waterfront and create a major economic benefit to our city that will help ensure a stronger long-term budget and quality city services for residents. 

The reality of the Queen Mary is that regardless of what we do with it, it will require a significant investment. It will cost more than $100 million to remove the ship. It may take approximately $125 million-$250 million to make the ship secure, remove it from resting in corrosive ocean water and extend its life. 

However, this is a decision that should not be taken lightly. Significant public outreach, transparency, fiscal and peer review, and accountability must be a priority, in order to ensure the public’s trust and confidence in the vision and plan for the Queen. We need to ensure the process is transparent to the public, that the plan is fiscally responsible and sustainable for the extended life of the ship. 

We should work together to save the Queen Mary and ensure that we submit the asset to our children’s generation in a better position than the way it was submitted to ours. 

The city never imposed a vaccine mandate on its employees, and recently lifted its indoor mask mandate. What should the city do if there’s a new surge of COVID-19 infections? 

We need to continue protecting the health of our community members. Long Beach has been recognized for our proactive COVID-19 response and ensuring our residents had access to testing and vaccines. 

I helped support food distributions, provide funding for businesses to keep their doors open, and help residents remain in their homes. I helped start the Office of Equity in our Public Health department, which has led to improved health outcomes and ensured an equitable response to COVID-19. 

The variants are reminders that we need to continue to be vigilant when combatting COVID. I will collaborate with our health department to prevent spread, ramp up testing, and increase access to vaccines and boosters. I’ll work with businesses to provide support they need to remain open and safely return people to their office spaces. I’ll coordinate with our school district to ensure students, teachers, parents, and administrators are safe in their classrooms. 

In the last two years, we have learned that when we work together, we keep people safer. 

That’s what I intend to do as mayor.

What should the city do when confronted with homeless individuals who refuse to go into a shelter or temporary housing?

Homelessness is absolutely the most complex problem we face here in Long Beach. But, the situation is something we can absolutely tackle with the right strategy. We have about 2,000 homeless people in Long Beach, but only a limited number of outreach teams and hours of operation. This is an issue. We need to emphasize our service-first enforcement model by increasing our capacity through creating additional street outreach teams (whether through the city or a contracted nonprofit) for each district so that they can target specific problem areas and repeatedly and consistently offer services to the same individuals. Every single district needs help now! The data is clear that this type of directed outreach works. We just don’t currently have the capacity for it in Long Beach. And while there are many things that can be improved upon in terms of the services we offer, and the hours we offer them, your question is very specific to what should happen when people refuse services.

We have a municipal code that makes sleeping in public spaces illegal during certain hours. If individuals do not accept services and they are given ample time to do so, the option cannot be to sleep in public spaces. Residents need to be able to use our parks, beaches and public restrooms and if people are living in those areas, it renders them closed, in large part, to residents, including our youth, who need safe open spaces to be able to engage in programming and outdoor settings. For those who refuse services, enforcement of the municipal code or referrals to future programs, like CARE Court, can be a critical piece to addressing issues of homelessness. One of the reasons this can be so useful is due to our in-jail clinician, collaborative court options and nonprofit rehabilitation programs that begin to engage as part of the justice system. Intervention through the justice system is a last resort but there is no other way to keep parks, beaches and public walkways accessible for all residents in the city without using the municipal code to keep these public spaces clean, safe and usable for all. 

How would you address crime in the city?

Keeping people safe is a core responsibility that every city has. We reduce crime by making it a priority, not by making it a political football. I believe we need both preventative and traditional public safety systems. What that looks like is a balance of youth programming and engagement and more police department resources. We need officers who are able to respond to calls for service, as well as follow up on investigations, and do the essential police work of deterring crime, and solving crimes after they have occured. We should support our police officers, who do the work that is often very challenging and dangerous, but should also expect the department to continue the work of building public trust, increasing transparency, updating our training to include bystander liability and ensuring accountability. 

In recent years we have asked police officers to do more and more work, much of which is unrelated to addressing crime, so giving our police department the ability to focus more specifically on stopping crime and responding to crime is critical at this time. We also need to be a leader in updating our public safety policies. For example, I was a lead advocate in incorporating body worn cameras for all officers, updating our use of force police practices and cracking down on gun violence. 

We need new ordinances in place that support the work of our officers and give them the tools they need to keep us safe. We also need to move past these conversations about defunding our police department, and into the discussion of how we make sure we are getting the best public safety service we can get. Rarely do you pay less for something and get a better product, so I support more investment in our police officers specifically. This means more targeted responsibilities like bike patrols, and walking beats, it means more police presence and faster responses on emergency calls. 

With oil revenue dropping, and the city facing the possibility that Measure M revenue could disappear, what will you do to balance the budget in coming years?

The role of mayor means making tough choices. In recent years we have seen recessions, a pandemic, and now the impacts of inflation hitting the city hard, leading to many years of discussion about department cuts, furloughs and service reductions. However, during this time the city continues to create new programs and specialty projects that may have good intentions, but ultimately exist at the expense of the city efficiently providing foundational responsibilities Long Beach residents depend on the city exclusively to provide. I will recommit the city to focusing on the work of running a city and doing it with greater effectiveness. Too many departments have continually taken on more and more responsibilities or been given new unfunded mandates to manage that are beyond the department’s core necessary responsibilities. 

We have all heard the difficult position many police departments have been put in over the past few years where issues outside of policing have been added to their plate. Well, the same is true across many other city departments as well, leading to a limited, and in many cases reduced, number of staff being given more and more things to do with fewer resources. Look at the numbers of planners we have in our Development Services Department for example. We ranked ninth out of 12 in terms of the number of planners we have working to approve new projects. Santa Monica, Pasadena, LA and LA County are all better staffed than us. That is not acceptable for a city of our size.

As a city we have bitten off more than we can chew, with the desire to be everything for everyone, but as a consequence we are struggling to do anything well, and often struggling to do it at all. As mayor, I will lead the reprioritization of city responsibilities and help develop a budget that is realistic about what our city staff can do. I have infinite faith in our Long Beach employees, they are dedicated and hard-working everyday, but they are only human, and asking them to do the job of four other employees sets them up for failure and residents not getting the services they deserve. 

The state is requiring Long Beach to make room for 26,502 new housing units by 2029. How should those housing units be distributed throughout the city? 

We have already started making a dent in that number and I think at this point, we have about 23,000 to go in order to be in compliance with the state. Housing is absolutely an important topic here in Long Beach as well as up and down the state, and it will continue to be a priority for me as mayor. Long Beach does not have enough housing for our existing population. So, building more housing means that a family of three can move out of their one bedroom apartment and into something bigger, it means a new graduate can move out of their parents house and into a studio apartment on their own for the first time, and it means empty nest seniors can downsize their large house and move into a condo or a senior community. These are the needs of Long Beach residents that are living here today, but none of those needs can be met without more housing. 

As mayor, I will do what I have done for years as a councilmember and that has been to confront problems head on to solve them with real and pragmatic solutions. On the topic of housing, I have been a leader time and time again as we passed updated Land Use Element policies that make more housing possible throughout the city, and I worked closely with community groups and residents for years to find a good and workable policy that made positive impacts for the city. Specifically, in my district, I led the update of the Southeast Area Specific Plan (SEASP) that set updated development standards for retail as well as inclusionary residential developments in the southeast part of the city, and this was historic as it created the opportunity for thousands of new units to be developed. In fact we have already seen a number of properties sold and are beginning the process of making them into residential buildings, that include low income affordable units, that will benefit Long Beach residents as well as faculty and students. 

The Queen Mary will require at least tens of millions in repairs to just remain in the state that it’s in currently. Is this a wise investment for the city, or should something else be done with the ship?

The question states that the QM will require “tens of millions” in repairs. I wish that were the case. It’s actually hundreds of millions! 

I believe that before we make a decision about spending significant amounts of money on the ship, we need the residents to weigh in. This has to be a practical, not emotional decision. The financial stakes are just too high. Ask any resident where they think hundreds of millions of dollars should be prioritized and you’ll hear answers focused on crime, on homelessness, on affordability, on street and road investment, in sustainability, in youth programming, and dozens of other pressing topics for everyday residents. The ship has suffered as a result of leaseholder mismanagement, and fraud as the $23 million in Tidelands funds for the operators to perform emergency repairs, a vote that I was the only person to oppose, resulted in the misappropriation of money and lack of clarity about whether the city really got the true value of its investment. 

The future of the shop will have to be a creative one. In my opinion, it needs to be taken out of the water, because remaining in the water is contributing to its rapid deterioration. The Harbor Commission is currently reviewing their interest in taking the Queen Mary as part of the Pier H transfer. If this were to happen, perhaps they can find a creative way to monetize Pier H, while at the same time using all (or parts) of the Queen Mary as a tourist attraction. Whether it’s this idea or another, it is my hope that the experts at the Harbor Department can best understand the full potential of a broader Pier H acquisition and incorporate that into a proposal for the City to consider. 

The city never imposed a vaccine mandate on its employees, and recently lifted its indoor mask mandate. What should the city do if there’s a new surge of COVID-19 infections?

Long Beach city employees have been incredibly dedicated and working hard throughout the pandemic. During stressful, difficult, times Long Beach employees were working daily to keep our city moving forward. We will continue to do that if there is a new surge of COVID-19. 

As a city we sought to protect employees and the public by following best practices in the state, while also following the science. I appreciated having our own Health Department during the pandemic and will always encourage us making independent decisions that are best for our city, its residents and the businesses that are operating here. 

At this juncture, it appears the risks to many residents and employees is waning with the increased number of vaccinations, and boosters, and understanding of how to keep yourself and others safe in public, but I put my ultimate trust in our Health Department to provide the expert analysis and policy direction as we slowly move out of the COVID-19 crisis and hopefully prevent another surge. If we were to have another surge, however, I would hope that decisions about closures of businesses, schools, services, and programming are made in an independent, mindful and consistent manner. As a mom of two school-aged kids and a local business owner, I can tell you that building back and reintegrating after a pandemic has been an uphill battle and something many people just like me are struggling with. I am optimistic that we have learned some important lessons if ever faced with the same realities.