Keeping the Grit in Grit City

Taking this pledge is important in Tacoma. Where we have large fossil fuel corporations that operate on our port. Where Puget Sound Energy is building an LNG facility that will hold enough liquid FRACKED gas to fill the Tacoma Dome. Once that facility is full, it will become a ticking time bomb. LNG facilities are not supposed to be built within a three mile radius of anything you don't want to disintegrate into dust if the facility blows. Tacoma port and city council think building it where three of our hospitals are within the blast zone and multiple schools are within the blast zone is perfectly safe. 

Are you in the blast zone? Would you like to know more about the LNG facility and why you should be worried about it all? Check out this site.

https://www.frackno253.com/

The politicians in our area were ready and willing to put our lives at risk for the sake of their own careers. I do not agree with that. I will not pocket money from fossil fuel companies in this area just for them to one day come and ask me to pay up on their favor. I am beholden to the people of Tacoma and what is in their best interests. Not the interests of the fossil fuel industry. We can do better. We MUST do better, now.

Growing up, we were always economically poor. My mother taught us from a very early age to not judge a book by its cover and to always have respect as a default, no matter what someone looked like or how much money someone made. Her grandmother, Betty, was the one who instilled that in her and because Betty was my only other caregiver other than my parents until she died- just shy of two weeks before I turned 10- I learned that lesson twice over. I have met some really inspiring people because of that mindset. For instance, I used to know a man named John when we lived in Florida who would have whole conversations with me on the bus ride home about electrogravitics and the possibility of an anti-gravity machine. People would shun him and ignore him, not knowing he was full of life and intelligence. I am blessed to be full of stories like this one. 

Housing First is not just handing people without houses a house. That will not work. There are reasons (many different reasons, not just drugs and mental illness like most people are led to believe) that people cannot pass the means tests that society throws at them to stay housed. With Housing First each individual is given the necessary resources they need to become successful at retaining a home. Nobody- and I really mean nobody- wants to live in a tent in the winter or in an unsafe shelter or tiny home village. Maslow was on to something with that hierarchy of needs thing. Even my grandfather, who would decide to live in his car or his sister's closet sometimes, would have rather had his own place to shower and contemplate the universe. 

City Council is not trying to figure out how to eliminate homelessness. Even though a decade ago they made a plan, just to do that, and we are nowhere near what the timeline of that plan says; even without the COVID epidemic. They are just trying to find places to keep our houseless neighbors out of sight and out of mind. Places that do not inconvenience the loud NIMBY's on the more affluent sides of our city. Places that they themselves have stated have room to "grow" to accommodate their projections of a growing number of houseless individuals. 

I want to make sure we are upholding the promise made a decade ago. I want to get our houseless neighbors STABLE AND HOUSED. No matter how you feel about our homeless, the end result you want is for them to be off the street; and I assure you that is how they feel also. Your street is safer when the housless are housed. Their lives are safer when they are housed and supported. It is a win/win situation. 

This is not just a political talking point to me. I am not just saying this because it is "trendy". About a year and a half ago, my daughter felt compelled to stand up in front of Tacoma City Council at the tender age of 6 because they were vilifying the homeless in People's Park, saying that people felt unsafe to take their children there, and forcing them to leave for the sake of the "grass". She asked them to give the houseless Housing First. The statistics show that Housing First WORKS. 

As your council member, I will fight for Housing First and for the betterment of all of our lives. 

If you want to look into ways Housing First has been implemented in other places go ahead and click this link:

https://housingfirsteurope.eu/...

The most important fact about the 5th district is that we are the heart of Tacoma, we are the working class of Tacoma. With this in mind, we are usually the district that carries the brunt of growing pains in the city. That means we bear the weight of the houseless epidemic, that our people are affected by the high rents and low wages, the need for mental health services from the stress we endure, all of which have been exacerbated by COVID. These are heavy issues and someone with a sound knowledge of these problems must be the person to represent the people. As a service worker myself, I have first hand knowledge of what it means to go through these problems. I also have first hand knowledge on why we need police reform. These are the major issues I want to help my city overcome, especially in the 5th district.