A future worth fighting for

I believe you deserve to feel safe on our streets and in your home. Our city needs to provide services and infrastructure that show we care about our people. As a city, we need to work to lower speeds, increase visibility, provide more effective traffic education, expand public transit, and improve enforcement. As your alderperson, I will:

• Advocate for reform of the inequitable ward capital fund system, which creates patchwork, low-quality infrastructure.

• Push for our city to establish a Vision Zero goal to end traffic fatalities in St. Louis, and expand public transit options, including a North-South MetroLink, MetroBus, and bus rapid transit.

• Actualize traffic calming infrastructure investments, like separated bike lanes and raised crosswalks.

• Support a traffic safety division that includes city civilian personnel to address accident reports and minor moving violations like broken taillights.

• Explore the incentivization of driver education throughout the city, producing safer conditions by creating safer drivers.

• Ensure that as we repave our roads, we are improving our infrastructure to be safer for all road users. By prioritizing pedestrians, bicyclists, and Disabled residents in designing our roads, everyone will feel safer - even folks in their cars.

Whether you own your home or rent, you should be secure in your housing. Renters in our city do not have the same rights as homeowners, and everyone deserves to raise their families and live in safe housing. Housing justice is also intrinsic to racial justice, as Black Saint Louisans are nearly twice as likely to rent as white Saint Louisans and twice as likely to be severely rent burdened. As your alderperson, I will:

• Pass a Tenants’ Bill of Rights that includes the right to Counsel in Housing Court, ensuring people aren’t evicted illegally or without representation.

• Establish an Office of the Tenant Advocate that is responsible for tracking tenant issues and ensuring tenant’s rights.

• Increase our supply of housing by regulating short-term rentals like Airbnbs.

• Create a Rental Registration Program so that we know who owns our city’s housing and negligent owners can’t hide behind LLCs.

• Increase the number of building inspectors to ensure that code violations are reported and solved.

• Improve our neighborhoods by ensuring that landlords who violate renters rights are held accountable .

St. Louis is a premier city, and it’s time we started building like it. We need to raise the standards for development to build a place that not only attracts population growth, but also supports the people who already live here. Unpredictable development processes favor large developers over small ones, creating barriers to those that lack the funds or political connections to navigate our complicated system. Our city is facing a 35,000 unit affordable housing shortage. All of that needs to change, and as your alderperson, I will:

• Work with the Mayor’s office and other alderpersons to create a modern city-wide development plan for our city, fostering a common understanding of our goals for St. Louis.

• Set clear expectations for development review with an eye towards streamlining the process for smaller developers, like home-rehabbers and infill projects.

• Fully fund and staff our building division and update our building codes so that inspectors can ensure the quality of our housing.

• Address ethics reforms related to aldermanic powers for approving and denying projects.

• Support increasing the construction of affordable housing, and reduce permit barriers for homeowners to improve their homes.

Following the collapse of federal funding for urban projects in the 1980s, St. Louis turned to private entities as partners to fund its growth and offered subsidies to incentivize desired outcomes. In present day, we need to modernize our approach by addressing our city’s over-reliance on subsidies and decreasing the barriers to building. As your alderperson, I will:

• Be extra judicious in the use of public subsidies, understanding the trade offs for abatements and the impacts they have on funding for our public school system and other city services.

• Explore alternate incentive mechanisms by learning from examples across the country: like zoning reform, permit waivers, pre-approved building plans, community land trusts, and more.

• Identify ways we can lower barriers for community members to become developers with a focus on bringing our vacant buildings back to life.

• Work to ensure St. Louis Public Schools have representation on the Tax Abatement Commission. Almost 80% of our students are BIPOC, and they deserve fully funded, racially equitable schools.

St. Louis was stronger when our unions were stronger. Unions can be a part of everyday life again. Today, we are seeing a groundswell of organizing from baristas to gig economy workers, but our right to organize is constantly under attack. I will stand with workers. As your alderperson, I will:

• Strengthen protections for workers seeking to unionize by adding labor peace requirements to all city contracts and tax abatement bills

• Create a Labor Department in city government to facilitate action against labor violations

• Close loopholes that allow for Disabled workers to be paid less than non-Disabled workers

• Bolster protections for gig workers and independent contractors

Our city and its government should be accessible to all, regardless of Disability status, race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic level. As your alderperson, I will work to:

• Fund capital improvements to sidewalks so wheelchair users can safely navigate them.

• Pass legislation to ensure that official social media accounts for the city use image descriptions for those with screen readers.

• Increase seating in public spaces.

• Explore ways to address food deserts, so that everyone has access to healthy foods.

• Increase the number of city inspectors to ensure that buildings are safe and ADA compliant.

When people lose their housing, their lives are turned upside down. Banning people from public spaces does not solve the problem. The solution is to treat them with respect, and find them housing and wraparound services so that they are no longer homeless. Black St. Louisans are four times as likely to be unhoused as white St. Louisans: we need to house people if we want to address racial injustice in our city. As your alderperson, I will:

• Adopt a Housing First strategy.

• Establish publicly-funded shelters, which will increase their hours to 24/7 in extreme weather conditions.

• Increase funding for mental and physical healthcare services.

• Enact a Basic Income Program.

• Support the establishment of a universal lunch program at SLPS.

Saint Louis should be a place where everyone should have control over their own reproductive healthcare. As your alderperson, I will:

• Support efforts like last session’s BB61, the Reproductive Equity Fund.

• Work to implement a Reproductive Justice Package similar to one that was passed in Philadelphia.

• Fight to allow residents to countersue if Missouri implements a bill like Texas’s S.B. 8 “Bounty Hunter” abortion law.

• Work to pass an anti-discrimination law that prevents workplace discrimination for workers’ reproductive healthcare decisions.

• Work to pass legislation that bars the disclosure of reproductive healthcare information if the information will be used for abusive litigation or harassment.

Our state has been one of the most aggressive in its attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights. It is imperative that we have public servants who will effectively stand up for our LGBTQIA+ community. As your alderperson, I will:

• Support making the restrooms in government buildings gender neutral.

• Push to update the city website and publications in line with Prop R’s charter change, removing gendered language (e.g.: Board of Alderpersons).

• Work to pass a local version of the EQUALITY Act, which would ban discrimination upon the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

• Support the creation of a framework for a Trans Equity Fund, similar to the Reproductive Equity Fund, which would assist trans St. Louisans in receiving gender-affirming care if the state legislature bans this healthcare.

• Work to create funding for financially accessible, culturally-attuned therapeutic care for LGBTQIA+ folks.