Platform

Our Homes. Our Streets. Our Future. 

We are fighting for a Rochester where Our Homes are comfortable and affordable, Our Streets are safe and free from violence, and where we invest in Our Future by prioritizing the most critical and urgent Needs of our youth and families.

Our Homes: Stable, quality, affordable homes for all 

Too many Rochester families are burdened by the same unmet human right: stable, quality, affordable homes. Solving the housing crisis is our city’s strongest defense against the generational poverty that determines our children’s fate from the moment they’re born. We must turn up the pressure on city officials, negligent landlords, and developers to immediately address the unsafe living conditions, rising rents, and displacement of families due to rapidly changing neighborhoods. We must pass tenant protections to increase stability and affordability and regulate short-term rental housing. We must build, rehab, and subsidize housing that is affordable to the average Rochester family making $37k per year. Lastly, we must look to innovative solutions like Community Land Trusts and Social Housing to provide permanent stable, quality, and affordable housing.

Our Streets: Safe Streets

The limits of our public safety strategy have been tested to the breaking point. We can no longer place all of our societal ills on the backs of those tasked with enforcement. Many of the issues we face would be better handled by other trained professionals suited for calls that are more social and administrative in nature. 

During the pandemic, I reached out to other cities seeking data-backed solutions and brought innovative programs back to Rochester, namely the Person in Crisis Team and Advance Peace. I continue to collaborate with other cities to explore researched based best practices that we can tailor for use in our city.  

To meet the need, Rochester must continue and expand its Community Response and Violence Prevention/Interruption programs that focus on providing the right resources at the right time and building relationships that foster individual transformation.

Our Future: Address the Critical & Urgent Needs of our Youth and Families

Youth and their families are in crisis. In my role as Social Emotional Learning teacher at RCSD School 28 I see the magnitude of the problem. An alarming number of children are sharing the truth of their current and past traumas. Domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse, neglect, death, violence, racism, incarcerated loved ones, mental health issues, homelessness, running away, feeling unloved, wanting to die. 

We must challenge the status quo and marshal all available resources to meet the most critical and urgent needs of our youth and families. We must stop prioritizing trickle-downtown investment that benefits a few wealthy property owners with the promise that it will bring “economic development” that will eventually reach our suffering people. Our children do not have the time to wait for the promise of a trickle of economic support. They do not have the time to wait for us to invest in them.   

We must build up the people and families in our community.  We must meet their most critical and urgent needs, and we must ensure they have the resources to thrive. That self love is what will attract people to our city and bring true prosperity.