Silicon Valley Nonprofit Coalition Debate

Introduction

Thank you for inviting me.

I’m going to use my intro time to respond to some inaccurate interpretations of my recent comments.

At the last forum, I challenged Omar’s claim that he had more experience than I.

Here’s why — it’s because I have a much broader employment history that includes — and goes beyond — nonprofit and government categories.

· I have deep nonprofit experience which I absolutely value as the founder and 7-year leader of The Business and Housing Network — SJ.

· And as a judge pro tem and an administrative hearing officer for SCC and a teacher at SJSU — I have government experience.

I founded two small businesses in downtown and worked in finance at IBM, and I’ve worked in mental health — in a psychiatric hospital.

When I said Omar’s experience was “wanting”, I meant that simply that he doesn’t have the scope of experience I do, as he has only worked in nonprofits and government.

That is just factually accurate and uncontroversial, and I stand by it.

Public funding for solutions to the housing shortage and homelessness

Give me a billion dollars over a three-year period and I can guarantee you a better result than an 11% increase in homelessness.

I am not trying to be difficult, but implicit in the question is an assumption that more money always means a better result. It doesn’t — especially if we’re not spending the money in a smart way. This is one of those lessons that business teaches you in a really ruthless manner. We need to spend the money in a way that delivers the results we want in a cost-effective manner. A negative example of this is our housing department, whose budget skyrocketed from $298 Million to $435 Million. That extra money would have been better spent had it been repurposed into my rental voucher program to keep families housed.

So, I am saying we need a complete audit of how we are spending our Housing dollars before we commit to upping the budget. I’m open to it, but I can tell you that I would like to see a spending plan that focuses much more on Treatment Now, Shelter Now, Placement Now, and Prevention Now instead of Million Dollar Units built a decade in the future.

City has meaningful and healthy partnership with nonprofits

Of course, the city/nonprofit partnership is fundamental — but we don’t manage it that way.

If you’re a big nonprofit with a favored relationship with the Housing Dept, the current system is probably o.k. But if you’re a small nonprofit or a new one, not so much. And we are missing out on great new approaches.

I believe we should model our nonprofit relationship along the lines of San Francisco’s innovative nonprofit management system, which centralizes city relationships with nonprofits in terms of streamlining their compliance requirements and offering training opportunities.

This generally means more funding for nonprofits and fewer hassles dealing with the city.

My broader plan for reimagining the city’s relationship with — what I call CCC — Community Coordination Committee — can be found on my medium account and goes into more detail.

Homelessness response centered on permanent housing strategies

Permanent Housing is and should be a part of our approach to homelessness, but it should not be the *only* part. And the city — and the Housing Dept’s — adamant embrace of Housing First — to the detriment of other more effective, cheaper, and faster solutions has been a big contributor to our inability to put a dent in the wide variety of homelessness.

We need to be more creative and open-minded, and more folks need to be educated in the complexities of the housing problem. That’s why my D3 recovery plan focuses on Shelter-Stabilization and Services First for the unhoused living in parks and sidewalks. It also focuses on making much more effective use of existing housing stock to help alleviate our issues — I call it Placement First. We are way behind other cities in making it easy for businesses to convert vacant office and other shelter space into housing: take a look downtown there are lots of see-through buildings. And of course, we need to build more permanent housing, but not at a $1M a door, that’s not a long-term strategy.

Communities need for mental health services

The County recently passed and is planning implementation of Laura’s Law — outpatient treatment, and Governor Newsom just signed CARE court for mandatory in-house treatment. Unfortunately, SCC is not part of the pilot program, and our implementation of CARE court is outside of two years. Again, we cannot waste time in responding to the needs of those who are crying out loud for our help.

I am the only candidate in this race with education and experience in mental health treatment. And here’s what that expertise tells me:

· Job 1 is shelter-stabilization at destination locations

· Job 2 is services, safety, showers, and security for those who currently live on the sidewalks, creek-beds, and parks.

· And Job 3 is to verify and validate that everyone is getting help instead of the status quo haphazard approach to drive-by treatment.

Addressing historical inequities in D3

The legacies of internment camps, Jim Crow, redlining, overtly racist codes at the City and State level are impossible to ignore. For D3 at the municipal level, here are four areas I’d like to focus on:

1.) Free Transit within the city — or at least for D3 residents. This would neutralize some of the geographical privileging that takes place in a car-based, suburban environment.

2.) Crack down on illegal rentals. Because of our constrained housing supply, off-the-book housing can exploit the needs of immigrants and disadvantaged groups. This has to stop.

3.) Municipal properties converted to Housing. As I have discussed previously, we need to up our game Placing people in unused empty spaces and converting that property to housing.

4.) Enforce the Siting Policy fairly. D3 is the dumping ground for affordable housing in San Jose, and San Jose is the county’s dumping ground. This has to stop — affordable housing needs to be allocated equitably and the Housing dept needs to follow its own Siting Policy rules.

Affordable early education and childcare

It’s not just the workforce challenges that support the need for early education and childcare — until we start fixing the inequities that force parents in many historically oppressed communities to have 2,3, poorly-paying jobs, we really disadvantage family creation in those groups. And we privilege wealthier workers with one job. So, I’m very much in favor of more investment in this area of early education.

Early education should be free, childcare should be means tested in terms of payment and one of helpful things the city can do to support early education and childcare is clean up our parks for families and children. This will be dependent on making the parks in D3 accessible to all and implementing the ILHS — so that those using the parks for shelter have an alternative for their belongings and for the services and shelter-stability they need.

Prioritize prevention and providing opportunity or policing

That question is framed as a bit of Hobson’s choice, and I don’t think this is an either/or question. If we lived in a perfect world of course we would only prioritize crime prevention and youth opportunity. However, our residents are demanding more immediate results, so — in city government, we must be non-dogmatic and post ideological. That means we need to focus on what really works for folks — right now — who live and work in D3. I would privilege the programs such as the Mayors Gang Prevention Task Force, and others that can show dramatic visible results — whether they’re upstream or whether they’re downstream. I would push for prevention and opportunity through spending reform. To reappropriate our budget in accordance with many of the cost saving measures our City Auditor has identified over the last several years.