I started my career on Skid Row and spent years helping more than 11,000 people access housing and services at L.A. Family Housing. This deep, hands-on experience cemented the urgency of addressing the city’s housing and homeless crisis and creating much more affordable housing in L.A. To achieve these objectives on the city council, I will advocate for cutting through bureaucratic red tape and incentivizing the construction of more affordable housing and ensuring that our city is equipped to meet the housing demand. We must drastically expedite the building of all types of housing solutions: ADUs (with potential tax incentives for landlords who agree to rent to an unhoused individual or family for a few years), containers or prefabricated homes; tiny villages; and exploring the use of unused or underutilized government property to build on. I am also committed to working closely with all relevant city departments to streamline and expedite the permitting and inspection processes for new affordable housing developments.

As the policy director of TreePeople, I have actively addressed the crucial issue of ensuring pedestrian safety in communities. Urban planning should prioritize investments in pedestrian-friendly infrastructure including well-maintained sidewalks, crosswalks, and designated pedestrian zones to prioritize the safety of walkers and cyclists. Another critical component of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure is a robust and well-funded public transportation system. Prioritizing public transportation, particularly in underserved areas, not only improves mobility for residents but also contributes significantly to pollution reduction by reducing reliance on individual vehicles. Fostering transit-oriented development creates safe, walkable, and green neighborhoods, addressing pollution concerns while enhancing overall community well-being.

As a father of three young children, one of my most important public safety priorities is combating gun violence in Los Angeles. I support implementing stricter gun safety laws to protect families and prevent mass shootings, as well as strengthening red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals, including those accused of domestic violence. I will also advocate to restrict gun and ammunition sales near schools, childcare programs and community centers.

I am deeply troubled by the corruption that has plagued City Hall. Recent scandals involving members of the City Council have deteriorated the trust Angelenos have in their local government. I am committed to comprehensive city governance reform, which includes making essential procedural changes to redistricting (such as shifting to a truly independent redistricting process) and strengthening ethics oversight to ensure our government truly represents the people's interests.

Growing up in a low-income household raised by a single mother, I helped to raise my siblings while working at a local market. I understand the struggles of families, parents, and workers in our city. I'm running for City Council to fight for working families like mine — standing up for better wages, workers' rights, and safeguarding tenants against unfair evictions and rent hikes. Equal access to quality services, from safe parks to libraries, is vital for all residents in L.A. I'm not a career politician, but a nonprofit leader committed to improving lives and building stronger communities. My goal is to bring reform to City Hall, ensuring transparency, fighting corruption, and holding politicians accountable for the betterment of our city. I live in North Hollywood with my wife and children and actively serve as a PTA officer at their local public school.

I enjoy yoga, jogging, and hiking with my family .

Many Angelenos must work multiple jobs to survive. This causes stress and a poor quality of life. Meeting our neighbors’ housing needs will help alleviate these problems. We must create more affordable housing by increasing the housing supply while focusing on affordability, building near transit, investing in social housing, and creating community land trusts. We must protect renters. We would crack down on illegal short-term rentals by enforcing existing ordinances, holding predatory landlords accountable, and expanding renter protections like the rent stabilization ordinance, universal just cause, and right to counsel to achieve this. We would assess current zoning regulations, cross-reference what exists with the needs of the community and update outdated regulations. We would encourage equitable development by allowing a variety of housing types like multi-family and mixed-use construction and by removing parking minimums. We would push to implement vacancy taxes on empty commercial spaces and ensure that revenue is dedicated to help fund low income housing. We would seek to add new density bonuses for developers that agree to have at least 50% affordable units in their buildings. For many, owning a home feels out of reach. We must rebuild the “missing middle" by creating housing at all levels. We can't just build five-over-ones or single family homes. Let’s build duplexes, triplexes, and garden apartments. Let’s let young families build their dreams in L.A.

Our office understands that we must work towards making Vision Zero a reality. This year is on record to have over 300 fatalities. We support the Healthy Streets L.A. Ballot initiative and will implement the Mobility plan throughout our district. My team and I will work to create true protected bike lanes across well-tread corridors with curbs, bollards or flex posts at minimum. Major intersections must be upgraded with curb extensions (bulb-outs), protected by bollards as well. Sidewalks need to be widened, proactively repaired and built where missing, using accessible-first design, as with other public spaces. I would additionally push for dedicated bus lanes and improved bus shelters in a broader Metro expansion to make our transit system even safer and more efficient, accessible, and comfortable than driving currently is. Fewer vehicles and car lanes, especially with traffic calming measures, are shown to slow speeds and reduce fatalities for all road users.

We believe that public safety issues are the failure to address the socio-economic disparities in our city. When it comes to public safety, we resort to excessive force and incarceration rather than harm reduction and restorative solutions. Universal basic income (UBI) for those below the poverty level would provide a safety net and is the most effective means of getting people off the streets and on their feet. We additionally need to remove law enforcement from situations that they are not needed in or adequately trained for such as mental health crises. Broader state and federal funding will bring all of these alternatives to scale. The fact is, in Los Angeles, overall crime has decreased. Most 911 calls categorized as criminal have nothing to do with crime, but instead relate to poverty, homelessness, mental health and substance abuse which pose no danger to the public. I believe that police can be removed from those situations and replaced with Unarmed Crisis Response. This alternative would utilize trained civilians, mental health therapists and paramedics. These programs cost a fraction of the police budget and result in more positive outcomes, where those experiencing a mental health crisis can be de-escalated and receive treatment. Our office would also establish overdose prevention centers with full-time addiction treatment professionals and build integration programs for formerly incarcerated Angelenos to break the cycle of recidivism.

First off, restoring the public’s trust is of the utmost importance. After so many corruption scandals, making public comment even less accessible by moving general comment to the END of meetings will not restore public trust. I would advocate for its return to the beginning, as well as allowing virtual attendance and comment by phone at all public council and committee meetings. The City Council charter is long overdue for expansion to at least 29 seats. We can give the public a say in elections by implementing democracy vouchers, independent redistricting, making the ethics commission truly independent, capping election costs to no more than $200,000, and barring the use of special interest money in elections. Our office believes that one council meeting a week should be moved to an evening or weekend so the working-class public has the opportunity to engage with their government. Finally, we need to change the schedule of city council meetings that coincide with the L.A. County Board of Supervisors and the L.A. Police Commission. These meetings should never conflict.

We need to reinvest in our community with services. We can start by ending harmful city ordinance 41.18, the anti-camping law. It causes trauma, displacement from services, contributes to climate change by overfilling our landfills, is a waste of taxpayer money and fails to provide a solution. We need a housing first approach, transparency on available shelters, housing and a tailored supportive program. We support expanding our green spaces, tree canopy, and removing hostile architecture. For clean transportation I support the high speed rail. It’s imperative that we create programs to improve energy efficiency for all homes while retrofitting older homes. Expanding water capture programs to send water into the San Fernando aquifer, not into our streets, is key to solving water shortages. For green jobs, it’s time to invest in programs that transition our workers out of the fossil fuels industry. Furthermore, employers engaging in wage theft and discrimination must be held accountable; the underfunding of departments tasked with investigating these practices must end. Our office will expand supportive services, re-entry, and housing for BIPOC women, marginalized genders and LGBTQ+ residents, while also expanding access to reproductive and gender affirming care. We must discontinue cooperation with ICE/DHS, including all city vendors. I will establish programs that buy back and forgive medical/credit card debt. A well-loved and invested community will thrive.

I have a degree in forensic anthropology and theater which I am putting to good use as I co-own an interactive murder mystery theater company. I was an avid weightlifter and used to compete online .

I will prioritize interventions that make it easier and reward the creation of affordable housing. This could be through the support of measures like Mayor Karen Bass’ executive directives to expedite shelter and affordable housing projects and 100% affordable housing projects in Los Angeles, ED 1 and ED 7. I will also take steps to rezone our commercial corridors for mixed-use commercial and residential construction. These are areas where increased density can be served by current public transportation or where public transit can be added. Redevelopment of these areas will benefit residents, businesses and promote 15-minute city concepts. Part of the issue is a lack of resource utilization as well as a lack of inventory held by the city. LAUSD is a large land holder. I am a proponent of utilizing these lands to develop low-cost housing for teachers and families with children at the school. In order to increase inventory, I propose we go through the L.A. County default tax lien auction system. Every year the county auctions off properties that have defaulted on 5+ years of property taxes. These properties become part of the speculative market and are bid up by real estate investors typically. It’s time that the city works with the county to purchase property pre-auction for the cost of the tax encumbrance. By doing so, the city will expand its portfolio at a discount and be able to create public housing solutions for the perpetual public good. These can become resources for shelter beds, the creation of social housing, community land trusts, pocket parks, community gardens and commercial space for public health services.

I would argue that Vision Zero hasn’t failed; those who were to implement the systems failed. I will use the "High-Injury Network" as a guide when it comes to street improvements. We have already mapped out the most dangerous areas on our streets. It logically makes sense to proactively address these problems. Currently it appears we make improvements to dangerous areas only after a tragic event. This misses the point of Vision Zero and neutralizes the value of our data collection. Specific interventions are: protected bike lanes, raised crosswalks, speed humps, and circular speed bumps. Vision Zero is meant to be a paradigm shift away from the notion that we can train and develop drivers to operate vehicles safely enough that we don’t have tragedies. Vision Zero is about the creation of safe systems that acknowledge that humans are fallible, and our streets should be developed in ways that reduce the damage done due to human error. The equation is that with increased kinetic energy mortality increases, thus the goal is to reduce kinetic energy and speed. Another aspect of this issue is that the current mobility plan for the Southeast Valley is lacking. With better public transit such as express bus lanes and more protected bike lanes, intentionally developed with destinations in mind, we will slowly begin to transition away from our reliance on personal automobiles.

Our current reality: LAPD has shrunk from 10,000 officers to 8,800 officers due to on time and early retirements and there isn’t a demand for the job. At the same time, we have LAFD which has been underfunded for years and has more volume than they are staffed for. In my view, this presents a prime opportunity for a third option: Unarmed Crisis Response (UACR). By funding UACR, we relieve the LAPD of calls that they are not designed for, and we provide street medicine to the unhoused community to lower the high-acuity issues that the LAFD respond to regularly. UACR is a means of promoting rehabilitation and social justice in our communities. It is also a model that respects the notion of “right tool for the right job.” Also… let’s give the LAFD more funding resources and incentives.

We need: — Radical transparency: Part of this will be to fund the controller’s office for more performance auditors so that they can provide oversight that informs constituents and educates elected representatives while holding them accountable. Expansion of the council is necessary for better representation; my preference would be 33 council seats. This would be 118,000 constituents per district. Los Angeles is best served by having districts of no more than 150,000. With annualized population growth in Los Angeles being .48% over the last 20 years, we can have appropriate representation for 50 years. I favor amending the city charter to automatically increase the number of districts when it’s no longer able to accommodate 150,000 constituents per district. The creation of these new districts will require an independent body. — Co-governance: I believe that when it comes to the spending of discretionary funds that constituents should have a voice in the decision making. I will look to create a mobile app that utilizes voter data as part of identity verification. Each registered voter in the district will be given an opportunity via the mobile app to vote on how to spend funds. I envision that the city councilperson’s office will propose different projects to spend funds on, and then put it up to a ranked choice vote. My hope is that this will engage constituents and serve as an accountability structure for elected officials. — More access to city council meetings: I will advocate for one city council meeting a week to be held in Van Nuys, online public comment for all meetings and one meeting a week that starts at 5:00 p.m.

We need more pocket parks and green spaces. This will require thinking outside of the box when it comes to re-envisioning our public spaces. One idea is the transition of Lankershim Boulevard to a green promenade. This would create an area for more tree canopy, promote small businesses in the area and provide a new third space for people. As an added benefit, if we create a green promenade on Lankershim abutting the B line and G line we will create a destination for people to utilize public transit, thus increasing ridership for Metro. As a therapist I have worked with police officers around issues of depression, anxiety and trauma. There is a stigma around mental health treatment and a fear that if found out to have sought mental health services that they will not be able to be promoted in their career. Fundamentally, this is wrong. We can all agree that first responders have a traumatic job. Currently, we train and put officers in the field to enforce laws while possibly suffering from PTSD or other disorders. Why not a paradigm change? What if we change the way that police are promoted to include a requirement of mental health counseling? The content of sessions remains confidential and happen at a minimum of twice a month for a year leading up to a promotion. By doing this we will change what it means to seek mental health treatment as an officer. To create generational change, we will need to train cadets in mindfulness skills (MBSR & MSC) so they know to seek help faster. Lastly, as a therapist I process all parts of L.A. through the lens of how our mental health is affected. Affordable housing, infrastructure, public transportation, labor, etc.

One of my favorite pastimes is putting on a backpack and hitting the trails with my college buddies for multiday hiking trips. Being in nature with old friends is healing and rejuvenating.

I understand our street crisis hinges on affordability. Los Angeles falls short, producing 16,700 units annually against a need for 57,000, per Regional Housing Needs Allocation. I’ll diversify housing types, from affordable to market-rate, ending hindrances for Angelenos. Streamlining bureaucracy is key; my oversight of land-use decisions will drive viable vertical development. Coordinated city efforts will speed up quality projects.

Transit-oriented development is a priority, using Red Line stations in North Hollywood and Universal City as hubs. Corridors like Lankershim and Vineland will see rezoning for housing and business growth. Local control and renter rights matter most. I opposed SBs 8, 9, and 10, supported Costa-Hawkins’ repeal, and stood for local tools to shape development and protect tenants’ rights. I advocate nuanced, precise solutions rather than centralized control.

My priority is ensuring the safety of every Angeleno and addressing the strain on our first responders. Fixing LAPD staffing shortages is crucial; with under 9,000 officers for 4 million people and a massive area, we're significantly under-policed. I support boosting LAPD recruitment efforts to match attrition and expand the force as needed. Community-based policing is key. Residents want respect, not defunding the police. Acknowledging systemic issues, especially in Latino and Black communities, I'm focused on rebuilding trust through practices like community policing. Though the LAPD has made progress in reform, there's more to be done. I endorse targeted reforms to improve training and tools for first responders. Not every 911 call needs a police response; I aim for safer public encounters through collaboration with the LAPD. Updating LAFD funding is crucial to meet 21st-century demands.

I'm committed to tackling the systemic challenges of corruption and scandal in Los Angeles with decisive action. Firstly, City Charter Reform is a priority. I'll lead a comprehensive review to identify areas needing change, particularly in land use and political structure. Learning from past scandals, I aim to introduce amendments promoting transparency and accountability. To combat corruption, I'll champion concrete measures like robust whistleblower protections and incentives for reporting graft. Empowering honest public servants to combat corruption is crucial. Effective oversight in land use is essential. I'll explore creating oversight bodies like an Inspector General for land use and independent groups to handle conflicts of interest. Implementing time limits for project deliberations will prevent stagnation. Reform shouldn't solely come from political circles; I'll engage external entities like academic institutions to drive meaningful change. Embracing diverse perspectives is key to comprehensive reform. Advocating for independent redistricting is vital. Shifting towards a model free from political influence, as seen successfully at other city and county levels, aims to restore trust in civic institutions and counter the issues prevalent in our national political climate.

I stand as the singular candidate with unmatched experience in delivering effective mobility solutions to Valley residents, setting me apart with a proven track record. During my time in the state Assembly, expanding transit options in the San Fernando Valley was a priority. I authored legislation that facilitated the development of light rail infrastructure, paving the way for the East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor, aimed at establishing a light rail line from Sylmar to Sherman Oaks. Advocating for the conversion of the congested Orange Bus Line in the Chandler Corridor to light rail is a pivotal initiative I endorse. This transformative project will significantly enhance mobility for Valley residents by linking the current Red Line subway and connecting with the proposed East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor, with the ultimate goal of reaching Burbank Airport. Additionally, I've supported bike path construction and connectivity, securing $1.9 million from the State to link the Chandler Bike Path.

Soccer has been a constant love, particularly as a goalkeeper. Its accessibility is what I find truly remarkable — just a ball is all it takes, and no fancy gear or specialized venues are required. Music has been another profound passion, passed down from my father, a musician and composer.

People are dying on the streets. More than 70,000 people are homeless in L.A. County. Nearly 50,000 in the City of L.A. are homeless. More than 50% of unhoused women are survivors of domestic violence because our system pushes them into homelessness. Black people comprise 8% of L.A.’s population, but almost one-third of the unhoused population is Black. Sixty percent of people experience homelessness for the first time because they cannot afford rent. We need a trauma-informed approach. The evidence clearly shows that a mix of housing, services and tenant protections gets people off the streets and keeps them in their homes. I will end violent sweeps and remove armed officers from regular encampment outreach in our district. I support an approach leading to housing solutions and services, not criminalization. I will advocate converting vacant/underused hotels, motels, retail spaces, and office buildings into interim and permanent housing. We only have beds for 40% of our unhoused population. We must act immediately with these measures: —Converting hotels and other properties into supportive housing. Converting — cheaper and faster than new construction — can provide help now while we build for the future. —Building networks of drop-in centers to give our unhoused neighbors 24/7 access to physical/mental healthcare, job training, addiction, and caseworker services. —Creating union jobs programs to train and hire desperately needed homeless outreach workers, including mental health, addiction, hygiene/sanitary, and social workers.

I will implement emergency “road diets” by reducing lanes on all arterial streets; reduce speed limits on all roads; deploy automated speed enforcement; reappropriate street space for public transportation, walking, and micro-mobility; making safe transportation modes free and add oversight for the work of the Department of Transportation and the City Council toward improving the situation.

Community safety is my top priority issue. I support care-first systems that prevent harm rather than just reacting to it after it has happened. Safety is housing stability. I want to pursue zero traffic deaths; road repair and emergency vehicle access; access to jobs and healthcare; aging in place; clean air; programs, and support for youth. My values are centered around the fundamental question of “Who gets to be safe?” Los Angeles is one of the wealthiest cities in the country. Our city budget is over $11 billion dollars annually. We have the resources to care for Angelenos and pull us out of a vicious cycle of inequity, criminalization, and death. After all, the wealthiest communities are the safest. In the last few years, decades of organizing, popular education, and coalition building have moved major victories and challenged what is possible in L.A. In a moment of reactionary pushback to our monumental wins, we must keep our aim true and fight for the future we want to live in, nothing less.

To truly change the culture at City Hall, we must make structural changes as to how our government works. I support creating a new fair process for redistricting and increasing the size of the City Council. Right now, each council member represents over 250,000 residents. Increasing the number of the council districts would give everyone more representation. Remove politics from decisions about new buildings. The building process in our city breeds corruption. Too much power is concentrated in the hands of council members, and the system incentivizes developers to pay lawyers and lobbyists to influence those politicians. Strengthen the ban on real estate developer campaign contributions. Ban campaign donations from non-individuals. Corporations should not be able to give campaigns money, period. It’s time to update and strengthen the municipal lobbying ordinance to make it stricter about who qualifies as a lobbyist. I support tightening rules about when council members must recuse themselves.

Stepping into the political arena as a candidate, I have set clear priorities: combating homelessness; addressing housing shortages and related challenges; ensuring public safety; fighting government corruption; promoting economic development across all income levels; creating a sustainable immigration framework; and devising efficient public transportation solutions.

I speak, write, and read in four languages.