On the Issues

Let’s get real about the reality of the homelessness crisis: the present system has failed the over 41,000 people living on the streets of LA City. Continuing to let thousands of Angelenos die on our streets each year is not progressive. Rick’s plan will help meet each homeless Angeleno where they are to build a better path forward. Rick will:

• Bring everyone inside through building 30,000 interim housing interventions in 300 days. We need to move past the status quo and expand interim and permanent housing
• Declare a Local State of Emergency on Day 1 to create a single point of accountability in the Mayor
• Hire 500 additional caseworkers to provide needed mental and psychiatric services 
• Deploy 500 new sanitation workers to clean the streets and our public spaces

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Rick believes that we don’t need to defund the police — instead, we must invest in making them better at preventing crime. Rick’s plan calls to increase Community-Based Policing, hiring officers that look like, and understand, their communities. He has a proven track record: as president of the Police Commission, Rick fought corruption, instituted police accountability, and oversaw a 30% reduction in crime. As your Mayor, he will:

• Restore LAPD’s budget and put 1,500 new officers on the street.
• Build trust across neighborhoods by promoting Community-Based Policing and hiring officers from the communities they serve.
• Make our communities safer from gun violence by expanding LAPD’s Gun Unit, cracking down on gun trafficking, expanding safe storage laws, and getting guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.
• Address the link between mental health and crime, including hiring mental health workers to respond to 911 and 988 calls.
• Expand crime prevention programs that work. Double the number of gang prevention workers, and expand youth prevention programs.

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Corruption at LA City Hall has become commonplace. The last three years have seen more councilmembers, staff, bureaucrats, and high-level commissioners arrested and indicted than anyone can remember. Career politicians have failed us, and that’s why we need real leadership to restore faith and trust in our government. Rick will:

• Run the cleanest, most transparent Mayoral administration in history. He will work for $1 a year as Mayor and won’t meet with lobbyists.
• He will appoint an independent ethics czar, draft legislation to remove the City Council from ALL land use decisions, and end pay-to-play politics in LA.
• Special interests won’t be allowed at City Hall and tough penalties will be given to those who break rules.
• Place all of his business holdings in a blind trust and be 100% focused on being a Mayor for all Angelenos.

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It’s clear: in order for our City to thrive, women must thrive. Los Angeles is home to the largest number of women-owned businesses in the country, but since the pandemic, there has been an exodus of women from the workforce. Nationally, women’s freedoms and access to reproductive healthcare are under serious threat. On day one, Rick will:

• Unequivocally support a woman’s right to choose. Rick will wield the power of the Mayor’s office to ensure people have access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion. 
• Appoint a Deputy Mayor focused on Women & the Economy and market LA as a City that Protects Women’s Freedoms. 
• Commit to gender parity in the administration and explore creating a city public health department, which could be designed with women’s needs in mind.
• Immediately develop a business tax relief & incentive program to combat inflation.
• Provide institutional resources to offer care for families, including incentivizing businesses to provide on-site child care.

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Los Angeles will experience triple the number of hot days per year by 2053, and we are expected to see more frequent wildfires, drier summers, and mega droughts. Climate change and exposure to severe heat is most likely to impact communities of color, compounding their exposure to air pollution and other environmental hazards. The City needs bold action immediately. Rick’s plan to lead LA will incorporate the following:

• Ensure a secure water future for LA by converting 15,000 parks and properties to sustainable lawn replacement in the next 5 years, expanding access LA Sanitation’s recycled water program, and accelerating the establishment of graywater treatment and storage standards 
• Expand mobility options and create green neighborhoods. Accelerate the development of public transit and support the expansion of community-centered green zones.
• Support the transition to clean energy through expanding the City’s solar footprint and implementing zero emissions commitments at key city assets like Port of LA and LAX

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Los Angeles is becoming increasingly unaffordable as rising housing costs burden hardworking families. The statistics clearly show that the burden of housing affordability falls more heavily on Black and Latino communities. Rick will:

• Incentivize the zoning and development of affordable housing, adaptive reuse projects, and innovative solutions like “small lots”
• Establish a City-led housing subsidy aimed at alleviating housing costs for our most vulnerable rent-burdened households
• Leverage the City’s credit rating to secure low-interest loans and then partner with HACLA and the private sector to purchase, redevelop, and rehabilitate existing multi-family projects

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Despite small businesses accounting for 43% of the local workforce, 15,000 business closures in the wake of the pandemic have made Los Angeles the US city with the most closures up to that point. Of the affected businesses, women and minority-owned businesses were the most vulnerable due to a lack of available capital and funding. To support small businesses looking to grow and modernize their businesses, Rick will:

• Revise City regulations and establish resources to assist business growth, including coordination of support (capital, tech, marketing, legal, etc.) and microloan services for businesses and vendors

• Recalibrate the City’s Business Processes to eliminate bottlenecks between departments

• Empower the Chief Procurement Office to break up large city contracts into smaller and more specific contracts, allowing more businesses to access opportunities

• Propose a Small Business Bill of Rights, to encourage timely consideration of small business permits and licenses and use economic impact analysis to consider small businesses when city policy is being developed

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As the owner of more than 7,500 properties within its limits, the City of Los Angeles is one of the largest municipal real estate managers in the country. With economic development mainly housed within the Mayor’s office and no centralized office in charge of management and strategy, initiatives are highly politicized and priorities change depending on who is in office. To improve stability for long-term goals and partnerships, Rick will:

• Establish a de-politicized, municipal development corporation (MDC) to optimize city-owned land and property, to generate revenue for vital improvements to infrastructure

• Appoint a Chief Real Estate/Land Asset Manager to centralize City’s construction, sales, leases, development, joint ventures, etc… to improve and streamline management of city-owned facilities.

• Maintain city-owned properties in a manner that uplifts the community and supports business growth

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