Our current housing crisis has been decades in the making, and responding to it has been my top priority. I have aggressively worked with non profit housing developers to build housing and to develop policies to expedite construction. If you’re serious about helping people and achieving true social justice we have to meet people’s basic needs.

We’re way behind on production of housing for people starting out with their lives – for millennials who are facing the prospect of not doing as well as their parents or for a population that is living longer and might need more housing with support services on site. From my perspective as an executive director for a small nonprofit that engages in infrastructure and economic development projects, we should be bundling economic development incentives to streamline everything from a state perspective. That way, you not only reform their process for incentivizing people to come in and build housing, but you also do it in a way that mobilizes a very effective economic development strategy that doesn’t take away local control. It’s not about needing to be the alpha dog in the situation, but to get housing built.