The rent is too damn high. Most New Yorkers spend more on rent than anything else. As your City Councilperson, I’ll find every opportunity to make our neighborhoods more liveable.

As the chair of my community board, I’ve advocated for increasing the supply of affordable housing, protecting existing affordable housing like HDFCs and rent stabilized units, and I’ve worked to expand the number of community land trusts in the district. Working in a coalition with community groups and elected officials, I’ve already helped secure thousands of affordable and supportive housing units, and I won’t stop there.

As your next Councilperson, I’ll fight for comprehensive solutions to make our housing stock accessible, sustainable, and secure through key policies and local initiatives like expanded Community Land Trusts and Green Social Housing to keep people in their homes and communities. I will work to build additional Supportive Housing and expand the Housing Voucher Programs so we can end homelessness.

As a resident of the waterfront and member of LES Ready, our local disaster preparedness group, I understand the need for climate justice as we work to build a more resilient Manhattan. The threat of climate disasters like extreme storms, floods, and heat waves require us to act now. As your Councilperson, I’ll work to ensure new solutions to combating, adapting, and mitigating the climate crisis work for all residents of District 2, but particularly communities who have lived through environmental racism.

I’ll work with all levels of government to implement a Green New Deal for NYC through effective interventions that work to fight climate change, like improving our neighborhoods’ infrastructure to make it more resilient, and make investments in green union jobs as technology changes and innovate our economy. I’ll work to expand dignified cooling centers during extreme heat emergencies, and assure that all seniors have access.

I’ll ensure that our neighborhood’s green spaces, parks, and community gardens, and other open spaces, are well maintained to address and provide reprieve from increasing frequency and severity of heat waves. I’ll work to transition our neighborhoods from Fossil Fuels to Clean Energy.

I’ve worked tirelessly to create educational opportunities that address the pressing issues we face—housing, public health, climate justice, and the struggles of small businesses. I’ve secured millions in funding to support our artists, sustain vital public programs like the City Artist Corps, and nourish our cultural ecosystem. I have collaborated with visionary artists and leaders who weave together our cultural legacies with grassroots organizing, lifting up the working class, our seniors, individuals with disabilities, people of color, and LGBTQI communities. I’ve worked to defend the culture of our neighborhoods for over a decade.

In the City Council, I’ll work to champion the many artists, creatives, independent venues and arts spaces that contribute to the cultural, creative, and artistic hub that is New York City, particularly in Greenwich Village, Lower East Side, East Village, Midtown South-Flatiron-Union Square, Gramercy, and Murray Hill-Kips Bay. With 10,000 cultural workers operating every day in our district, I’ll work to create programs and opportunities to put artists to work on making our streets, public spaces, transportation, schools, and senior centers more beautiful, cleaner, greener, and safer, and I have the experience to make it happen.