Because I know our community and its priorities, I pledge to focus my campaign on families, jobs, and opportunities.
In order for all families and residents to have a high quality of life, the City of Vancouver needs to have affordable housing throughout the City, better transportation, living wages, and opportunities for growth. Chart a course that for clean air, water, and land to ensure our most vulnerable communities are protected from whatever might come.
Quality of Life
“A great quality of life, to me, means affordable homes, easy transportation for all, a healthy environment, living wages, and a strong sense of community.” – Diana Perez
In my eyes, Vancouver’s rapid growth creates opportunities and challenges. Not the least of these is maintaining the quality of life and natural beauty that drew or kept us here. In order to achieve this, we must:
- Develop easy to use, multimodal transportation systems.
- Fight for affordable housing so that our community’s most pressing need is met. We can do this by incentivizing mixed-income communities (with access to public transportation) by strategically removing zoning barriers for developers who agree to affordability restrictions; utilize public investments, such as the Affordable Housing Levy and SHB 1406, to affordable housing developments that serve populations that are being left out of the housing market; and strengthen our homeless crisis response system to be able to get people into wrap-around supportive services needed to ensure success, while also increasing our emergency response to ensure people’s basic needs are met.
- Ensure our clean water, air, and land are protected. That’s why we must chart a climate action plan that is proactive (including hard dates to meet goals by) and ensures our most vulnerable communities are protected.
Economic Opportunity
Vancouver has been blessed with a location in close proximity to the mighty Columbia River, parks and trails along with easy access to the airport. This makes it appealing to a whole new generation of businesses that are looking to move here. To support that, we must:
Work with the economic development sector to attract community-minded businesses that care about people’s quality of life. Businesses that will bring jobs and pay living wages in order to attract, create and retain local talent in our beautiful area.
Work with Clark College and WSU Vancouver to promote skills that equip students and folks searching for employment to enter the workforce.
Given that small businesses are the economic backbone in our area, I want to improve access to programs that assist business growth and stability through new and creative partnerships, especially for micro businesses, in newer and greener sustainable approaches.
Embracing All People
Vancouver’s demographics demonstrate that we are a city of multiple cultures, voices, and abilities. Unfortunately, we don’t often see this reflected in our local government. Everyone in our city should feel part of the community. That’s why we must:
- Create opportunities for our youth by reestablishing a City-wide Youth Council to develop strong future community leaders with buy-in for the decisions we make as a City Council.
- Create community centers and invest in neighborhood parks in all parts of the city that draw people together to foster community culture and arts, with a particular focus on East Vancouver, where sprawl dominates.
- Seek feedback from every corner of the community; from planning and zoning to grassroots efforts.
- Promote a culture of equity and inclusivity in all areas of governance by looking at systems change and improving the City of Vancouver’s hiring practices, contract awards, partnerships, and improving accessibility and navigation of City services.
