Frequently Asked Questions

I'm a mom of five, a renter, and a car-free transit rider running for Portland City Council, District 4. For almost a decade I've worked inside the City of Portland as a policy professional — writing tenant protections, building transit projects, and helping the city navigate its biggest structural change in a generation. Before that, I spent my career in Alaska in social work, supporting adults with disabilities and abused children and families, and leading an anti-coal coalition in my own community.

We moved our family from rural Alaska because our oldest child has significant developmental disabilities and couldn't access the services or independence he needed in a place without public transportation. It took everything we had to leave our community and start over with five kids in tow. We landed in an apartment in New Columbia, in North Portland, and lived there for eight years. Portland gave my family the services, freedoms, and sense of belonging we came looking for — and that experience is a big part of why I'm running.

I've worked in a range of non-management roles over almost ten years: as policy director in a city commissioner's office, as a special projects coordinator at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), and on the Charter Transition Team helping implement Portland's new form of government. Along the way I wrote Portland's Relocation Ordinance and FAIR Access in Renting policy, developed the Rose Lane Project, created PBOT's first anti-displacement framework (Building Belonging), and led PBOT's only gun violence response program.

I believe Portland can do hard things — I've spent a decade helping prove it. My top priorities are housing stability, effective governance, and economic development, because the affordability crisis touches nearly every challenge our city faces. I want to bring the same hands-on, get-it-done approach I've used inside city government to representing District 4.

Housing stability. I believe every person deserves a stable home regardless of their sobriety, mental health, or job status, and that it's the City's responsibility to help build and provide access to housing. My approach includes shifting City resources toward housing development, making homes permanently affordable through public purchasing and public land, strengthening tenant protections before displacement happens, and returning vacant homes to productive use.

I support redirecting dollars from shelter services toward housing development and public hygiene (while Multnomah County leads on shelter, mental health, and addiction treatment), building more homes by reforming system development charges and pre-approving plans to speed up permitting, upzoning for density, purchasing municipal housing and building permanently affordable social housing, and expanding tenant protections like long-term lease covenants, tenant opportunity to purchase, and portable screening reports. Full details are in my Portland Community Housing Plan, linked on the Platform page.

Yes. I support strong tenant protections, just-cause eviction standards, and rent stabilization where state law allows it. I wrote Portland's Relocation Ordinance, which requires landlords to cover tenant moving costs for no-cause evictions or steep rent hikes, and I created FAIR Access in Renting to limit discriminatory tenant screening.

Getting around Portland shouldn't require a car payment. I want free transit for everyone under 25, buses that run free of traffic congestion, and expanded transit options in Southwest Portland. I led the Rose Lane Project, which created dedicated bus and bike lanes citywide with a racial-justice lens to cut congestion and improve transit reliability.

I want budgets built on transparency and real oversight — not balanced on the backs of workers who've already borne the brunt of the economic crisis. That means addressing Portland's top-heavy management structure and executive salary compression to build more sustainable budgets that don't force layoffs of front-line workers when revenue dips, supporting participatory budgeting so residents can help direct a share of general fund spending, and giving City Council independent staff capacity to provide budget oversight.

Affordability isn't just about rent — it's about wages, jobs, and whether your neighborhood has what you need. I want to reimagine downtown as a complete neighborhood, invest in destination anchors and riverfront access, streamline permitting to bring vacant storefronts and office buildings back into use as housing and small-business space, strengthen enforcement of wage and labor standards, and explore a municipal bank to lower borrowing costs for the City and local businesses.

I support growing community-led public safety programs: expanding unarmed crisis response for behavioral health and quality-of-life calls, investing in community violence intervention and the root causes of harm, and partnering with community organizations to keep families stable and connected. I led PBOT's only gun violence response program, which used infrastructure and placemaking to reduce opportunities for community violence.

Climate disasters are an affordability crisis — fires, floods, and extreme heat hit low-income families hardest. I'll prioritize climate resilience, build on Portland's renewable energy commitments, and make sure District 4's most vulnerable residents aren't left paying the price for disasters they didn't cause. I have signed on to the 350PDX Climate Justice Platform.

It's central to how I approach policy. When I worked on tenant screening reform, I built an internal advisory group of communities of color and renters to set the policy's north star, and had the outcomes independently analyzed by a PSU researcher before finalizing it. On the Rose Lane Project, an advisory group of transit riders and community advocates helped set a goal of cutting the commute-time gap that costs people of color in East Portland an average of a week more per year stuck in traffic. And when I led the City's first Independent Salary Commission, I worked to bring equity considerations — including a pay differential for additional languages — into how the City values elected officials' work.

I'm concerned less about federal pressure itself than about how our local administration responds to it. I want a full accounting from the administration of how it's interpreting federal requirements, and clearer Council guidance on what is and isn't an acceptable response. I also want to invest more in protecting residents directly — including a municipal ID program that doesn't depend on federal documentation to access housing, banking, or jobs — and in the culturally specific organizations doing front-line work with immigrants, refugees, and communities of color.

I helped form Portland Tenants United, a community-based union that won many of the tenant protections I later helped write into City policy, and I served on the bargaining team for the City of Portland Professional Workers union — in fact, I was among the people who first encouraged City Hall staff to organize. Most of my family, friends, and campaign team are union members or organizers. I am also endorsed by AFSCME Local 189 and Oregon AFSCME.

Yes. I support prevailing-wage requirements on public contracts, Project Labor Agreements on publicly funded construction, and labor peace agreements for businesses receiving public subsidies — I helped initiate the City's labor peace policy while working in a commissioner's office. I also oppose contracting out public-sector jobs, which I believe drives down accountability, wages, and institutional knowledge.

Yes. I support a Workers' Rights Amendment guaranteeing Oregon workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. As a City Council candidate I can't enact a state constitutional amendment, but I'll champion it publicly and align Portland's own labor and contracting policy with its spirit.