No one should ever be on the streets suffering. Last year, for every 133 individuals who were housed, 150 more fell into homelessness. We now have over 66,000 unhoused souls wandering our city streets. Despite the City and County having spent billions of dollars, and having billions more at their disposal, the crisis has only grown worse due to a lack of leadership, a lack of urgency, and gross mismanagement of our tax dollars. The homeless industrial complex has been richly rewarded while our money never reaches those who need it most – the unhoused. We must break this cycle by voting for new leadership. Encampments and open drug markets have no place in our City, period. Scott will fight for legislation to get mental health, addiction treatment, and job training services to all who need it and will support targeted rental assistance for those about to lose their housing due to financial hardship. We need to hold our elected leaders accountable for their failings and not let them simply pass the buck. When it comes to addressing the mental health crisis, the City Council quietly blames the County Supervisors, yet they are silent in calling them out for their malfeasance. Why? Because they all play in the same sandbox and endorse and donate to each other’s campaigns. Our current council member promotes tiny villages, but this short-term stop gap opened very recently. The housing crisis is not new, so where has he been the last 8 years that he’s been in office? An effective leader would have had real solutions in place already. It took our council member over 2 years to open the Willows Bridge housing project. While people were dying in the streets, he was unable to provide the much-needed emergency bridge housing for 80 homeless individuals. He was not capable at navigating the quagmire of City departments for 2 years. Scott has an innovative services first program called M.O.R.E., which would rapidly house individuals in location appropriate areas. Read about the program here.

We are fortunate to have the best, most engaged, law enforcement officers in the country right here in the Valley, yet there’s no denying the increase in crime. From break-ins, to shoplifting, to organized street races, to aggressive panhandling – it’s not hard to understand why parents aren’t letting their children walk their neighborhood streets alone anymore. Families and business are fed up. Scott will fight at City Hall to enhance public safety and make our neighborhoods and public spaces safe for everyone. There can never be any tolerance for police misconduct and there is always room for improvement, but Scott will fight to provide our public safety officers with the staffing, training and resources needed by those women and men that we rely on to protect and to serve.

The City of Los Angeles has a Department of Public Works that oversees Street Services and Sanitation yet our roads are crumbling, sidewalks are torn up, parks and medians are covered in trash and hazardous waste, dead trees line our streets from lack of irrigation, and the district is carpeted in weeds 6 feet high that grow straight out of cement pavement. Where are our tax dollars for the basics going? Our District deserves a dedicated public servant who will make sure that services run on time and that calls get answered. Scott wants to make our community proud again and that starts with clean streets and sidewalks. Other district offices pay clean-up crews out of their discretionary funds and work hand-in-hand with community clean up organizations to great success, but that’s not happening in District 3. And because of the neglect, our community suffers. If we don’t vote for change – expect the status quo for another four years.

Community Engagement is much more than an occasional photo op. Unlike the current Council member, Scott will lead with transparency and will work with the community on planned City motions and legislation, especially when they originate from the District 3 office. Scott actually wants the community’s input and will engage the community when he needs our support to help push legislation through. Scott will have an outreach staff dedicated on working alongside the community on important issues and will be open and transparent with the District, so that the community is aware of and involved in what’s going on downtown. Scott knows good community engagement is not a one-person job and will ensure his entire staff be trained to be responsive to the community. This also means that the community should be engaged with the Council office. As a community, we should be united on working together instead of how it is now – with a Council office totally disengaged from the community it represents.

Council District 3 contains the economic engine known as Warner Center 2035 specific plan which was envisioned to be a concentrated live, work, play designated zone the entire community could enjoy. Instead, developers have found loopholes in the plan and are only creating large market-rate luxury apartment buildings without any of the required commercial space being accounted for. Scott will put a halt to any large-scale development in Warner Center that won’t adhere to the true vision of the live, work, and play plan. Many adult children are not able to live in the area they were raised anymore because it has become so unaffordable. The City has been pathetic in requiring affordable units be built. Why? Quite honestly, career politicians just don’t have the skills necessary to know how to get it done. We need to change that and that starts by electing a leader that has real world experience and integrity to get affordable projects built so our children can stay in the area if they choose, and lower income families aren’t at risk of being evicted and ending up on the streets. Single family neighborhoods in the Valley are under siege from Sacramento politicians hell-bent on destroying them, and our representative on the Los Angeles City Council has been silent. Scott will not be silent! LAUSD has recently proposed trading vacant properties, embedded in quiet Valley neighborhoods, with developers who would then be able to build market-rate apartment buildings on them. When our current councilmember was asked to use the influence of his office to oppose this effort, he refused. His excuse? “I try not to spend my time telling other levels of government what to do. I’ve got more than enough on my plate.” That will never be Scott’s reply. Scott will never be afraid to stand up to other government agencies.

As we emerge from the pandemic, local businesses need support from the City, not interference that only makes it harder for them to survive. Scott will fight for economic recovery solutions that prioritize local businesses. District 3 is completely unique from the rest of the City in that we have the Warner Center Specific plan that was intended to, among other benefits, attract good businesses to move to the Warner Center area of District 3. The true vision of the Warner Center is that these medium and enterprise sized businesses will attract and recruit an abundance of local District 3 talent which will reduce auto traffic and maybe even create a “walkable city”. But the true vision of Warner Center will only become a success if we have the proper leadership with real world experience to see it through. Career politicians, no matter how well intentioned, just don’t have the skills, or spine, necessary to lead this critical endeavor.