Membership

 I’ve always been pro-housing and pro-transportation. But I’m a boomer. When I was younger, there really wasn’t a pro-housing movement. I had to wait for the YIMBYs to be born.

YIMBY was of great help to me in my campaign in 2022. By endorsing me, you elevated my platform. Thanks to YIMBY, I really felt a sense of belonging.

The thing about YIMBY that really attracted me was that it brought all sorts of stakeholders to the table; developers, homeowners, tenants, local politicians, national politicians. It’s power building!

The more housing options we have, the better our neighborhoods are, and the more we can make sure people are not displaced.

If we don’t have more housing, only the rich will have the opportunity to live in a city.

The opportunity here is so great because of the economic growth, but that can’t be shared because people can’t live here.

I learned about a lot of different concepts in transit, realized it was related to land use and related to housing. Everyone has to be spread out in terms of single family housing, suburban neighborhoods, all the pieces came together and I was able to see it in a much larger picture.

If we don’t make cities more dense and get people out of cars, we’re going to be dealing with forest fires affecting houses, pollution, CO2 emissions, and livability of earth in 30 years.

I care about housing, jobs, and education. Those things go hand in hand. I truly used to think education was the most important. But then, I realized housing is the most important because where you grow up determines what food you eat, types of schools you go to, and types of people you network with that you get good jobs from.

Housing is the most important issue of our time. I’ve worked in poverty alleviation my whole career and all roads lead to housing when it comes to the root causes of wealth inequality, educational inequality, and health inequality.

My biggest concerns is the fact that in New York, new housing is only permitted in black and brown neighborhoods. White neighborhoods are preserved in perfect epoxy crystal. White neighborhoods are not doing their share and black and brown neighbors are being pushed out and pressured because of that.

I saw my friends, who lived three doors down from us, moving miles away because of the rent.

When my mom and I came to America as refugees, we were only able to survive because we got a cheap apartment in NYC… Today, this is much harder…Only by building so many apartments that housing becomes abundant can we drive the rent of apartments down to where they’d be affordable to immigrants who came to this country with nothing, like I once did.