Collaborative Solutions

There are limits to what we can do through the Capital Budget without raising property taxes. I call upon Madison’s private sector to augment our Affordable Housing Fund. Microsoft has pledged $500 million to help Seattle deal with their affordable housing crisis. Atlanta’s private sector is working with Mayor Keisha Bottoms on a $1 billion public-private partnership to tackle gentrification and displacement in that city’s urban core.

A local private sector effort is underway here in Madison but the impact to date is way too modest. It is time for Epic Systems and other cash-heavy firms to get serious about addressing Madison’s affordable housing crisis. Our Affordable Housing Fund, currently at $6 million a year, needs to be three or four times as large in order to adequately address the current crisis.

With fellow Council members, I have called for an update to our land banking policy to combat gentrification and create permanent affordable housing. Land banking is a strategy whereby the City purchases select parcels to take them out of the speculative real estate market. These parcels should be in high-opportunity areas accessible to transportation, jobs, and healthy food. A more robust land banking policy combined with expanded use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) requires additional capacity due to current staffing bottlenecks. That’s why I put forth an amendment in the 2021 budget to address this very concern.

The work Sustain Dane is doing around Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing or NOAH is worth noting. There are over 40,000 such units in Dane County. While we need to build more affordable units, we also need to preserve and invest in our existing stock of workforce housing provided by these older small size multifamily buildings. This is an area of important intersection with sustainability, because the tax code offers few incentives for the owners — often small companies or mom-and-pop operations — to upgrade their buildings and make them more energy efficient. Because of amendments I offered to our Affordable Housing Fund making the Fund more flexible, the City can now more freely join in these efforts.

Innovative Strategies

Our housing strategy must prioritize innovative solutions like tiny home villages and relaxing the burdensome regulations around accessory dwelling units. The so-called missing middle options such as row houses and small to medium multifamily housing projects are viable means of adding density to our neighborhoods, particularly in instances where existing single-family houses have fallen into disrepair.

As we do this, we need to expand assistance for first-time homebuyers among Black, indigenous and people of color to build wealth and counter the impact of racist policies in our City’s past. I supported the City’s contribution of $200K in TIF funds to the Urban League for its $5 million Home Ownership Initiative. I put forth an amendment to the 2021 budget to increase financial education and coaching for first-time minority homebuyers.

In addition to the structural housing crisis, there is another near-term crisis looming—brought on by the pandemic and held back at this point only by the moratorium on evictions. We are going to need to work through this in collaboration with property owners and landlords — and hopefully with sustained support from Washington—to avoid housing insecurity on a large scale. Both renters, and those they rent from, are in jeopardy.

I’m involved in regular conversations with city staff and the Mayor’s office to address the economic impact of the pandemic on our housing crisis. Should there be a series of defaults by small-scale independent landlords unable to make mortgage payments on their properties, the City, the CDA, and qualified non-profits need to work with the financial institutions holding the notes to prevent vulture capitalists from stepping in.

Grocery Store and Triangle Redevelopment

Since being elected, I’ve placed primary emphasis on two challenges within the district — securing a full-service grocery store for South Madison and the future redevelopment of the Triangle. My reasons for doing so are simple. Both are centered in racial and economic justice.

It’s taken an enormous amount of work, but we are now on pace to break ground in the spring with a goal of opening the new grocery store before Pick n’ Save closes. Avoiding a grocery gap has been my number one goal, and I’ve worked diligently to keep this project on track.

Similarly, the redevelopment of the Triangle has been at the top of my agenda. The Triangle is home to some of Madison’s most vulnerable residents and looking out for their interests remains a top priority. I’m very pleased the Bayview community within the Triangle will be breaking ground in the spring with their tremendously exciting redevelopment project, one that will serve as a model for the entire City in terms of how to go about community engagement, design justice and sustainability.

Eviction Prevention

The COVID-19 pandemic occurred amid Madison’s ongoing crisis in affordable housing, leading to mounting concerns about a possible eviction tsunami. Communities of color are hit the hardest by evictions in that black and brown families are disproportionately rent-burdened. Black residents nationwide are twice as likely to be renters and, due to racialized wealth and income gaps, are more vulnerable to eviction.

For months now, I’ve been working with city staff, fellow alders and other elected officials to address emergency needs. With a view towards increasing capacity to reach impacted communities, I sponsored a budget amendment to increase funding for COVID relief, stipulating that at least half of the $725K fund be used for eviction prevention. I’ve also been working with District 13 County Board Supervisor Chuck Erickson to secure emergency homeless access to the Coliseum at Alliant Energy Center should it be necessary.

Guaranteed Income Pilot

Thanks in part to the candidacy of Andrew Yang, the idea of universal basic income has gained currency. We are a wealthy nation, yet 40% of Americans do not have $400 for an emergency. The impacts fall harder on Black households due to the racialized wealth gap. Several mayors across the country, including Mayor Satya, have joined in a campaign called Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

I am strongly in support of a pilot in Madison along the lines of to the one in Stockton, CA in which 125 families receive $500 per month. The research to date indicates guaranteed income programs reduce homelessness, food insecurity, domestic violence, petty crime, truancy, addiction, and other social ills.

Racist polices in our City’s past are the primary source of today’s racial disparities. Implementing a guaranteed income policy is an example of reparations in action, an important step forward in addressing Madison’s racial divide.

Education Committee

I asked to be added to the Education Committee in order to tackle the opportunity gaps in our public schools. This committee, with members from Common Council, Dane County Board, and the School Board just started meeting again since being on hiatus due to the pandemic. It’s imperative the city and county work with the school district and its new school superintendent, Carlton Jenkins, to address issues outside the classroom that impact school success. The city must get behind efforts to close these gaps, lest our rhetoric around racial equity be empty words.

At a recent meeting, the committee identified digital access to be our top priority. The pandemic has unveiled the extent which the digital divide impacts low-income communities. Digital access should be in the same as having running water, heat and electricity, but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome. By state statute, Madison cannot be an Internet Service Provider, but we must do everything in our power to address this inequity. Children in low-income families have struggled with virtual learning due to insufficient access to the internet, devices and digital literacy. I am working with Alexis London, Bayview’s executive director and Sarah Edgerton, the city’s IT Director, to come up with solutions for the Triangle that we can then take to other low-income neighborhoods throughout the City.

Environmental Justice

I have been active in opposing the F-35s, standing in solidarity with the east side alders whose districts are more directly impacted. Residents in District 13 have been generally supportive of my decision to do so. The Chamber of Commerce, who endorsed my opponent in the last election, made the F-35s their top priority, placing monied interests over the health and welfare of low-income families on Madison’s east side.

I sit on the Board of Public Works and have used that position to call for remediation of PFAS -contaminated soils at Truax airbase. I support the lawsuit filed by Safe Skies Clean Water to force the National Guard to do a thorough environmental impact statement prior to any new construction.

Lakes and Urban Greenspace

Madison is nothing without our lakes. It’s our number one characteristic, this beautiful city surrounded by water. But over the years, as our city has grown, our lakes are under assault. Non-point pollution due to agricultural runoff in the Yahara watershed contaminates our lakes and closes our beaches.

But the real culprits are closer to home. Keeping leaves out of our streets is vital. Just one pound of phosphorous from decaying leaves can create 500 pounds of blue-green algal blooms. Road salt is another serious threat to our lakes, particularly Lake Wingra, which is largely spring fed and doesn’t recharge itself to the same degree as Mendota and Monona.

Our founding city planners, John Olin and John Nolen, were very intentional about creating urban greenspaces such as The Park and Pleasure Drive. Let’s not forget the words of John Muir: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”

The Vilas Park Master Plan process has been challenging. Vilas Park is a gem, one of the city’s oldest and most treasured parks. Residents by and large are very supportive of the decision to close Vilas Park Drive to vehicular traffic. The huge numbers of commuters cutting through the park created safety concerns and the Drive’s closure during the pandemic was broadly lauded.

There are several areas of concern in the final plan – the paving of open space for expanded parking, the consolidation of three cherished playgrounds, and the push to move the zoo and park entrance without careful consideration of potential negative impacts are chief among them.

As your alder, I will continue to advance our shared values around sustainability, environmental justice and protecting our lakes and urban greenspace.