2020 Santa Cruz City Council Candidate
Elizabeth Conlan
What do you think are the three most pressing issues facing Santa Cruz?
The most pressing issue facing Santa Cruz is recovery from the pandemic/economic downturn with its disproportionately negative impacts on people of color and low-income individuals and its negative effects on small businesses, renters, and the city budget. The other most pressing issues are the housing crisis and homelessness.
Please name one city ordinance or policy that creates negative racial impacts? Will you work to change this ordinance or policy? How will you work to change it?
I will work to eliminate exclusionary zoning. Santa Cruz is sadly becoming inaccessible to middle- and low-income folks and I’m deeply concerned that this will keep the city segregated, force lower-income people of color out, and act as a barrier to entry for people who aren’t wealthy. I recognize that the legacy of housing discrimination from redlining to predatory subprime mortgages has prevented Black and Brown families from accumulating the wealth that white families have. We need to provide real opportunity for people, particularly people of color, to afford to live here and to buy a home here.
What city council actions will you support to implement antiracism in policies, funding, training, hiring practices, partnerships or any other way within your power? Be as specific as you can.
I will support antiracism by looking at policy outcomes and repealing, changing, or opposing policies that exclude or discriminate. I think that inclusion is valuable and makes the policy process better and so I’d seek to partner with groups and organizations that represent historically marginalized groups.
How would you effectively build a coalition to address issues of racial justice in Santa Cruz County?
To address issues of racial justice, I will pursue anti-racist policies and seek the input of and to elevate the voices of people of color. I will seek to build a coalition to combat inequality in poverty rates, incarceration, health outcomes, education, and other areas where outcomes are not the same between races. I will work with groups and leaders who already have deep ties in our community and channel the energy of recent protests into concrete actions to dismantle systemic racism.
How will you use your role on the city council to educate the community about racism in our city?
I will work to facilitate discussion and provide forums and other venues to discuss racism and inequality. I will always take a stand against racism in our community. I also recognize that as a white person, I would be educating community members based on data, statistics, and having learned from the experiences of others. I would act to empower voices of color who may have personal relationships with racist systems or institutions in addition to data.
What have you learned recently about your role in racism?
I have recently learned that I have been too passive in opposing racism. I have been thinking a lot about the county in Virginia where I grew up. I had assumed that I grew up in a white neighborhood because it just happened to be white, but I’ve started to learn more about the ugly history of segregation in my home county and the way it manifests in unequal schools and neighborhoods that are still racially segregated to this day. As a result, I wrote a letter to the school board asking for changes and I’ve been trying hard to support, financially and through calls to action, established organizations like the NAACP and the Sentencing Project that are working to for the equal society that I desperately would like to see.
What in your past record will give voters confidence that you will make substantial antiracist decisions on the Santa Cruz City Council?
I have no prior voting record, but I am involved in housing advocacy work that serves as a record for my support for an inclusive community and affordable housing.
There have been numerous Grand Jury findings that point to a need for stronger City Council leadership. Do you support amendments to our City Charter that would help create a strong council and more oversight over city management as outlined in a recent Grand Jury Report, entitled “Failure to Communicate”? Why or Why not?
I am open to considering it. As the Report mentioned, there are benefits to the public for councilmembers to be more accountable for leadership failures. I will continue to be following the responses made by the current council to the report.
Please share your concrete suggestions about how you will address the high cost of living and lack of affordability for average working folks.
As a renter, I understand the difficulty of finding and keeping a decent place to live in Santa Cruz. As a member of Council, I plan to advance bold housing policies in affordable and middle-class housing, while also supporting renters. In the short-term, I will do everything I can to keep people housed for the duration of the pandemic. I will work with state and federal partners to try to get desperately needed rent and mortgage relief and work with other local government and non-profit partners in providing additional assistance. In the short to long-term, I would advance policies to address housing affordability and availability including permitting building of 100% affordable projects on city land such as downtown parking lots and pushing for pro-housing reform like Portland’s recently approved “Residential Infill Project,” which allows quadplexes on almost any residential lot and up to six homes on any lot if half of them are available to low-income residents.
Income inequality is one of the issues that creates difficulty in living in the city of Santa Cruz. Would you, as a City Council Member be willing to introduce and create a Universal Basic Income (UBI) pilot program. If so, how would you propose funding such a program? If not, why not?
I am extremely concerned about income equality and the drastic inequality in California along with the state’s high poverty rate are the main reasons I started to get involved in housing advocacy. Given our current budget constraints and the other needs for money (residential and commercial rent relief, small business assistance, and internet and food assistance), creating a UBI would not be a top priority for me. However, I am committed to researching creative new policies and working to propose and adopt successful policies from other cities and regions. If presented with good evidence for prioritizing a UBI pilot program, I would do so.
The homeless population in the City of Santa Cruz has been an issue for many years. The current Covid-19 pandemic is acutely highlighting the need for safe and humane housing as well as long term food and housing security. How do you plan to work with City, County, and community to address this both in the short and long term?
The covid-19 pandemic has clearly illustrated that housing is healthcare. The city should do more to provide shelter to those experiencing homelessness. Access to bathrooms and handwashing should always be widely available, and I support the city’s actions to make them more available since the beginning of the pandemic. In the long-term, I will work towards eliminating homelessness by providing more funding for social workers to better connect unhoused folks with shelter and services. I would look to the recommendations of the Community Advisory on Homelessness including improving the navigation center and also coordinating with the county on best practices elsewhere like permanent supportive housing.
A “housing first” model may not be possible as there isn’t enough permanent housing available to house houseless citizens. What do you suggest the city do for the thousands of homeless in Santa Cruz for the upcoming winter?
The lack of temporary and permanent housing is a huge problem. For the upcoming winter, I think the city needs to finalize plans to help those living in vehicles park in a safe place with access to sanitation, if needed. For those living outdoors, the city should continue to make sure that a safe place to sleep is available and have indoor space available in case of bad weather or another emergency. I would also like to see creative policies like creating a new zoning code for tiny home villages to be legal in the city limits, subsidizing backyard ADUs targeting low income and homeless residents, creating a developer incentive program for temporary housing.
Are there aspects of the SC police contract that you think should be changed?
I would like to see more accountability and forms to the internal affairs and discipline process.
Given that the SCPD spends over 1/4 of the entire city’s 2020 budget on policing (estimated 30 million of 107 million total budget) and over half of the SCPD’s budget is spent on homelessness issues. Would you as a city leader support shifting at least 5% ($1.4 million) from the current police budget toward creating actual solutions to homelessness? Why or why not?
Yes, I would support this. We need to start being more proactive than reactive in our responses to problems, including homelessness. The status quo moves people from site to site without sufficiently tackling the root causes of an individual’s homelessness and we should do more of that.
Would you support creating an alternative 911 call line in a Cahoots-style triage system to address the mental health crisis, drug overdoses, and wellness checks as is now being done in Eugene, Oregon? If not, what other ideas do you have?
I support an outreach-focused approach to homelessness would redirect from the current reliance on the police department in responding to calls about those experiencing homelessness and have other trained professionals, like social workers, respond. I think that there are opportunities to change how we handle calls and the dispatcher service. Looking to models in Austin, TX, and the Cahoots program, we should have a 911 dispatcher ask if the caller is asking for police, fire, medics, or mental health experts and crisis workers. We can be smarter about how we respond to calls and reports.
For the tenants living at the Tannery Arts Center who share the neighborhood with the homeless encampments along the river, calls made to the police are often met with hours and hours of wait time before assistance arrives. Many of these calls are concerns with domestic violence and drug abuse along the river and adjacent to the residential buildings. What do you believe is a solution to the lack of will to address the Tannery residents’ concerns for their neighborhood and the children who live there?
I would like to better understand current SCPD priorities and why these calls take so long to address. Whereas the policing of homeless folks who do not have safe places to go and sleep is not productive, I think there is a role for law enforcement (and other types of crisis/mental health professionals) in potentially dangerous situations involving domestic violence and drug abuse.
Where do you stand on the new library/garage?
I support the mixed-use library project. I understand that the main library branch plays a critical community role as a meeting and gathering place and with an average of 1,000 daily users, the library is clearly a vital part of Downtown and renovating the structure in place would result in smaller library that would have to close during the renovation process. I am also in support of the project for the plan to build 50 deed-restricted affordable housing units.
Now that the City of Santa Cruz has just finished the historic painting of the Black Lives Matter street mural what are the top three actions you want to achieve in fulfilling its objectives with tangible policy changes and accountability towards equity, inclusion, and justice.
I would like to see continued progress on police and criminal justice reforms, more inclusive neighborhoods (which ties into educational access and health outcomes), and more opportunities for businesses owned and operated by people of color.
What resources are you aware of that are being given out to the BIPOC community to ensure that our health, investment in businesses and quality of life are on par with the white population? What will you do while serving on the city council to guarantee this?
The City Council should make sure that federal funds dispersed are serving the communities most in need first, whether its for renters, businesses, or non-profits providing health services.
What is your top priority for our SC Youth, specifically the Black students who statistically are not graduating at the same rate as their white counterparts?
Although the Council doesn’t have any direct influence over the school system, I want Black students and their families to feel valued and supported. With school being remote for the time being, I would work to make sure that kids have access to the internet, school lunches (if needed), counselors, and the other services provided in school. We can also make sure that the Parks & Recreation Department is has programs available that are of interest to children of all ages.