No one in our city should feel unsafe walking our streets or getting on the subway. These fears are valid and are the result of us living through a national increase in crime that must be addressed so that everyone can feel safe once again. 

By investing in proven innovative solutions New York can deliver a comprehensive plan to increase safety and well-being for all.

• Keep guns off our streets
  • Fund the State Police to trace illegal guns statewide and across state lines to put a stop to the pipeline of weapons that plague neighborhoods.
  • Support local police department gun safety efforts such as gun buy backs and increasing funding for Crime Analysis Centers which ensure local law enforcement agencies collect and share crime data.
• Support Homeless New Yorkers
  • Connect homeless people with mental health services, help with housing, and medical treatment like the Center for Court Innovation’s Community First Project does in Times Square/Midtown Manhattan.
  • Invest in the “Housing First” model to address the need for safe, supportive shelter for homeless people with chronic mental illness and substance use disorders. We must also have a strong police presence around supportive housing to help ensure safety for all.
• Deploy mental health rapid response teams
  • Other cities have had great success directing non-emergency calls to mental health response teams, allowing police to focus on dangerous crimes. Deploying these teams throughout the city would bring care to those in need and increase safety for all.
• Meet the demand for mental health care
  • The state must invest in mental health care systems to meet the demand. Time and again when there is a violent incident involving someone experiencing a mental health crisis, we later learn that they had sought care and were denied, often multiple times. Denying care is setting people up for failure and the results are too often tragic.
  • Drug addiction prevents people from obtaining jobs, and housing, and is correlated with other crimes. People who are addicted to drugs must be given treatment to help them with their addiction. Anything less is just kicking the can down the road.
• Strengthen bonds with local police
  • When people have a connection to their local precinct, they feel safer reporting crimes and police can respond better to the problems in the neighborhood. We need to build and maintain those bonds between precincts, residents and community groups through programs like the Neighborhood Coordination Officers that promote conversations about problems on our streets.
  • Police presence is crucial for street safety. We need police officers who have been assigned to a desk for non-disciplinary reasons to be brought back out onto the street as soon as possible to protect the public.
• Invest in our youth
  • We must increase funding for afterschool and summer employment programs for youth which are proven to reduce crime. Guaranteeing every K-12 school has a licensed social worker and psychologist on staff will help students set a course away from violence and identify mental health issues early on.

As we rebuild our economy from Covid we have to tackle economic inequality by making real investments in working people. We must guarantee a living wage and restore the dignity of work across New York State. We must tackle the high costs of childcare and education, the second largest expense for working families after housing. And we must invest in equitable education, reforming our segregated schools so that they provide real opportunities for children.

This includes:

• Accelerating the middle class tax cut to take effect in 2023
• Raising the minimum wage and implementing a minimum guaranteed income
• Ensuring that families have expanded options for flexible work beyond the pandemic
• Expanding affordable training for the jobs of today and tomorrow
• Providing free tuition at SUNY, CUNY, and community colleges

The right to reproductive health and freedom of choice is under attack in many states across the country and in the federal government. We must pass comprehensive protections here in New York to ensure that New York remains a Destination State, where anyone can come for an abortion or any reproductive health decisions.

• Protect people from discrimination based on pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes by passing the Equality Amendment (S.8797)
• Direct funding for abortions, provider expansion, infrastructure and practical support
• Allow New York residents to designate a portion of their state tax return to support access to abortion-related care
• Funding and policy changes to lower maternal mortality and morbidity rates in New York
• Reimburse local health departments at a higher rate to carry out sexual and reproductive health care
• Implement thorough, inclusive sex education by passing the Comprehensive Sexuality Education bill (S.2584/A.6616)
• Increase access to emergency contraception such as by mandating that SUNY campuses provide abortion pills in campus health centers (A.3322)
• Pass Civil protections for abortion providers, (S.7539/A.8286) to exempt people from money judgments arising from an action in another state for knowingly engaging in conduct that aids or abets the termination of a pregnancy
• Hold Crisis Pregnancy Centers accountable for their deceptive tactics
• Expand access to contraception by requiring insurance companies to cover all federally-approved contraceptive methods without a co-pay, and regardless of an employer’s religious or moral beliefs

We must address the inequities and inefficiencies in our healthcare system and finally ensure universal, affordable, quality healthcare in New York State. At the same time, we take lessons from the Covid crisis to make our healthcare system more efficient and effective, and invest in our healthcare workforce.

This includes:

• Passing the NY Health Act or an equivalent single-payer healthcare bill
• Finding places to cut waste in our healthcare system
• Providing bonuses to healthcare workers who served on the frontlines of the Covid pandemic

From my time leading Superstorm Sandy relief efforts for the City Council to my time at Friends of Hudson River Park, I’ve seen firsthand how resiliency and sustainability are tied to the livability and health of our communities. As your Assembly Member, I’m committed to making our coastal district a nationwide leader for climate preparedness and carbon neutrality.

Here’s how I’ll do it:

• Passing new funding for climate resiliency projects and ensuring that other sources of funding go toward supporting our waterfront parks
• Expanding funding for parks; creating more open green space throughout the West Side and beyond
• Increasing funding for the MTA and fighting for the implementation of congestion pricing
• Passing the Climate and Community Investment Act (S.04264-A/A.06967) to expand the state’s investments in renewable energy generation, especially in low-income communities
• Investing in an all-electric city transit fleet and EV charging infrastructure.

Our state is facing a housing affordability crisis, one which is felt acutely in the 75th District. I’m running to create more affordable, quality housing–so that the firefighters, artists, and nurses who make their living on the West Side of Manhattan can afford to live here too. This means strengthening tenant protections and requirements for new developments, but also finding creative solutions to build new housing.

Specifically, I’ll fight to:

• Pass Good Cause Eviction and Home Stability Support so that housing-insecure New Yorkers have the support and protection they need to stay in their homes
• Fully fund NYCHA repairs
• Convert hotels, and other abandoned or unused properties into housing
• Expand and create new mixed-use development
• Create many more units of supportive housing in the 75th District and beyond
• Ensure that all future development in the 75th District brings a significant amount of affordable housing and also utilizes union labor

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and our neighborhoods, making the West Side the vibrant cultural center that it is. But the pandemic and lack of basic protections for small businesses have left our commercial corridors in desperate need of support. The state government must partner with the private sector to find solutions that protect our small businesses and revitalize our neighborhoods.

We can start by:

• Cutting taxes for businesses with less than $1.5 million in income
• Creating a tax credit for small businesses for expenses incurred complying with COVID-19 orders
• Identifying ways to fill the empty storefronts on our streets.
• Assisting small businesses with free resources and technology

New York State has taken great leaps forward over the past decade from marriage equality to the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act.  However, there still remain policies in New York that disproportionately harm LGBTQ individuals that I will address as an Assembly Member.

• Require comprehensive, age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education be taught in schools so that students are prepared to make healthy, informed and consensual decisions about relationships.
• Require anti-discrimination policies and procedures in schools for Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, and Non-Binary students. 
• Require LGBTQ inclusive curriculum in all schools so that students gain an unbiased and more thorough understanding of the LGBTQI community while learning how to promote acceptance.
• Extend the ban on conversion therapy to adults under legal guardianships.
• Pass the "gender identity respect, dignity and safety act" requiring state and local correctional facilities to house people consistently with their gender identities and guarantee the associated rights and privileges.

Home care workers, delivery people, farmworkers, taxi drivers. Undocumented immigrant New Yorkers keep our city and state running and kept us functioning during the pandemic. They contribute over $1 billion annually in state and local taxes and it is time they receive their fair share.

• Build strong supports for refugees seeking asylum and tools to settle in communities across the State
• Support the New York For All Act to make New York a sanctuary state, protective of undocumented immigrants 
• Expand healthcare access to excluded immigrants who are already working and paying taxes by passing Coverage for All 
• Support voting rights for all residents 
• Ensure access to legal representation in immigration hearings by passing the Access to Representation Act
• Fund legal services for people facing deportation
• Strengthen the Excluded Workers Fund to ensure relief from the pandemic is accessible to all
• Preserve and fully fund adult literacy, citizenship & ELL classes 
• Make all state programming language accessible
• Pass Fair Pay for Home Care to ensure a living wage for health care workers who provide home and community-based long-term care
• Fully fund ERAP (Emergency Rental Assistance Program) to help thousands of New Yorkers who lost income due to the pandemic maintain housing

The government has a duty to protect animals from abuse and exploitation. Animal rights is a bi-partisan moral and ethical issue our state legislature should lead on and I will work for greater protections for the rights of animals.

• Ban the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in pet stores in New York State. The cruel conditions they live in in these stores leads to suffering and poor health, and has no place in our state.
• Require plant based food options in our schools

• Ensure the disbursement of a properly funded capital fund for animal rescues and shelters to allow for more space, greater accessibility and improved ventilation.

• Our streets are no place for horses and we have been horrified for too long by witnessing the inevitable accidents and tragedies created by this practice, I will support a ban on horse carriages in NYC.

• Increase funding to animal rescue and rehabilitation services.

• Prohibit abusive practices in rodeos and circuses statewide, ending the use of animals as an object of pure entertainment in cruel environments.
• Ban animal killing contests, competitions, tournaments and derbies

The Theater District was one of the hardest hit economic sector during the pandemic and many of our beloved performers, producers, stagehands, and ushers are still out of work. Theatre and arts are at the center of New York City's culture and I will fight for these industries to thrive.

• Expand and extend the New York City Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit to help defray production costs of shows.
• Fund operating grants for theatres and artistic spaces as the arts return to our city on every level. 
• Fund direct grants to independent contractors working in creative fields to support, stabilize, and bring them back to working in New York.
• Pass income tax relief for arts related businesses so they can stabilize their finances after being one of the hardest hit sectors of the economy during the pandemic.  

We need a city and economy that works for all New Yorkers. Building an equitable and accessible society for people with disabilities is a priority long past its time.

• Fully accessible transportation
  • NYC can never claim to have a world class transportation system until it is fully accessible for all.  That means working reliable elevators at every station and platforms that can be navigated by all. Right now only 29% of subway stations are accessible. Bus stops and crosswalks must always be clear of trash and snow so that all New Yorkers can freely move about our city.
  • Dedicated policies such as the city’s “zoning for accessibility” should be the start of a wave of new bold and creative policies that build the open and accessible public infrastructure we need and deserve.

Open meetings law and accessible meetings

• The emergency need for virtual meetings ushered in a new wave of technology that must remain and grow through the future.  No form of meetings works for everyone, but with technology and a real investment from the state we can build and mandate a form of meetings that is accessible for all.

Accessible and affordable housing

• Designing our buildings, free of barriers and usable by all people is an issue of equity.  I will work to ensure new housing development in our state follows the principles of universal design.
• Increase statewide funding for Disability Rent Increase Exemption (DRIE) and Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE)

Strong jobs for people with disabilities

• Work performed by someone, no matter their ability, deserves the same wage as their peers and the subminimum wage goes against that key principle.  I will work to end it in New York State.  Work performed by someone no matter their ability deserves the same wage as their peers.
• I will support legislation to require a set percentage of state employees to be people with disabilities.  Every government agency and office should have hiring requirements and supports in place to support the careers of people with disabilities.
• Support Businesses Committed to Access and Inclusion (BCAI) to help small businesses become ADA compliant.

508 compliant websites 

• I am proud to have an accessible website from the launch of our campaign.  All candidates in every race should make all campaign materials available for all.  How else can you claim to represent the whole community?  As we continue to build our campaign, accessibility will always guide our design and I want to hear from you on the best way to accomplish that.
• All government websites and the websites of organizations who receive public funding must be 508 compliant so that everyone can access needed services and information.  When preparing for emergency situations, such as major storms like Sandy and more recently Ida, we must break down all barriers to information and resources.