We have not gone away! We have been busy meeting with legislators about our housing “crisis” hoping to change the narrative from more supply to more affordable housing. Not surprisingly, most of our legislators are tied to the leadership rhetoric that we need more housing supply. We have shown all of you what a fallacy this is at our Feb 26 meeting. We realize that there is only so much we can do with our legislators. Afterall, they do not fear us as much as they fear their leadership. They get their next chairmanship or their next job by being liked by them.
Electing good people with common sense and a willingness to fight for what is right and not what is based on magical thinking and special interests is very important. To that end, we have been meeting with candidates and will hopefully get some of them to address United Neighbors. We are taking the opportunity to discuss policy concerns with them privately. Many of them are running “donation drives” so they can get matching funds from the cities they are running in. I will forward these drives to you as I get them. Knowing that many of you can not endorse candidates as heads of your associations, I think it may be something you circulate if you can and support if you want to. We just must remember that getting good people in office matters to all of us and will affect all our lives. We need to expose good people to as many of our members as possible. It is our best hope in getting good governance. LA has some big races that include Mayor, City Attorney, Supervisor and City Council seats. We need to get LA back on track so we will be following these races closely. Let us know what is happening in your area. All these races are significant for all of us.
Finally, we are also starting to reach out to bigger possible partners that have an established role in Sacramento to see if we can find common ground in our fight for better legislation. We have taken some great meetings with important players in the housing scene. Getting these meetings is easier because all of you make up United Neighbors. It continues to open doors.
Keep us informed of what’s happening in your neighborhood. We will probably not have an April meeting but will schedule one in May.
Happy Easter and Passover to all,
Maria, Jeff, Cindy, Sharon.