The Research Behind the Priorities:
Portland deserves a City Council that shows up with evidence, not just intention. Six priorities. Real data. Credible sources.
[Open the Research Brief Below]
My Priorities:
Housing That Works
Portland should be a place people can stay — not just visit. We need streamlined permitting, responsible density, and housing that people actually need, so Portlanders can remain in Portland.
Caring for Our Coast
We can't claim to love this place and keep treating it like a trash can. We need cleaner streets and shorelines — starting with smarter trash collection, bins instead of torn-open bags — stronger stewardship, and real accountability for protecting Portland's coast and ocean.
Keeping Us Safe
Safety starts with connection — knowing whom to call, feeling heard, and getting help before things break down. We need stronger community response systems, safer streets for walking and biking, well-trained crisis response, and better support before crisis becomes harm.
Building Our City
A strong city depends on the people who keep it running. We need to invest in workers, families, artists, small businesses, and the everyday systems that make Portland livable.
Growing Our Community
When neighbors know each other, the social fabric gets stronger. We need neighborhood connection, civic participation, and public spaces where people can gather and truly belong.
A Place for the Arts & Artists
Maine's creative economy supports more than 18,700 jobs and generates $2.5 billion annually — but artists can't afford to stay in the city they help build. We need a self-sustaining Arts & Culture Fund that keeps creatives in Portland.
Homelessness · Addiction · Mental Illness
Portland already has the pieces.
They're just not standing in the same room.
I've spent twenty years inside this work — a first-of-its-kind collaborative court in San Francisco, forensic case management for Maine DHHS across York and Cumberland Counties, and now as Clinical Liaison for Maine State Forensic Services.
Preble Street and MaineHealth do medical coordination. Greater Portland Health runs a health center built for people without stable housing. Commonspace runs recovery housing and jail reentry. Avesta has proven Housing First works here.
What's missing is one door — with a plan waiting on the other side of it — and the honesty to publish whether it's working.
I won't tell you I'll end homelessness in a term, or two. Nobody will, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.
What I can tell you is that Bakersfield and Kern County — a community fourteen times Portland's size — cut chronic homelessness to fewer than three people at any given time. It took them two decades and a system that finally worked faster than the crisis did. I was a young case manager there at the beginning of it.
Significant reduction is real, it's measurable, and it's been done. That's the work I'm asking for a seat to do.
You'll notice this isn't a seventh priority.
That's deliberate. Homelessness isn't a separate problem sitting next to public safety and community — it's what happens where those two meet. A crisis at 2 AM is a safety question. A person with nowhere to be at 2 PM is a belonging question. Same person. Same day.
Pull one thread and it leads to another. Treating them as separate is how we ended up with a system that's dis-membered — good organizations, real effort, no shared door.
So you'll find this work in both places:
Where I Stand, In Every Room
This election cycle, ten different groups sent their own questions, each one written from what that room cares about most. Here are my full answers to all ten, each one linked to the platform and research behind it.
Housing, harm reduction, homelessness, property taxes, climate, and the everyday issues shaping this city.
The Voter Guide's core policy questions: top priorities, why I'm running, the city's biggest challenge and opportunity, development, and what I'd change.
Written by and for people who've lived it: hygiene access, food distribution, day space, shelter funding, syringe services, and getting to services safely.
Cruise tourism, Casco Bay, scrubber discharge, neighborhood impact, and what the city's own tariff can actually do about it.
Density, inclusionary zoning, social housing, the Amtrak station relocation, Reimagining Franklin Street, and what happens to the former Midtown lots.
The three short, word-limited questions for the October Election Edition print profile: relevant experience, why I'm running now, and the city's biggest failure.
The teachers union's questionnaire on the council's role in our schools, from a former K–12 substitute and third-grade teacher with teachers in his own family.
What historic preservation means to me, how I'd engage with ReCode's rewrite of the Land Use Code, adding housing density without losing what makes a historic neighborhood historic, and whether Portland should protect more areas through historic designation.
Rent control enforcement, a fee for no-cause non-renewal, right of first refusal, verifying landlord exemptions, negotiating with tenant unions, the $100M social housing bond, expanding P-STEP, affordable set-asides for smaller developments, escrow for repeat violators, banning non-owner-occupied short-term rentals, and where I stand on every plank of their full Tenants Agenda.
Closing the arts-funding gap, a structure for Creative Portland, the Live Nation buffer-zone lawsuit, supporting Wabanaki and New Mainer artists, and why this fight is personal for me.
Ten different rooms, ten different sets of questions, but the same platform underneath every answer. Nothing here was invented for a survey. It's the research I've already published, applied to whatever that room actually asked.