The West End News Candidate Profile
The West End News asked every council candidate three short, word-limited questions for its October Election Edition print profiles. Here's exactly what I sent Tony Zeli.
What experience makes you most qualified for this role?
Co-founded a San Francisco collaborative court and served as a Forensic Intensive Case Manager in York and Cumberland Counties, closing service gaps and cutting recidivism.
Why are you running now?
Most of my life, I've worked to fill gaps for people facing barriers to stability, frontline and administrative, in nonprofits and alongside government agencies. That work taught me to spot where systems break down and build the relationships needed to fix them. Portland needs that bridge-building on its council now.
Name the city's biggest failure right now, what you'd do about it, and how you'd measure success.
The biggest failure is fragmentation, city HHS, state DHHS, and the community partners filling these gaps operating separately, while people struggling with stability, near homelessness, chronically unhoused, or managing substance use disorder fall through the cracks. As councilor, I'd build "One Door": a memorandum of understanding and shared release agreements bringing city HHS, state DHHS, and community partners under one roof, so every person gets one real plan instead of bouncing between systems, while pulling in regional partners so Portland stops carrying this burden alone. I'd measure success by how many people move from languishing to stable housing.
This is One Door, the seventh plank in Housing That Works: housing and homelessness treated as one failure, not two separate departments working past each other.
Read the full Housing brief →