​Addressing the Housing Crisis

Houselessness is the biggest issue facing our city and the main challenge is balancing the rights of unhoused individuals with the obligation of providing a safe and clean city. Being respectful of and compassionate towards our unhoused neighbors doesn’t mean we have to tolerate littering, fires, and public camping. Brooklyn has a multi-step plan to solve our housing crisis in both the short and long-term:

• Expediting the implementation of safe-rest and safe-park villages. Immediately relocate illegal campers and illegally parked RVs to these areas to free up space on public right-of-ways and allow for clean-up of these areas. Ensure a 24/7 law enforcement and social worker presence at these villages by increasing funding for the Behavioral Health Unit and Portland Street Response.
• ​Build city-owned public housing complexes.
• ​Create a WPA-style public works program that would entail activities such as weekly graffiti and/or litter clean up. The purpose of the Public Works program would be to help individuals who have been out of the workforce reintegrate into the labor market. Portland would require residents of safe-rest villages and public housing to work for this program or have other employment.

​Reducing Cost of Living

​​The cost of living in Portland has skyrocketed in recent years. Brooklyn will work to do the following to ease the burden of rising costs and reduce the speed of inflation:

• Increase local rent-control laws to ensure landlords cannot raise rent more than 5% annually. Create an online webpage that provides resources and information for both landlords and tenants.
• Stop excessive property-tax hikes to remove the need for landlords raising rent.
• Dedicate police officers to enforcing out often unenforced regulations on AirBnBs and similar apps.

Protecting Our Environment

Like most youth in Portland, Brooklyn is very concerned about the environment and our community's reliance on the private sector to solve this issue. If elected Brooklyn will:

• Work to continue expanding our world famous walking and biking infrastructure.
• Increase PBOT's funding and end their reliance on parking and gas tax revenue.
• Lobby TriMet to bring back "Fareless Square", thereby promoting public transit usage.
• Ensure city vehicle lots are evenly spaced across the city, removing the need for unnecessarily long trips. Lobby PPS and TriMet to do the same.
• Ensure that large energy companies like Zenith are not prioritized over the safety of our community.

​Increasing Public Safety

Our city has been facing unprecedented levels of crime and safety issues in the past few years. Vehicle theft, shoplifting, and violent crime have grown to record numbers. Brooklyn will work to solve our city’s public safety problem by the following measures that will increase "eyes on the street":​

• Increasing funding to Portland Street Response and the PPB Behavioral Health Unit.
• Increasing recruitment of quality and diverse individuals to the Portland Police Bureau and Bureau of Emergency Communications (911) through local campaigns which include city job fairs, commercials, transit & billboard ads, and high school recruitment. This will help solve our understaffing crisis and allow for decreased response times for both emergency and non-emergency calls.
• Establishing a municipal court to try low-level crimes and traffic violations, allowing for more enforcement of these crimes and a streamlined court process. Portland is currently experiencing a privatization of law enforcement where more and more businesses are relying on private security and the City of Portland needs to make an active effort to keep law enforcement as much a public entity as possible.​

​Fixing Portland's Economy

​​There are better ways than high taxation to help Portland’s economy. Brooklyn will do the following to support our local economy without raising taxes:

• Require the city to do business with local companies (Oregon & Washington based) whenever possible and feasible, specifically in regards to purchasing and public works projects. This will help local union members.
• ​Allow for more Mixed-Use zoning throughout the city where it makes sense to allow the creation of more small businesses with less money, while ensuring the charm of single-family neighborhoods can be kept.

Increasing Transparency

Brooklyn strongly believes in government transparency and wishes to do the following:

• Fix our Arts Tax by changing it to a payroll deduction like most taxes instead of a “pay it on your own” tax. This will remove the burden of tax payments from individuals. Additionally, Brooklyn will work to establish a public web page that shows exactly where Arts Tax Funds are going.