Affordable Housing: Every New Orleanian deserves a safe, livable, and affordable place to call home. We must work towards solutions that combat the rising cost of homeowners insurance and barriers to the development of new safe, affordable housing.

Whether you’re a renter, a homeowner, or a home builder, you deserve a clear set of expectations and rules that encourage affordability.

• Support small landlords seeking compliance with the Healthy Homes Ordinance through low-interest and forgivable loans for rental upgrades.

• No new Commercial STRs permits unless a developer dedicates a similar number of units for affordable housing.

• Provide predictable, consistent enforcement of regulations, from zoning to STRs, to reduce confusion and build trust. Eliminate block-face exemptions.

• Aggressively remove the tax-exempt status of consistent slumlords operating tax-free as non-profit organizations.
  

Short-Term Rentals: Enforce existing STR rules with no exemptions for additional units per block face. Enforce the ban on STRs in the French Quarter and ensure any new STR regulations reflect community fatigue with ongoing policy. I support a broader citywide phase-out of STRs for commercial use.

Housing Trust Fund: 

• Invest in the Fortified Roof program for low-income homeowners to reduce insurance premiums.

• Provide grants to low-income and elderly homeowners to ensure they can maintain a safe, livable property and avoid blight fines and fees.

• Prioritize housing developments that can be acted on quickly – not just large scale projects that may tie up funding over time.

• Ensure community land trust models are eligible to build a stock of permanently affordable homes that better protect the homeowner from rising costs.

Support for Small Businesses: For too long, New Orleans has had the reputation of a place that’s hard to do business. We must streamline permitting and licensing by:

• OneStop should mean OneStop: Expanding the use of OneStop for permits and consolidating with the online systems of the City’s Revenue department.

• Ensure every applicant receives an answer within two days by investing in customer service roles and creating clear timelines with direct contact points for troubleshooting delays for all permits and licenses.

• Bring back opportunities for small vendors and artists by eliminating the performance bond requirement for small festivals and art markets.

• Expand the Facade Renew program to assist small business owners with storefront improvements with a focus on underserved communities.

Accountable Growth: Focus on objective decision-making in major economic development projects. Create a standard decision-making matrix for any development seeking public incentives like TIFFs or Economic Development Districts with clear, measurable standards for inclusion of community benefits.

• Make sure the boards in charge of managing public money for development—like in special tax or economic zones—include both local residents and experts, so the community has a voice and decisions are made responsibly.

Workforce Pipelines: Create a direct pathway from trade schools, workforce development, and registered apprenticeship programs to civil service jobs, especially those addressing our infrastructure needs.

Communicate Opportunity: Develop an outreach plan to assist youth and those returning from incarceration to enter workforce development and job pipelines.

Youth Jobs with Dignity: Audit all youth employment programs to ensure teens and young adults are being paid and treated fairly, including summer lifeguards and teen internship programs.

Business Attraction: Expand funding to the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development to attract new, high paying jobs to our region.

Fund the Ferry: Secure long-term funding for the Algiers-Canal ferry by partnering across our region to advocate for state investment while advocating for new, innovative, and sustainable sources of revenue such as a disembarkation fee on cruise ship passengers.

Support Workers:

• Maintain midnight ferry service and late night bus service to communities like Algiers and New Orleans East.

• Expand subsidized parking options for hospitality workers in the French Quarter.

• Subsidize RTA Jazzy passes for City employees.

Modern Transit:

• Invest in prioritized traffic light signalizing for streetcars and bus only lanes.

• Keep transit free for opportunity youth to provide more access to jobs, safe recreation, and resources.

Transit for All: Quality public transportation is a benefit to all New Orleanians. Supporting an efficient, connected, and consistent transit system that provides access to jobs, reduces pollution, and ensures all New Orleanians can get where they need to be on time.

• New Orleans has some of the highest pedestrian and cyclist deaths per capita due to car crashes. We must invest in and enforce traffic solutions that keep us all safe.

Our approach to public safety must be rooted in prevention, dignity, and opportunity. 

• Economic empowerment, trauma-informed services, and access to housing and jobs are the foundation of safer communities.

• Ban the use of facial recognition software in city-wide crime cameras, which lead to higher incidents of false-positive identifications for people of color and create opportunities for extra-jurisdictional overreach.

• Invest in law enforcement training for interactions with vulnerable populations like youth, the unhoused, and people with mental illness while expanding a focus on trained mental health professionals responding to appropriate non-violent calls through the Mobile Crisis Intervention Unit – which have also been proven to reduce response times for people in need.

• Ensure that the entire criminal justice community is engaged when designing, evaluating, and implementing pilot programs including the District Attorney, Public Defenders, public health officials, law enforcement, and advocates for the formerly incarcerated.

• Encourage family and community communication and connection with those who are incarcerated or awaiting trial to build and maintain networks of accountability and care after release.

• Support appropriate, evidence-based, and safe court alternatives developed and proposed by experts such as mental health and drug courts.

• Fund existing and trustworthy re-entry services and listen to the formerly incarcerated community to identify unmet needs.

Real Civic Engagement: Two minutes at a City Council mic is not meaningful engagement. I’ll host regular, inclusive community forums where dialogue, not gatekeeping, is the standard.

Participatory Budgeting: Offer our community the direct opportunity to make decisions on city spending through a participatory budgeting pilot. Participatory budgeting allows residents, including youth, to propose ideas and vote directly on the investments they would like to see in their communities. Piloting in youth-serving departments like NORD will help us build a pipeline of young people already engaged and invested in democracy.

Financial Planning and Preparation: This is a crucial time for informed, engaged, and pro-active financial leadership. We must prepare for the devastating federal funding cuts that will be coming to our communities in the coming years through creative problem solving.

Open Government:

• Centralize financial reporting: There should never be a debate about the state of public funds. We can offer much-needed transparency by centralizing all departmental budgeting and real-time financial information so leadership can make clear and informed decisions about how to best fund the services and projects our city needs.

• Publish machine-readable budget data across all branches of city government.

Invest in Amenities that Matter: Every neighborhood deserves safe parks, community centers, and third spaces– places that aren’t your home or work– that build connection and well-being.

Support Working Families: Affordable childcare, reliable transit, and living-wage jobs should be treated as essential infrastructure.

Refund the Fresh Food Retailer Initiative to bring healthy food options back into community stores.

Fund green infrastructure and drainage improvements to help lower our city’s flood risk rating and insurance costs.

Preserving the French Quarter: The French Quarter should be treated as the unique blend of neighborhood, business district, and historic gem that it is. Ensure that our city’s most unique neighborhood remains a safe and enjoyable place for residents and visitors alike.

• Continue and enforce the ban on Short Term Rentals in the French Quarter.

• Support the Vieux Carre Commission to retain the historic character of our city’s most iconic community.

Stop illegal dumping: Add additional and escalating fines for those caught dumping illegally in our neighborhoods.

Funding Our Future:

• Re-evaluate existing sales tax dedications and align them with current community priorities.

• Leverage fines and fees against bad actor landlords to fund an already-established but un-funded Anti-Displacement Fund to help people displaced by negligent property owners.

Invest in storm-resilient infrastructure and grid hardening.

Expand the Community Lighthouse program and expand the current network of cooling centers to provide neighborhoods with relief after major weather events.

Mandate monthly all-hands leadership meetings of all utilities including Sewerage and Water Board with major infrastructure departments within the City such as the Department of Public Works to ensure consistent collaboration on all major work. The Superbowl showed us what’s possible when we work together; let’s ensure that standard of work continues for locals.