It is time we step up for our young people in foster care. We can no longer stand for small ideas and hope for incremental progress. It isn’t working, and our youth is falling farther and farther behind their non-foster peers. In true Silicon Valley fashion, we need to set big goals and shoot for...

Santa Clara County is home to 1.94 million residents, in which 412,000 are kids and teenagers ranging from the ages of 5-24. This group of residents makes up 21% of our county’s population and are heavily dependent on public transportation for many reasons. One of the most obvious reasons for teen dependency on public transportation...

Despite my five-year effort to educate the public and lobby the county Board of Supervisors to implement Laura’s Law, with the support of my colleagues on the San Jose City Council, county leaders failed to move this law forward on Jan. 28. Laura’s Law is a temporary, court-supervised, involuntary conservatorship law that would help some...

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. What’s that sound? The sound of time being wasted by Mayor Sam Liccardo and five of his colleagues in cracking down on human trafficking and wage theft in the construction industry. The fact that San Jose construction workers are exploited and victimized by wage theft perpetrated by unscrupulous low-road...

In April 2019, in a 6-5 vote, the San Jose City Council defeated a proposal to move the timing of the city’s mayoral elections from their current gubernatorial cycle to presidential years, which have historically generated higher levels of voter participation. Indeed, political science research demonstrates clear evidence that the simplest and most effective solution...

We can solve homelessness in San Jose. We have effective, proven solutions but continue to lack the resources needed to scale them to meet the enormous need in our community. But, the good news is that on Tuesday, March 3, San Jose voters can help achieve this goal by voting in support of Measure E....

In my recent State of the County address, I highlighted the county’s success with the voter-approved Measure A housing bond. Measure A is ahead of schedule, almost halfway to building more than 4,000 new permanent homes for the homeless. This week, I called for the county to double down on Measure A — to put...

I was very disappointed that the Mercury News failed to mention me as a San Jose City Council candidate for District 6 in its Jan. 21 endorsement editorial. By not mentioning the only District 6 candidate who grew up in the lower-income neighborhoods of District 6, in which income disparity, affordable housing, public safety and...

In a San José Spotlight op-ed published on Jan. 16, Pat Waite argued that Measure E — a property transfer tax on properties worth over $2 million which is slated for the March ballot — represented a money-grab by the city that would fail to deliver on its promises of increasing the city’s capability to...

Last year, the city of San Jose’s point-in-time count, a federally mandated count of the area’s homeless population, showed that homelessness spiked 42% in the last two years. Today, for every one person we house, three more become homeless. On any given day, there are more than 5,000 residents living on our city’s streets, however,...