MVP PLATFORM

In a city known for its driving culture, we recognize that the Mar Vista community faces different accessibility challenges in our urban spaces. We are committed to ensuring everyone’s safety on our roads, regardless of their chosen mode of transportation. We believe that every person living in Mar Vista should have the freedom to safely navigate sidewalks, buildings, roadways, and parks, and no disability should prevent anyone from being able to run errands around town, spend an afternoon at the park, or support local businesses. Furthermore, climate change is wreaking havoc on our communities with record heat waves, unseasonable weather, and devastating fires. Mar Vista can commit to addressing climate change right here in our own neighborhood, because we believe that all people have the right to live, work, and play in communities that are safe, healthy, and free of life-threatening environmental conditions. Here are examples of policies we would advocate for:

• Expand public transportation modes as real alternatives to driving, through protected, dedicated lanes for buses and bikes along identified routes

• Enhance connectivity in the public right-of-way, such as curb cuts to make crosswalks accessible, the continuation of designated bike lanes and “sharrows” across neighborhoods, and recent motions by LA City Council to phase out street widening via “street dedications”

• Push for real infrastructure changes (protective bollards, etc.) via Vision Zero to lower the number of traffic deaths and injuries and enable pedestrian/cyclist/micro-mobility safety

• Support safer routes to school and crossing guard programs at our local schools

• Connect homeowners and renters with subsidies and public benefits for environmentally-friendly programs, such as solar rooftops, energy efficiency upgrades, drought-tolerant yards, tree planting

• Support the creation and protection of community gardens, green spaces, and parks

• Demand the closure of the dangerous and unnecessary Playa del Rey gas storage facility on the Ballona wetlands

• Organize neighborhood clean-ups

We believe that safe, affordable housing is a human right. We will fight to humanize the perception of our unhoused community members. We will advocate for permanent housing and social services for them. Homelessness in our city is an epidemic, one that is a choice made by our City Council every day that they fail to provide guaranteed housing for all unhoused people in Los Angeles. The majority of people in Los Angeles, and in Mar Vista specifically, are renters, and we will push for stronger tenant protections to keep Angelenos in their homes as the impacts of the pandemic and the economy continue to affect us all. Some policies we would advocate for include:

• Advocate for tenant protections and conduct outreach and clinics so that Mar Vista renters know their rights, like the recently implemented “Just Cause” initiative by LAHD, including anti-retaliation laws, relocation assistance, right to counsel, temporary rental assistance, and support for tenant union organizing

• Re-establish a Renters Committee on the Mar Vista Community Council to represent and discuss issues of importance to renters

• Create a Mar Vista renters' index, which would include a registry of affordable housing units, pricing and vacancy data, eviction data, information about landlords (e.g. whether they discriminate against Section 8 voucher holders)

• Resist efforts to obstruct and delay affordable housing projects in our neighborhood

• Push for municipal services such as regular trash pickup and toilets at local encampments to ensure unhoused Mar Vistans can keep spaces clean

• Resist efforts to criminalize unhoused Mar Vistans with no credible offer of shelter or housing (e.g. pursuant to LAMC 41.18) and advocate for a trauma-informed approach to local implementation of Mayor Bass' "Inside Safe" initiative 

Politics, on both a local and a national level, has been fraught over the past several years. It isn’t working for all of us. Mar Vista is a diverse community of neighbors from all backgrounds, and every voice in our community is one that must be heard, respected, and valued. We are committed to reaching out to and involving the voices of all of our neighbors, especially those whose voices have been underrepresented or excluded from the Mar Vista Community Council. Policies we would support include:

• Re-establish the Aging in Place Committee, which will advocate for and involve the voices of our Mar Vista elders across issues addressed by the Mar Vista Community Council

• Collaborate with organizations like the Mar Vista Seniors Club, Westside Pacific Villages and the City of LA Department of Aging to ensure Mar Vista seniors can access supportive services 

• Purposefully reach out to a more diverse and intergenerational cross-section of the community to invite them to Council meetings and activities, to create a more community-involved venue and reinforce structures and systems that build community

• Support community-building efforts in our neighborhood by collaborating with local organizations like our public schools and parent groups, Mar Vista Farmer's Market, the Venice Fest, Ocean View Farms, the Mar Vista Art Walk and more   

• Prioritize spending resources on members of our community who do not already have adequate resources at their disposal