City Council District Three Candidate Questionnaire: Kailee Caruso

by Joe Brizzolara and Kevin Flores  |  Published June 6, 2022 in Journalism

7 minute read
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What is your background and how does it inform your decision to run for election?

I am a mother, community organizer, policy advocate and on the PTA Board at my kids elementary. I have a Masters in Public Policy and work directly with people experiencing homelessness in LA County. I have first hand experience with community-based, data backed sustainable solutions to create safety, health and economic growth for all. 

According to the city’s latest Housing Element, the City Council could take up the issue of creating a rent stabilization ordinance next year. What are your thoughts on a citywide rent stabilization ordinance in Long Beach?

Rent has increased substantially and is no longer affordable for so many residents and families. To increase affordable housing and prevent housing instability a citywide rent stabilization ordinance would create public safety and would protect the 50% plus renters throughout Long Beach. We also need to evaluate how many short term rentals (are) owned by one entity in Long Beach. Excessive short term vacation rentals creates less long term rentals for residents and families and increases the price of those available contributing to the lack of affordable housing. 

Would you support the creation of a citywide rental data registry that would require landlords to report lengths of tenancies, rent amounts collected, and whenever they begin, alter, or end a tenancy?

Yes.

Tenants rights advocates across the country have called for a codified right to legal counsel for tenants facing eviction and have been successful in San Francisco and New York. Would you support a right to counsel ordinance in Long Beach?

Yes.

Is housing a human right?

Yes.

Tell us about an approach, policy, or program that has been successfully implemented in another city to reduce homelessness that you would like to introduce in Long Beach.

Department of Mental Health in Long Beach. This would bring funding, resources, jobs, trained alternative crisis responders, community training/teach-ins, preventative programs, equitable access to house youth, adults, families, and increase public safety. 

As part of a plan for all new buildings to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, the Los Angeles City Council is considering a proposal to bar all new commercial and residential construction projects from including gas line hookups in favor of all-electric appliances. Would you support a similar undertaking in Long Beach? Editors’ Note: Since the asking of this question, the Los Angeles City Council voted in favor of banning most gas appliances in new construction. 

Yes.

A recently drafted city memo proposes to end oil drilling in Long Beach by 2035, when local oil fields will no longer be financially viable. Should the city end oil drilling operations before 2035?

Yes.

Have you taken campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry and, if so, do you plan to continue taking contributions from that sector?

No.

The Long Beach Police Department currently employs approximately 800 sworn police officers. Do you think the current number of sworn police officers should:

Decrease.

A city-hired consultant recently recommended changes to the Citizen Police Complaint Commission that would create an inspector general position to investigate the LBPD. However, the inspector general could only investigate police shootings, in-custody deaths, and complaints against command staff with the approval of the City Manager. Past commissioners and community members have argued that the CPCC’s current subordination to the City Manager has rendered it toothless. Would you be in favor of an Inspector General position with the unfettered authority to investigate officer misconduct and use-of-force?

Yes.

Please explain what changes, if any, you would like to see implemented to better hold LBPD officers accountable for misconduct and/or excessive force?

Every police department should have a Civilian Oversight Committee for accountability and transparency to prevent misconduct. There should not be any policy that protects police when committing misconduct or excessive force. The LBPD budget should not be increased when data shows us police do not prevent violence and crime. Data shows us the safest communities are the ones with the most resources. Public safety is more resources in our communities like mental health, education, after school programs, preventative youth programs, healthcare, stable jobs, housing stability, thriving local small businesses, clean parks, trimmed trees, repaved streets and alleyways, (and) building community with social events. 

Long Beach has been working to implement an alternate crisis response (ACR) program that dispatches mental health professionals instead of police officers to calls for service related to mental health crises. Would you support expanding the criteria for the ACR to divert calls away from LBPD beyond mental health crises? If so, which types of calls for service?

Yes! Any non-emergency calls, wellness checks, victims of assault or DV, substance misuse and verbal disputes.

The city’s Technology and Innovation Commission recently issued a full-throated recommendation to put a citywide moratorium on the use of Facial Recognition Technology until privacy and civil rights safeguards are put in place. Do you agree with this recommendation?

Yes.

Have you taken campaign donations from the Long Beach Police Officers Association and, if so, do you plan to continue taking their contributions? 

No.

According to county data, accidental overdose deaths have spiked over the pandemic, especially in Long Beach. Harm reduction has become a key public health intervention in preventing overdose deaths and cities like New York and San Francisco have opened safe consumption sites to address the problem. Should Long Beach open a safe consumption site?

Yes.

Several cities have decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms, otherwise known as ‘magic mushrooms,’ including Detroit, Santa Cruz, and Oakland. What are your thoughts on decriminalizing magic mushrooms in Long Beach?

Data shows decriminalizing drugs and treating it as a health concern instead of criminal issue is a more long-term successful model for keeping residents and communities healthy and safe. Criminalizing folks for drug use is more expensive and less effective than treating it like a health concern and putting preventative programs and resources in our communities. I would consider decriminalizing it. 

Long Beach’s minimum wage is currently $14 an hour for businesses with 25 or fewer employees and $15 an hour for all other businesses. Los Angeles’s minimum wage, which increases annually based on the Consumer Price Index, will rise to $16.04 in July. Should Long Beach adopt an annual minimum wage increase to keep pace with cost of living?

Yes.

Fare collections accounted for 12-15% of Long Beach Transit’s operating revenue pre-pandemic, totaling roughly $14.8 million. Should Long Beach consider investing more funds into LBT in order to transition it to a fare-free transit system?

Yes.

Seeing as councilmembers are only employed part time, what would be your other area(s) of employment if elected?

I work directly with folks experiencing homelessness throughout LA County.

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Contact The Author

More by Joe Brizzolara
  joe@forthe.org
More by Kevin Flores
  kevin@forthe.org   @reporterkflores
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[1] Militarily demobilized. Since WWII—which was both the death knell of European colonial empires as well as the starting shot of the American neocolonial era—Europe has had notoriously scant standing armies, and has been able to consistently slash government military spending domestically and as a percentage of their contributions to international diplomatic bodies such as the UN. This is because nowadays European nations very rarely find themselves in situations where they need to independently send their militaries abroad in order to secure trade routes, foreign resources, or privileges within markets overseas; the U.S. has been fulfilling that hard-power obligation for them for over half a century. The social results of Western Europe’s decreased militarization are striking, especially when contrasted with the U.S.: there is not a single country in Western Europe without universal healthcare, labor rights and welfare systems are strong, value is placed on corporate and financial regulation, environmental policy is lightyears ahead, and, not least of all, there is a robust governmental approach to curbing digital surveillance and reining in tech monopolies. Japan enjoys a similar arrangement with the U.S. in which it, too, is militarily demobilized yet is given full access to, and prominence in, the global economy. In the last decade there has been a reversing trend of remilitarization in some of these nations. That trend was hastened during the last four years as a result of Trump’s ultranationalist politics, but is likely to continue even after his departure in large part due to the growing bipolar geopolitical climate of competition between superpowers.

The “owner” bit of home-“owner” appears in scare quotes throughout the text for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Nothing signals trouble quite like consensus.

More on them later.

And, anyways, what exactly remains “obvious” in an era “post-truth”?

I take as my starting position that even the “obvious” must be won.

It’s like Lenin said, you know…

Whether directly, or through a chain of investments, or through the wider speculative market in real estate.

I use “banks” in this piece as a stand-in for several sources of income that derive partly through the mortgaging of property and/or investment in institutions that have the power to mortgage property.

That is just its “ideology.”

The Ricardian “law of rent” explains that any location with an advantage over another location, can accrue an economic value, called “rent,” to the owner.

This happens without the owner needing to pitch in to create the advantage.

If the owner does pitch in, then the value accrued from that advantage cannot be called “rent.”

“Rent,” in economic terms, is only, precisely, the value accrued from that portion of the advantage for which the owner is not responsible. That is what we mean when we say, “Rent is theft.”

This does not mean places with lower property taxes ipso facto have higher property prices—and that is because the property tax is only one of the contributing factors. You could have zero taxes on land in Antarctica, for instance, and it would still sell for $0. This is why the introduction to the analogy controls for such variables.

This is the logical conclusion of believing two premises:

(1) All humans have an equal right to the Earth.
(2) Vaginal birth is a lottery system

Prop 13 is rent control for home-“owners.” You can learn more about its history and impact here.

“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. Act 4, Scene 5

This is why the lobbyists who spend the most money to support the mortgage interest deduction are bankers, mortgagers, and realtors.

Term

Definition