Candidates for California’s Assembly District 54 seat convened for a forum in Little Tokyo on Wednesday to talk about how they’d tackle the housing and homelessness crises.
The candidates, Mark Gonzalez and John Yi, both Democrats, discussed strategies to increase affordable housing production, support rent-burdened families and address high insurance rates for residents. They emphasized the need for state funding and community-led initiatives that ultimately benefit renters and homeowners across the district of half a million people.
The 54th District includes L.A. neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Pico-Union, Westlake and the Arts District. The cities of Commerce, Montebello, Huntington Park and Vernon also lay within the district’s boundaries.
Gonzalez, the district director to incumbent Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, is a community organizer and longtime activist. He runs on a promise to raise wages for working families, alleviate the homelessness crisis and support guaranteed healthcare for all.
Yi comes to politics from the nonprofit world, serving as the executive director of Los Angeles Walks, a nonprofit that advocates for safe and walkable communities. He also worked to raise money for affordable housing projects and renter protections, and looks to take his local connections and policies to the state level.
The Wednesday forum drew about 50 people and was hosted by the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing (SCANPH) at the Japanese American National Museum.
Here, Gonzalez and Yi aimed to show how they differ from each other but also highlighted their shared commitment to tenant protections, establishing racial equity and addressing homelessness through different solutions.
Gonzalez, pointing to the district’s makeup of 80% renters, said there needs to be more policy that cuts the red tape of development and reform what he called “problematic zoning laws” to give more low-income residents opportunities to live within the district.
Conversely, Yi stressed the importance of protecting existing affordable housing, nodding to Kevin de León’s moratorium on the demolition of low-income housing in Boyle Heights and Chinatown residents’ fight to protect the affordability of an apartment complex there. Yi argued the role of the state government was to work with the renters to preserve their affordable rental units.
When it came to addressing the state’s shortfall of a promise to adequately fund the development of 1.2 million affordable homes by 2030, Yi said that working with localities and taking inspiration from measures like ULA, approved in 2022, and Measure A, which will go before voters in November, would be crucial to fill in the gaps in funding development.
“The budget we are spending is not matching the urgency on the ground, and so it is critical that as a state, we create reliable funding streams for affordable housing,” Yi said. “The state must also hold its end of the bargain and provide a reliable stream of affordable housing projects.”
Throughout the forum, Gonzalez repeatedly nodded to his political experience, saying that political ideation was far different from the action he had already undertaken working in the district office.
“This is not a job for ideas. This is a job for accomplishments. Campaigning is about promises. Government is about accomplishments,” Gonzalez said.
But, when prompted to discuss plans to address the high insurance rates renters, homeowners and landlords face, Yi argued that with an idea, New York was able to combat the dramatic insurance hikes that many Californians must endure.
“New York actually passed the first law in the country that actually limits section eight housing from having insurance hikes. We can do that here in California,” Yi suggested.
Gonzalez acknowledged the pace of which housing developments plans have become approved and said that incentives for builders need to be brought to the table. He proposed school districts across AD 54 be utilized for developing housing for students and teachers alike so community members can afford where they work, go to school and live.
“That’s how we keep [community] here. That’s how we keep the development and the continuation of our community and the culture of what is the 54th District,” Gonzalez said.
At several points during the forum, Gonzalez jabbed at Yi’s status as a homeowner, saying he wouldn’t understand the issues renters in AD 54 deal with on a daily basis. Yi clarified, saying his ownership came through his marriage, where his partner simply added Yi’s name to a shared lease. Yi argued that owning a home is an equally valid lived experience as renting is.
“Home ownership is an aspiration of so many working-class immigrants, such as my own parents. It does nothing to public policy to denigrate that experience more than aspiration,” Yi quipped back at his opponent.
Reacting to L.A. Mayor Bass’ Executive Directive 1, a motion to accelerate the development of affordable housing across Los Angeles, the candidates finally found common ground. Gonzalez considered ED-1 to be watered down with nimbyism from homeowners and said it was a form of redlining and racial discrimination.
Agreeing, Yi said that state government needed to be more involved in holding local governments accountable and making sure affordable housing is not just built in immigrant communities and low-income communities.
