Now that the candidates for the Assembly have been announced, I'm gonna start digging into who will be on the ballot. First up is Stephanie Taylor, who will be challenging Forrest Dunbar for East Anchorage. #ANCgov 1/
On Taylor's website, she lists her issues: Homelessness, Re-Investing in Downtown, and Taxes. Let's start with Homelessness. She claims we are "coddling" the houseless and need to hold them "accountable" for their crime and drug use. #ANCgov 2/ 
She continues that we must partner with non-profits and faith-based group to help the houseless. This is tantamount to saying that the city government has no direct responsibility to its houseless citizens, and rather independent orgs and churches should bear the weight. 3/
Further these comments reduce houseless people to criminals and addicts, and does not consider the many other factors that lead people into houselessness: mental/physical disability, lack of care funding, structural problems (inequality/house supply/affordability), etc #ANCgov 4/
What does "holding them accountable" mean? Considering Taylor was a volunteer for Bronson's campaign and she shares his number one issue, let's reflect on what some of his statements about houselessness. #ANCgov 5/
In a MRA article (🤮), Taylor is cited as saying that the municipality "spent much of the CARES Act money on poorly vetted plans for homeless shelters that never materialized", absolving the Bronson administration of its own poorly designed plans presented last summer. #ANCgov 6/
That quote is from a larger statement about COVID regulations, where she claims that “It wasn’t Covid that decimated our city, but it was the response to Covid". Disregarding that we have had 460 COVID deaths and extreme strain on our hospitals. #ANCgov 7/
The shelter issue is further complicated by the fact that since last summer, the admin has been in facilitated negotiation with the assembly to work out a plan for shelters, which makes her comments about how they "never materialized" disingenuous. #ANCgov /8
I have to go to work, but I will continue this examination of assembly candidates soon. In the meanwhile, I will leave you with this clip from an interview Bronson did with Suzanne Downing on the MRA podcast. #ANCgov 9/9
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