Key Issues
HOUSING
Protect affordable housing, expand homeownership, and keep families in the neighborhoods they love.
TRANSPORTATION
Build safer, people-first streets where people of all ages and abilities and local businesses can thrive.
PUBLIC SAFETY
Advance a holistic approach to public safety that prevents violence and strengthens community well-being.
GOOD GOVERNANCE
Make government more transparent, accountable, and responsive to the people it serves.
EDUCATION
Strengthen neighborhood schools by working across all levels of government to secure the investments and support every student deserves.
ENVIRONMENT
Create more sustainable communities through clean energy, climate resilience, and environmental accountability.
+ Housing
Housing is a personal issue to me. Long before I was elected to City Council, I organized alongside neighbors at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association and the Jane Addams Senior Caucus to protect affordable homes and ensure that working families could continue living in Chicago.
Now, as the father of two young daughters growing up in the 1st Ward, the housing crisis feels even more personal. Every family deserves the opportunity to put down roots, whether they’re renting their first apartment, buying their first home, raising children, or hoping to age in place in the neighborhood they love.
Since taking office, I have:
- Reformed the process around Transit Oriented Developments, making it easier and less expensive to build new housing across much of Chicago. Mandatory parking spaces can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of each new home while forcing builders to dedicate valuable land to cars instead of people. The ordinance now allows qualifying developments near CTA and Metra service to reduce or eliminate parking requirements without seeking special approval.
- Legalized Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs) including coach houses and basement apartments to give homeowners more flexibility, creating naturally occurring affordable housing, and allowing more multigenerational families to stay in their neighborhoods.
- Strengthened Chicago’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance, increasing on-site affordable housing in the 1st Ward instead of allowing developers to buy-out of affordable units.
- Prioritized adaptive reuse over demolition, encouraging development that preserves existing buildings whenever possible to preserve historic elements in the neighborhood while allowing housing stock to grow.
Looking ahead, I’ll continue to:
- Build more homes in every neighborhood by reforming the ADU ordinance and banning alders from opting their wards out.
- Work alongside the Here to Stay Land Trust to create more long-term home ownership opportunities for families in the 1st Ward.
- Allow more gentle density in the ward by expanding predominance of the block, and allowing three-flats by right throughout the 1st Ward.
- Preserve naturally occurring affordable housing by protecting two-, three-, and four-flats while expanding programs that help homeowners and small landlords maintain and rehabilitate existing buildings instead of losing them to demolition.
+ Transportation
Transportation is about much more than getting from Point A to Point B. It’s about whether our kids can safely walk to school, whether seniors feel comfortable crossing the street, and whether our neighborhood business corridors are places where people want to not only shop, but stay.
As Chair of the Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, I have prioritized safer streets built for people.
Since taking office, I have:
- Made traffic safety a top priority by investing in raised crosswalks, curb bump-outs, traffic calming, and neighborhood street improvements that slow speeds and make it safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike.
- Created Meet Me On Milwaukee, transforming Milwaukee Avenue into a people-first destination that for several years has made small businesses more accessible to neighbors, families, and visitors to invest directly in some of our ward’s greatest treasures.
- Expanded protected bike infrastructure and safer streets by establishing miles of concrete, protected bike lanes, proven to be the safest way to reduce traffic fatalities and accidents.
- Improved Blue Line service by working with the CTA to increase reliability and frequency of trains, while continuing to advocate for faster buses and more dependable transit throughout Chicago.
Looking ahead, I’ll continue to:
- Make the 1st Ward one of the safest wards to walk, bike, and drive by pursuing improvements to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries through street design, traffic calming, and expanding enforcement when vehicles obstruct bike lanes.
- Partner with the CTA to add Bus Rapid Transit to major corridors like Western Avenue and increase bus speeds, safety, and reliability.
- Build a true bike grid through a network of protected bike lanes.
- Create more people-first commercial corridors by learning from Meet Me On Milwaukee and expanding it elsewhere in the ward and across the city.
+ Public Safety
Everyone deserves to feel safe–walking home at night, waiting for the train, or sending their kids to school. Real public safety is about preventing violence before it happens, supporting survivors when harm occurs, and ensuring first responders have the resources they need to respond effectively. It also means recognizing that mental health, gender-based violence, addiction, and poverty are often compounding issues that intersect, and that a true intersectional approach is needed to address all of these at the same time.
Throughout my time in office, I’ve worked to make Chicago safer by investing in data-driven policies that reduce violence, improve accountability, and focus resources where they’re needed most.
Since taking office, I have:
- Expanded violence prevention programs by securing funding for community-based organizations that work directly with young people and neighborhoods experiencing the highest levels of violence.
- Made historic investments in survivors of domestic and gender-based violence in the 1st Ward including the Survivors Fund, which has given victims a path to economic independence.
- Championed Treatment Not Trauma because I believe a mental health crisis should be met by trained mental health professionals, not always a police officer. Now, Chicago’s Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement (CARE) program is connecting neighbors to EMTs and mental health clinicians when a 911 call involves mental health or emotional distress.
- Opposed ShotSpotter because it didn’t deliver results. I opposed renewing ShotSpotter’s contract because independent evaluations repeatedly found the technology generated false alerts and diverted officers away from true community policing. Public safety dollars should be invested in strategies that have been proven to reduce violence, not expensive technology that doesn’t work.
- Voted for budgets that prioritize evidence-based public safety. Since 2022, violent crime in the 1st Ward has fallen 44%, robberies have dropped 53%, and carjackings are down 88%.
Looking ahead, I’ll continue to:
- Support survivors of domestic and gender-based violence by allocating more Corporate (city) funding to programs and ensure they can continue amidst threats from the state and federal funding. We must move our victim advocacy services away from the police department and to trusted and culturally relevant community organizations.
- Work with neighbors to improve safety block by block by continuing partnerships with businesses, chambers of commerce, violence prevention organizations, and City agencies to improve street lighting, install infrastructure to make streets safer, and address public safety issues proactively.
- Ensure a broad and effective non-law enforcement crisis response. Citywide also has to mean sufficient staffing, sufficient hours of service, and quick and competent response.
+ Good Governance
Government should work for the people who live here–not the people with the most money or the most influence. Since taking office, I’ve worked to make Chicago’s government more transparent, more democratic, and more responsive to the people who rely on it every day.
Since taking office, I have:
- Created a more transparent ward by transforming the zoning process and publishing development proposals online, creating opportunities for community input, and ensuring residents can have a say in decision-making.
- Put residents at the heart of infrastructure needs with participatory budgeting. I established a process that allows our neighbors to decide how millions of dollars are spent, which has led us to repave streets, make sidewalk improvements, and bring new playground equipment to the 1st Ward.
- Stood up against ICE and the influence of dark money in politics. I believe Chicago must protect our immigrant neighbors and ensure our elected officials are serving our communities–not tying our hands when they terrorize our neighborhoods. That’s why I was one of the first 12 alders to sign on to the anti-ICE pledge, and I will continue to reject donations from companies and CEOs that are detrimental to our city.
Looking ahead, I’ll continue to:
- Implement public financing of elections to give Chicagoans a stronger voice in our elections, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and encourage candidates to run based on their ideas–not whoever has access to the wealthiest donors.
- Modernize city government by consolidating duplicative departments and positions, streamlining procurement, and making it easier for qualified vendors–especially smaller organizations–to partner with the city and be paid in a timely manner.
- Prohibit alderpeople from selecting their own voters by creating an independent redistricting commission, taking power away from elected officials and putting it back to community, making wards that are independently drawn and more connected to natural geographic boundaries.
+ Education
Every child deserves a great neighborhood public school. As someone who attended public schools myself and now as the father of two young daughters, I know that strong schools are one of the biggest factors influencing where families choose to live. While the City does not run Chicago Public Schools, the success of our public schools requires collaboration across all levels of government, including City Hall, our state legislature, and our elected school board. As alderman, my role is to advocate for our local schools and the investments they need for every student to succeed.
Since taking office, I have:
- Secured over $2M in investments for playgrounds and athletic fields at Goethe Elementary, Jose de Diego Community Academy, LaSalle II, Talcott Academy, A.N. Pritzker, and Otis Elementary.
- Improved pedestrian and cyclist safety around neighborhood schools through traffic calming and safer street infrastructure.
- Supported expanded youth programming and violence prevention to create safer communities for children of all ages.
Looking ahead, I’ll continue to:
- Advocate for fully funding Chicago Public Schools through Illinois’ Evidence-Based Funding formula.
- Direct speed camera revenue to hiring more crossing guards and investing in safer drop-offs around our schools.
- Expand Pre-K opportunities across the 1st Ward by working with city and state colleagues.
+ Environment
When I think about climate policy, I think about my daughters. Every parent wants to leave their children a world that’s healthier, safer, and more resilient than the one they inherited. Even for myself: what do I want being a senior in Chicago to look and feel like in thirty years time? That responsibility shapes every decision I make on City Council.
Climate change isn’t some distant threat; it’s here. Each year we experience more extreme weather, worse air quality, and an increase in the cost of our basic needs. That’s why I’ve fought hard to hold polluters accountable, reduce emissions, make it safer to bike and walk around our ward, and invest in more sustainable neighborhoods.
Since taking office, I have:
- Worked to democratize ComEd and put energy back into the hands of our residents. Learning from other cities and states, I have supported efforts to build an energy system with greater public oversight, stronger accountability, and a path toward publicly-owned utilities that put people ahead of shareholder profits.
- Supported the Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance, advancing environmental justice, strengthening protections against new industrial polluters, and ensuring every neighborhood has clean air and a healthy environment.
- Co-sponsored the Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance, moving Chicago toward cleaner all-electric buildings that lower carbon emissions and reduce long-term utility costs.
- Voted to restore Chicago’s Department of Environment, ensuring our city once again has a dedicated agency focused on responding to the climate crisis.
- Made it safer to fly around the ward by pushing developers to incorporate bird-friendly design, helping reduce bird collisions and creating more sustainable buildings.
Looking ahead, I’ll continue to:
- Make utilities more accessible to the public by passing the Water For All Ordinance, providing tiered water rates for higher users especially as we see an increase in data centers and the use of AI.
- Launch a citywide effort to replace lead service lines faster. At our current pace, Chicago won’t finish replacing lead pipes until 2076. That’s why in the next city budget, I’m already fighting to include a quarter-mile of lead service line replacement in every alderperson’s infrastructure plan.