Nine people running for an elected seat in National City met at Paradise Village on Sept. 6 during a candidate forum hosted by the National City Chamber of Commerce.
Candidates fielded questions regarding the city’s handling of a case involving the in-custody death of 40-year-old Earl McNeil; candidates also explained how despite political differences on the dais they would work with each other to move the city forward; and each candidate gave their position on Prop. W, a ballot initiative for rent control.
City Council candidates Mona Rios, Sherry Gogue, Candy Morales, Ron Morrison and Jose Rodriguez were present at the forum. Candidate James Kim, who had confirmed his attendance with the chamber, was absent.
On the topic of the handling of the McNeil case, Rodriguez said he is supportive of a more transparent process and believes that public officials and police should be held to the highest standards.
“I don’t think there has been a conversation about the individual who passed away,” Rodriguez said. “We need to mourn with the family and we need to have empathy with what’s happening right now. First and foremost, I think we need to have more dialogue in our community but we need to start from the top. Start from the people who are elected into office that have that mentality and make sure we build bridges instead of building walls between different communities.”
Rios said the McNeil case is not about picking sides. She said as a current council member she has to represent everyone. She said she wants all of the information to come out with the investigations and encourages it to come forward as quickly as possible.
National City Mayor Ron Morrison, who is in his final term as mayor but has chosen to run for city council, said the process of releasing information could be more efficient, but believes that protestors are using McNeil’s case for their own benefit.
“I think there is a grievance with the system of getting out information, but a lot of the leaders, in particular to this thing, I think are using Earl McNeil, and using his family, using the situation for their own cause and that is a travesty just as much as a death of any individual.”
Council candidates also took questions on the ballot measure for rent control. Morales said she does not support the measure for rent control because it is very one sided.
“If this measure goes through we could actually potentially limit progress on possible development,” she said.
“We need to really, really think hard how we’re doing this, how we’re going to move forward, how we’re going to have some type of solution and a balanced answer to the housing problem.”
The second half of the forum featured all four mayoral candidates: City Treasurer Mitch Beauchamp; Planning Commissioner Ditas Yamane, resident Daniel Perez and councilwoman Alejandra Sotelo Solis participated in the forum.
Beauchamp said he does not support rent control because he believes in a free market system.
Yamane said she will not vote in favor of Measure W because National City needs to attract developers to build affordable housing.
“Rent control is not the answer,” Yamane said. “It will hurt the same people that you think you are helping. The city should address the supply and demand factor to encourage investors to come into our city and we have to create a better access to a friendlier process for developers to build more affordable housing.”
VACANCY TAX: BETTER THAN RENT CONTROL
Rent control doesn’t force owners to offer their properties “to let” at the allowed rent. Rent control doesn’t force land owners to build more housing. On the contrary, it discourages both, reducing the supply of housing and RAISING other rents! Exempting NEW buildings from rent control may avoid deterring construction, but it still doesn’t open up EXISTING buildings for tenants. Worse, it means that the stock of rent-controlled housing becomes a shrinking fraction of the whole housing stock — unless the exemption is only for a limited time, in which case you’re discouraging construction again!
Will deregulation of development and construction solve the problem? Not by itself. Cheaper housing requires developers, builders, and owners to increase supply to a point where it reduces their return on investment! They obviously won’t do that voluntarily. They will do it only if they are penalized for NOT doing it!
SOLUTION: Put a punitive tax on vacant lots and unoccupied housing, so that the owners can’t afford NOT to build housing and seek tenants. By reducing the owners’ ability to tolerate vacancies, a vacancy tax strengthens the bargaining position of tenants and therefore reduces rents.
Such a tax, by reducing the cost of housing, would make it easier for employers to pay workers enough to live on. A similar tax on commercial property would reduce rents for job-creating enterprises. That’s GOOD FOR BUSINESS and GOOD FOR WORKERS.
A vacancy tax is also GOOD FOR REALTORS because they get more rental-management fees for properties coming onto the rental market, plus commissions from any owners who decided to sell vacant properties to owner-occupants (who of course don’t pay the tax).
Best of all, the need to avoid the vacancy tax would initiate economic activity, which would expand the bases of other taxes, allowing their rates to be reduced, so that the rest of the city/state/country gets a tax cut!