My Priorities | My Site

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

This is at the heart of why WeHo was founded, and it’s the key to our future.

West Hollywood was founded more than 40 years ago by a coalition of queer idealists, Russian-speaking residents, and older folks who were worried about being able to afford their apartments. This diverse group banded together and created a vibrant, diverse city that serves its residents. I love this city. I’ve lived all over the country, and this is the place I’m proud to call home.

But we’re in danger of becoming a victim of our own success. With the average asking rent in West Hollywood at $6,000, I don’t see where our next generation of idealists and dreamers is going to come from. This is the biggest challenge facing West Hollywood. We need more affordable housing if we hope to survive the next 40 years as a diverse, equitable city.

I want to lead us in…

Building more transitional housing like the Holloway House with robust social services.
Supporting our non profit agencies that build LEED certified, affordable housing.
Unlocking mixed-use housing opportunities at underutilized commercial sites everywhere, but especially near parks, commercial corridors, and within walking distance to transit.
Using city-owned land more effectively, including adding at least some housing component to all new city-led developments.
Continuing to update our zoning with community input so that the kind of housing the majority of West Hollywood residents live in is once again legal to build.
Keeping our tenant protections strong, and proactively identifying and working with any vulnerable, displaced residents.

SAFE STREETS

It’s time for safe, accessible streets for all our residents.

We can’t have a functional city if people don’t feel safe walking down our sidewalks, or if they can’t even use them because they’re not ADA accessible. This is why creating safer streets is one of the key pillars of my campaign. This means working with our safety partners - the sheriff’s department, our block-by-block security ambassadors, and our WeHo Cares team - to make sure everyone feels safe living, working, and playing in WeHo.

Crime has gone down in 2025 for the third year in a row. But there’s still a lot of work to do. That’s why I’ll work across our city to make sure we have walkable, well-lit streets, safe, clean parks, and data-informed policing that uses clear metrics to hold our public safety partners accountable. I’ll also work to make sure all our partners are responsive to the needs of our unique and diverse community.

We also need to keep our residents safe when they’re traveling down our streets and sidewalks, but unfortunately serious injuries and deaths continue to rise. In both Los Angeles and West Hollywood, you’re more likely to die or have a life changing injury in a collision with a car than you are as the victim of a crime.

This is a public health crisis, and we need to use all the tools we have to make sure no one has their life cut short or drastically changed because of traffic violence. As someone who rides my bike to work, walks to our local businesses and who shares a car with my husband, I’m at risk in all three of those modes of transport. Unfortunately, I routinely talk to residents in our city who’ve been the victims of terrifying and preventable collisions. That’s why I’ll work to make our streets safer by…

Implementing proven traffic calming designs on dangerous streets
Working with our safety partners and the state to implement novel enforcement strategies like speed and red light cameras
And most importantly, creating real alternatives to driving for residents who can’t or don’t want to drive (roughly a third of all residents). This means creating…
- Safe, connected infrastructure
- Fast, free public transit
- Sidewalks that are ADA accessible for everyone.

To be clear, I’m not against cars. I’m against forced car dependency where we’ve given people no other option but to drive whether they want to or not, whether they can afford to or not. I’m against people dying in the prime of their lives because we’ve delayed making improvements to our streets.

With several high-profile events like the Olympics and Paralympics coming up, it’s important to plan now for how we’ll move people through our city in a way that residents and visitors will be safe, and local businesses can get an economic lift.

THRIVING LOCAL BUSINESS

Our restaurants, bars, clubs, and other businesses are part of what makes WeHo so special. We need to make sure they’re thriving.

I’ve been an employee, a business owner, and I’m currently a member of the Writers Guild, so I’m uniquely poised to help lead us in strengthening our business community.

By creating more housing and unlocking more mixed use zoning, we’ll increase foot traffic, which is an invaluable resource for our businesses. But we also need to knock down the siloes and sidetracks in our permitting process. We need to make it easier for creative, locally-owned businesses to open and stay open in the city.

And we need something else too…

Safe Streets

REVITALIZING OUR CREATIVE ECONOMY

Let’s keep WeHo a magnet for creative people seeking the kind of inspiring environment that can nurture bold expression and innovative art.

I moved to West Hollywood in 2016 when I got my first TV writing job. I fell in love with the city then, and I’ve stayed here through ups and downs in the industry including the 2023 Writers Guild Strike and my time on the picket line.

But in that same time I’ve seen creative friends have to move away because they just couldn’t afford the rent. The biggest drop in WeHo’s population in the past 15 years is people aged 20-34, people trying to get started in their careers. These are also the people we need to cement our city’s creative future. So again, the solution leads back to building more housing.

I also want to work to streamline film permitting in this city, to help our lots and production houses stay open, and to inspire our creative residents by increasing services like our artist support programs and our creative/maker spaces like our WeHo Public Access and podcasting studio. I’m uniquely positioned to make sure West Hollywood stays open for the creative industries and for the people that have helped us thrive.

LGBTQ+

West Hollywood has always had a vibrant core of local activism, and we need to work hard to make sure it stays that way by providing multiple ways for residents to give input on the future of their city.

It’s one of the things I love most about this city as a queer, bisexual woman, and I also want to recognize and address the ways our community’s needs have changed from when we first became a city 41 years ago.

We’re living during a time when our trans and non-binary community is under attack, so it’s imperative we work with all our public safety partners to make sure our TGI2S+ residents feel safe in our city no matter what’s happening on the national stage.

We’re also living in a time where LGBT people’s lives are in danger in many countries, including Russia, and some of them are escaping and seeking new lives in West Hollywood where both a robust LGBT and a robust Russian-speaking population can welcome them. But these efforts are being stymied by our lack of available housing. This is just another example of how housing affects so many other issues.

TRANSPARENT, FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

The public comment periods in City Council Meetings are a great way for some neighbors to give feedback, but that doesn’t work for everyone, especially working families with young children, as well as folks with health concerns that keep them from being able to physically attend meetings. Not all of them will be able to use our zoom public speaker option.

That’s why it’s important to have multiple ways to meaningfully interact with city officials. I want to build on our practice of holding community meetings for important projects during the weekends, I want to revamp our website so that it’s more intuitive to use, and I want to make it easier for residents to track projects by allowing them to sign up for selective alerts and emails about just those projects they’re the most interested in.

I also want to make sure we don’t waste the time residents have already put into meetings and feedback , so I want to be sure we’re utilizing the insights compiled in these documents…

WeHo 40 Strategic Plan (2024)
WeHo Climate and Adaptation Plan (2021)
Aging in Place Initiative (2022)
West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Small Business Initiative (2019)

Of course none of these things are possible if we don’t have a fiscally responsible government that can continue to steward our resources appropriately. West Hollywood needs money to fund the vibrant social safety net we’ve assembled over the years. That’s why I’ll always advocate for a transparent budget process and audits to make sure we’re getting the best return from our public dollars.

Under Environmental Sustainability can we put this sentence in yellow, “A single passenger vehicle emits 4.6 metric tons of CO2 annually.”
And also the bolded parts here: “In our WeHo Climate and Adaptation Plan we’ve made a commitment to become a net zero city by 2035, which is commendable, but we need to make sure we’re making real progress toward this goal. We need climate action, not lip service. That’s why I support creating a Climate Action and Adaptation Advisory Board to keep us accountable.”

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABLITY

Because environmental sustainability is so important to the future of - not just our city - but our entire world, this is the pulse underneath all my other priorities.

We need more housing, and the most efficient place to build that housing is within existing cities where higher density means less land use per person and also less transportation and utility costs per person.

The easiest place to build housing is where nobody lives - along the “undeveloped” outskirts of cities and towns, but that’s incredibly inefficient in terms of infrastructure costs and the cost to the environment. Also, these “undeveloped” outskirts are only undeveloped from a human perspective. From a natural perspective, this is often a vital habitat for wild animals, plants, and fungi, and this habitat is rapidly disappearing. That’s why, even though it’s harder to build more housing in cities, it’s vital that we find efficient, equitable ways to do it.

You can’t have denser housing if you only design your city for cars. That’s why I want to give our residents real choices for how they can get around our city safely. This also helps environmental sustainability more directly because transportation is the number one driver of climate change. A single passenger vehicle emits 4.6 metric tons of CO2 annually. I know not everyone wants or is able to give up their car, but for those that do, we need to make it safe and easy for them to walk, take public transit, and use micromobility options like bikes and scooters.

Similarly, by supporting local businesses and our local economy, we cut down on the transportation costs and waste of getting something from across the world. We also support the labor laws and values of our city when we’re supporting those businesses. Creating self-sustaining communities makes us, and our environment, healthier in the long term.

In our WeHo Climate and Adaptation Plan we’ve made a commitment to become a net zero city by 2035, which is commendable, but we need to make sure we’re making real progress toward this goal. We need climate action, not lip service. That’s why I support creating a Climate Action and Adaptation Advisory Board to track our progress toward this goal and to keep us accountable.

Contact helen

Contact helen