Nate's Platform - Nate Ward 8

Nate wants to break the tethers of DC government entitlement programs that contributes to an environment of generational poverty and broken families.

Environmental Justice: Apply resources to discover who exactly is trashing up our neighborhoods. Then stop subsidizing their lifestyle, and/or make them choose between heavy fines and 20 hours of picking up trash. This may be a Mayoral role, but i’d assist with it.

Not Subsidizing Health Disparities: SNAP/EBT cannot be used to buy soda, chips, or anything else that rots teeth and is connected to diabetes. Fight the sugar lobby.

Solving Truancy through withheld benefits: If the child doesn’t go to school, the family doesn’t get housing, food, or other benefits. It’s either tough love now, or a tougher life later.

Free Housing (regulatorily): Housing affordability is a problem, and the cause is housing policy, not developers. Structural reasons for this include the 8,000+ federal units that are mismanaged by DCHA. In addition to holding these thousands of units off the market, the supply is further restricted by inclusionary zoning, rent control, the Housing Production Trust Fund, and other restrictions. With fewer properties available to the public, this artificially shortage causes prices to rise. Additionally, many programs give limited amounts of money to specific individuals, which artificially increases demand, like the Home Purchase Assistance Program. The worst part about public housing is that that generations of DC families perpetually live in poor conditions that support gang activity.

Close DC Housing Authority. Allow all housing units to go to auction individually, and then allow the current residents to buy their unit with a 30% discount from the final auction price. Final transaction occurs in 24 months.

Defund unequitable home buying programs. I don’t event know what unequitable means, but I know it’s not fair to offer assistance to whomever gets to the first-time homebuyer money first.

Cut Spending: DC’s population has decreased below 700,000, but the District operating budget has continued to grow. This has resulted in the tax base to have increased property taxes. Programs that are ineffective and only support special interests need to stop and the council and mayor should apologize.

Banish the following: The Mayor’s office on (insert special interest group here) affairs, any mayoral spending where she puts her name on free t-shirts, Violence Interrupters (RIP Davon McNeal), DCHA, Clean Team, local SNAP funding (sorry Rap Snacks), Safe Passage, funding for any local arts, more to follow….

Actually conduct oversight: Make WMATA enforce fare evasions, make DPW go after the illegal poster creators, and help MPD solve Seth Rich’s unsolved murder.