Mental Health, Substance Use, and Homelessness

Each week, the publisher of the Arizona Daily Sun poses a question to the candidates for city council and mayor. Below are each of my answers. Local journalism is so important and I encourage you to subscribe. I’ll add additional answers as they appear in the newspaper.

The goal is to obtain trauma-informed system change at the county and city level. Because these organizations touch virtually every member of our community, this makes great strides toward becoming a “Trauma Informed Community”.

I recently took some items to the “Fix It Clinic,” an event sponsored by the City’s Sustainability Section and staffed by community volunteers. Residents can bring items such as small electronics, toys, lamps, vacuum cleaners, bikes, and clothing while handy and creative volunteers will do their best to fix them for free. I struck up a conversation with Ward Davis, a long-time community volunteer involved with many great projects around town. Ward was working with two young men to disassemble items that couldn’t be fixed, but that contained parts that could either be repurposed or recycled. The entire event got me thinking about consumption and solid waste so I went back to the video of a presentation City Council received about the Cinder Hills Landfill…

Will eventually transition to provide permanent supportive housing.