By Hannah Asuncion, Ariel Caspar, Alesha Blaauw, Alyssa Branum and Grace Weber | Special to The OBSERVER
Steve Hansen says he is running for Sacramento mayor because he wants to rebuild Sacramento, lead the city into its next great chapter, and leave no one behind.
Hansen in 2012 was elected the first openly gay city councilmember and would be the city’s first openly gay mayor. Hansen said he has dedicated his life to fighting for others regarding social policy issues such as marriage equality and civil rights.
The Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association and Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ organization, have endorsed Hansen, who said he is basing his campaign around the issues of homelessness, neighborhood safety, police misconduct and economic development.
Hansen recently met with a group of Sacramento State journalism students who asked him questions on behalf of The OBSERVER.
Q. With the lack of housing for low income earners, what exactly is your plan to make sure that they get as many opportunities as higher income earners?
A. California didn’t build housing for 30 years because a lot of communities thought new housing was going to be a problem. They talked about traffic or too many people using parks and schools. So cities literally made housing almost illegal, impossible to build, with high fees, barriers – years to get a project approved.
So when I got elected, I really made it my mission to lower the barriers to new housing. A unit of subsidized affordable housing can cost $600,000 to $750,000 a unit for an apartment in Sacramento. So if you do the math on how much subsidy you need, we can’t subsidize our way out of the shortage.
We have a lot of low-density places where there is a parking lot or an empty lot. There was a study done around 2010; basically we could meet all of our region’s infill needs if we just built on those empty lots. The more inventory we have, the more supply we have, we’ve seen rents go down or stabilize. If you don’t build enough housing at all levels of affordability, then you’re really screwing your own community.
Fresno got $300 million last year in the state budget for housing. We got $30 million. We’re not doing our job. We want to be fancied as a capital city, but we’re not actually making the capital help us.
Q. Sacramento police have been under scrutiny in the past for some of their misconduct, especially involving the Black community. Knowing there’s been missteps, are there any plans to reform any inappropriate or outdated practices?
A. Other than homelessness, I think probably one of the biggest questions of our time is how we keep people safe in the communities they’re in and get upstream on some of the root causes of crime, poverty, homelessness. But we also have to make sure that neighborhoods feel protected.
I’m going to go to the heart of your question in a second, but I was really surprised a couple of weeks ago, when the Oakland NAACP sent a really passionate letter to the mayor and council about something similar. But it was that they felt that the cutbacks in law enforcement in Oakland and some of the other problems had left their community vulnerable. So the NAACP was pleading for Black and brown communities to get more law enforcement because people were being robbed, assaulted and murdered. It was this tension between how we keep people safe and how we reform.
So here, when I was on the [Sacramento City] Council, we mandated body-worn cameras, which is part of accountability. We have reformed our use-of-force policies. We mandated implicit bias training. We mandated de-escalation training. We also were trying to diversify our police force, hiring from ZIP codes that traditionally didn’t always see law enforcement as part of what they wanted. I think that’s all part of it, but we have to figure out how we continue to ensure high levels of accountability because if somebody has a weapon or they have the power of the state to deprive you of your liberty or your life, then we have to ensure every day that the accountability is really high.
Q. How do you plan to ensure diversity, inclusion, and accurate representation in city government are at the forefront of the administration’s priorities?
A. We have very diverse portions of our workforce. Our garbage workers are very diverse, largely Black and brown folks – good middle-class job, pension, all that. But they haven’t had a contract for quite a while. They’re some of our lowest-paid workers, our park workers, our park maintenance workers. So I think first, making sure that our pay for those types of positions is good.
We did do a bunch of initiatives that I think the pandemic kind of put on hold. Everybody kind of froze. But we have to get back to active recruiting. Civil service is supposed to be very open, but it can be scary to people navigating, sometimes … horror stories. So how we reform those civil service processes to have a quicker response will also help us in our efforts around diversification.
I was the first gay person to ever even be on the City Council. We didn’t have an employee group for LGBT folks. So I helped start that with my staff. I was the first person to raise the pride flag at City Hall and the trans flag. Our Black employees, our Latino employees, our [Asian-Pacific Islander] employees, they’re doing things as well. We as a city need to show that we’re supporting them. That’s the kind of stuff where it’s not always a policy, it’s just showing up that I think can really make a transformational difference.
Q. Sacramento has benefited from the CARES Act since it was implemented in 2020 due to the economic impacts of COVID-19. What are your plans for funding distribution now that we’re considered in a post pandemic era?
A. All the COVID money has been spent. This mayor and Council, they’re not shy about spending money. So I think there’s very little left. So the fiscal side of the city is a little scary right now because of the state workforce now coming back, a lot of other things going on. So while I was there, I put together all the plans to make sure that artists, individuals, arts organizations, people who performed, all those venues that were shut down, got resources. I also helped create the Farm to Fork Al Fresco program where we allowed restaurants to take over sidewalks and parking spots to dine outdoors.
Q. Sacramento calls itself both the City of Trees and the Farm to Fork Capital, placing an emphasis on the city’s environmental efforts. How do you think the recent years of severe drought play into Sacramento and its environmentally friendly culture?
A. We’re at the confluence of two really powerful rivers. The drought was a 1,200-year historic drought, but earlier this year, we saw flooding and we saw all kinds of things. Fires last year; this year we’re doing relatively OK. When I was on the Council, I prioritized improving our water efficiency, making sure every house was metered for water, making sure that we’re being very successful, investing in programs like Cash for Grass where people would take out their lawns, stuff like that.
I also served on the climate commission and we did a lot to sort of reorient the city’s transportation ideas around walkability, bikeability, to be able to safely do those things so people will leave their cars at home. I served on the Regional Transit board for eight years and I’ve chaired it. There’s a lot we still need to do to make light rail and bus service more effective, including electrification of our bus fleet.
But I think it’s also this mentality that, like on so many of these other big things, we can’t just do one of the things, we have to do all of the things.
This story was produced by Professor Philip Reese’s Sacramento State journalism students.