Dr. Esther León

Cultural Connection

If we are going to walk the walk of diversifying Portland, we need to think long term to combat xenophobia and sow the seeds of cross-cultural connection. We can start by funding free Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian (the top 4 most spoken languages in Multnomah county after English) language classes at PCC, as well as ESL classes.

Environment

Investing heavily in re-wilding concrete lots for urban farming and food forests is a dual method to combat the effects of climate change and improve food security. Organizations like Depave are already doing the work to empower disenfranchised communities and should be commissioned/funded by the city to spearhead these projects.

I will also advocate for increased funding of Friends of Trees, in order to exponentially increase the amount of annual tree planting, focusing on neighborhoods of District 3 that have the lowest tree canopy.

AI may be the wave of the future, but it is costing us our present environmental wellbeing. One of our environmental protection priorities must be establishing regulations, together with Metro regional government, to stop a complete take-over of living space, wilderness preserves, electricity, water, and other natural resources by AI data centers.

Neighborhood Association Leveling-Up

Putting the power of government back in the hands of the people starts at the Neighborhood Association level. Considering rebranding “Association” to “Neighborhood Community Board” would help clear confusing mix ups with “Home Owner's Associations”. Let's become the civic capital of this country by restoring meaningful investment in them and renewing their focus on enhancing community engagement and mutual aid.

Public Bathrooms

Everyone needs a place to pee! A huge expansion in public restroom access will help address city sanitation and community engagement.

We can start this tomorrow without building a single new toilet. I cannot tell you the number of times I drove to a local park to use the restroom between patient home visits, only to find the toilet “closed for the season.” Let's start with paying city janitorial staff a living wage to keep park restrooms clean and open 365 days a year. We can also incentivize local businesses to open their restrooms to non-paying customers by funneling some of the city's sanitation budget their way. Longer term, we need to look into expanding the Portland Loo city-wide.

Street Trash Pickup

Let's tackle Portland's trash problems and give our houseless neighbors the dignity of work by offering living wage pay for picking up trash in public spaces.

Public Payphones

Bringing these back will not only improve public safety for emergency use, it will reduce dependence on mobile phones and allow people to go back to a time where they could enjoy a night in the community without being tied to the internet.

Local Government Accessibility

The process of running for public office has enlightened me as to how difficult it is to figure out what one actually needs to do to run. Part of this is due to the City website's lack of intuitive formatting. When it comes to following City Council activities, watching the hours'-long city council meetings is not feasible for most. Government is for all of us. Let's cut barriers for participating in our democracy through some of the following reforms:

• Create a clear 1 page checklist of To-Do's to run for office in easy-to-understand language
• Offer on-site childcare for government employees to make it easier to be a public servant and a parent.
• Revamp the City website to be more intuitive and neurodivergent-friendly
• Post brief summaries of key points of city council meetings that can easily be found

Portlanders are currently incentivized to work for either large businesses or not work at all in order to have healthcare. Most small business owners simply cannot afford to provide their employees with benefits. This needs to change. Healthcare is a human right. Long term, I support Healthcare for All Oregon's (opens in new tab) goals. In the meantime, we can start increasing accessibility by working with the State to expand OHP eligibility to include owners and employees of small businesses under a certain revenue threshold. This will stimulate a thriving small business scene, lower unemployment rates, and ultimately, make Portland healthier.

I also stand in strong support of healthcare unions such as SEIU Local 49, ONA, and OFNHP. In doing so, I will use my voice as an elected official to advocate for fair working conditions and thriving wages.

Introducing “Holistic Zoning”

Current zoning policy in Portland is complicated, inflexible, and bloated with subclassifications. It fails to treat our city as one functioning whole. Imagine seeing the brain and heart as independent parts of a human body rather than relying on each other to function. This approach is at the heart of the housing crisis.

We need our city to relate to itself as a whole body rather than separate parts. “Holistic Zoning” would simplify zoning policy into easy-to-understand categories that will create the conditions for small businesses to grow, improve city walkability, and overall lower cost of living.

Resolving Homelessness (not just sweeping it - quite literally - away)

This is perhaps the most hot-button issue in Portland right now, and the most complex. “The Homeless” are not a monolith. We need to humanize our unhoused neighbors, and we need to take a targeted approach to the problem rather than pursue 'one-sized fits all' solutions.

Too often, progressive candidates have shamed citizens voicing valid quality of life and safety concerns when it comes to homelessness, such as massive trash piles accumulating around campsites, or sidewalk drug use. I believe we can, and should, address deep systemic failures while holding people accountable for antisocial behaviors that impact quality of life and safety.

However, current measures like city sweeps and hostile architecture are not only inhumane, they fail to address the root of the issue and drive our unhoused neighbors further away from trusting any government initiatives to help.

Shelters, while serving a function, are not stable housing. Supportive housing is limited in availability and often requires tenants to be fully sober in order to stay there. Criteria for affordable and/or subsidized housing does not reflect the cost of living with recent inflation nor our dwindling paychecks.

I am proposing we work with the county to revamp the affordable and subsidized housing approval criteria to actually reflect today's cost of living, so that community members can qualify for support before they are forced onto the street.

Additionally, we need to establish sobering centers staffed by professionals trained to work with people overcoming substance abuse.

We must also acknowledge the financial burden placed upon local landlords when taking in tenants at high risk of being unable to make rent, including the financial realities of maintaining a clean, liveable residence. This is why I am proposing we utilize funds from a vacancy tax (see “Taxes” section of my platform) to guarantee security deposit, and first & last month's rent for taking in tenants with a history of being unhoused.

Full Audit of City Finances and Revenue

We are living in an era of all-time low trust in government. Recent revelations in regard to missing money from the Portland housing fund as well as the arts tax have shaken public trust. Portlanders carry a high tax burden yet don't see it reflected in high quality services. This is a major problem. We need to get our house in order so Portlanders know that their money is going where it is supposed to be going and efficiently utilized to benefit the collective.

Property Tax Reform

Portland consistently ranks in the top 5 most expensive property tax cities in the country, lending to the property ownership disparity crisis. Current property taxes rise dramatically with building renovations and expansion, incentivizing owners to keep lots undeveloped, and properties aging. This is unsustainable.

Alternatives such as a Land Value Tax, in which only the value of the land is taxed, not the value of the property resting on the land, could noticeably improve the land use of the city. This means that someone who builds an apartment building on a lot will pay the same amount in property tax as the owner of a vacant lot. It would incentivize development and discourage land hoarding. While any tax isn't without its downsides, a Land Value Tax model would be more equitable than the current property tax system.

Coupled with the Holistic Zoning reform, the Land Value Tax could radically transform the cityscape and affordability of the city.

Invest in Our Artists

Music and the arts are one of the core pillars of our local economy, yet you wouldn't know it given how little our government invests in our artists. With AI threatening the livelihoods of musicians and visual artists, we need to explore all avenues of possibility for supporting them, including a universal basic income for career artists.

Reform Zoning for Venues

Warehouses across the city have been given new life by artists and musicians, yet inflexible zoning has kneecapped their ability to operate. Even if a building can safely support 300 people, it is limited to 50 or under depending on whether or not it is classified as an “assembly” building. The need for constant conditional permits makes it unsustainable to run a successful venue. I will work with Portland Fire & Rescue on a policy that ensures these venues are fire safe but also factors in the material reality of their re-adapted use for the arts.

Reform the Arts Tax

Nobody likes the way the Arts Tax is administered separately during tax season. Rolling it up with other taxes will reduce administrative overhead, allowing more of the money to actually go to its intended purpose. I would love to see this translate to expanded support for our local artist unions and the Portland Street Art Alliance.

Vacancy Tax: Commercial and Residential

The idea of a “vacancy tax” has been floated around for years by the city council, but it always seems to get stuck in the “discussion/study” phase. By taxing landlords with empty commercial and residential spaces who are holding out for tenants willing to pay outrageous rents, we can incentivize them to lower rent and expand the potential tenant pool. Vancouver BC (opens in new tab) has implemented such a tax for over a decade and has the data to show that it has helped keep rents from increasing while providing money for affordable housing. I am proposing residential vacancy tax funds be utilized to subsidize direct deposit and first/last month's rent for landlords taking in tenants with a history of being unhoused. For the commercial funds, I am proposing this go directly toward small business rental assistance.

Community Oriented Public Safety

Ask yourself: would you lose all of your friends if you become a cop? To be blunt, the answer is probably yes.

That is at the heart of the reason that PPB cannot hire enough officers to reduce response times. It isn't budget shortfalls. Unlike every other department in the city, PPB is very well-funded, rewarded with increasing budgets while other departments face drastic cuts. It's a job with a social stigma that makes it a “no” even in a struggling economy.

Portland's “ACAB” culture comes from a passionate stance against severe injustices committed by police, particularly against people of color. While the outcry is justified, the blanket villainization of law enforcement has only placed Portland Police Bureau on the defensive without actually accomplishing real reform. We can both acknowledge the ugly history of policing AND mend our relationship with the Portland Police Bureau.

PPB needs to acknowledge the harmful practices it has utilized to target marginalized groups and actively work to de-militarize their operations, while citizens need to acknowledge that change is possible without making officers local pariahs. Let's start with the following:

• End practices like Civil Asset Forfeiture, which currently allows police to keep anything they find while investigating potential criminal activity for the bureau.
• Clarify the role of police rather than asking officers to play mental health managers. We can offload this burden by expanding the Portland Street Response.
• Mandate officer training in de-escalation, nonviolent communication and self defense techniques, while simultaneously decreasing the number of lethally armed responses to calls.
• Encourage Portlanders to engage in civil dialogue with cops. This would be much more realistic if Portland Police Bureau intentionally participated in unarmed community engagement.

Responding to ICE, and Standing Up for Immigrant Safety

Like many cities in our country, Portland residents have recently been terrorized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers operating with near complete immunity from the law. I have personally witnessed the use of tear gas at peaceful protests. I have watched my immigrant neighbors retreat from public spaces for fear of being violently taken without warning and held in detention centers under inhumane conditions, without respect for their constitutional or human rights.

As the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant, this moment particularly calls for me to take a firm stance. While city officials have limited power to stop federal operations, our current city councilors' responses have been feeble, with their actions against ICE's unethical operations amounting to a slap on the wrist.. Portland needs to show its teeth through a few different avenues:

1. Mandate and enforce the need for ICE officers to have a valid warrant before they are allowed to even set foot onto any property managed by the city. This includes public schools, hospitals, courts, and libraries.
2. Drastically increase the annual impact fee city administration levied against the owner of the ICE detention center in December 2025. We then funnel a sizable portion of the impact fee directly into immigrant support organizations such as Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition and the Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization.
3. Continue to pursue the detention center owner for violation of land use agreement, to the full extent of the law, in an urgent manner, without continually pushing back hearing dates.
4. Incentivize any contractors working for the City to step back from aiding ICE.
5. Offer free education to businesses and individuals alike on their constitutional rights and how to act for community safety.

Transportation is not only a matter of public safety, it is at the heart of issues of equitability and inclusion. We need to create spaces that are human-first: car dependency hurts Portlanders by not only worsening the climate, but demanding a certain level of income just to get from place to place.

For bicycle transport, we can use the recently opened “4th Ave” bikeway/busway Downtown as a model for expansion of the protected bike network. We need to also continue expanding the car-free plaza initiative, installation of speed-calming concrete planters near schools and residential areas, and increase personal bike rack space. I also want to see the city invest in highly secure public bike lockers in high pedestrian areas.

The city needs to collaborate with Metro to create a regional funding mechanism for TriMet that supplements dwindling State funding. Our goal must be to create the best public transit system in the country. This includes expanding bus and light rail hours to past bar closing time, to decrease the risk of drunk drivers on the streets and make night life safe again.

I also say absolutely no to Waymo (the self-driving car conglomerate) establishing a presence in Portland. Let's keep public transit, taxis, and ride share services in the hands of our human labor force. Let's also stand up against any measures that make mass surveillance easier.