Policy priorities
Housing
With skyrocketing home prices and rents throughout the state preventing young families from buying their first home or pushing seniors onto our streets, Californians agree that solving our housing crisis is one of the top jobs that the California legislature needs to tackle. Jed has dedicated his public service career to understanding our housing market and creating real solutions.
Jed earned a reputation as an effective results-driven expert on housing through his work as Chair of the San Gabriel Valley Regional Housing Trust and the San Gabriel Valley representative to the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency. In these roles, Jed has overseen a $30+ million budget to support the creation of affordable housing, interim housing for people experiencing homelessness, and a workforce development program for adults and at-risk youth.
Jed understands the root causes that gave rise to the crisis and will be a champion for housing availability and affordability. In the Assembly, Jed will focus on legislation that increases housing supply, increases subsidies, and promotes housing stability for those currently unhoused. Simply put, we don’t have enough housing and we need to create more housing for all income levels.
Jed believes that good housing policy is also good for the environment, good for the economy, and good for our future.
Homelessness
A safe place to call home is the foundation on which everything is built – our health, mental health, happiness, relationships, and overall well being. And without a stable home, you cannot create economic opportunity or a path to generational wealth to provide for your family.
Jed knows what works when it comes to getting people off the streets and into housing. In his first months on Claremont’s City Council he secured a record $2 million in Measure H funds to combat homelessness, funding a homeless services navigator program, shower program, homelessness prevention fund, shelter beds for individuals experiencing homelessness, interim housing for transitional aged youth (TAY), and motel vouchers for families with children experiencing homelessness. As a result of these efforts, Claremont saw a 41% reduction in homelessness within Jed’s first two years in office.
As Chair of the San Gabriel Valley Regional Housing Trust, Jed oversaw the funding of nearly 700 units of permanent supportive housing and over 50 units of interim housing for people experiencing homelessness. Jed has also secured funding for Claremont Gardens, the city’s first affordable housing development for extremely low income residents and seniors.
Jed also understands the importance of keeping people in their homes as a solution to homelessness. Seniors are one of the demographics falling into homelessness at the highest rates because the costs of housing exceed their fixed income. Jed will work to keep seniors and low-income individuals and families in their homes and off the streets.
In the state legislature, Jed will continue to work to ensure that every Californian has a place to call home.
Mental Health Care
Jed knows that our homelessness crisis and lack of investment in mental health care are directly tied together. We have seen a historic disinvestment in mental health care over the past few decades resulting in a visible mental healthcare crisis on our streets and in our childrens’ classrooms.
For the last five years, Jed has served on the Governing Board of Tri-City Mental Health, a mental health agency in Claremont, Pomona, and La Verne. Jed worked with Tri-City Mental Health to provide quality clinical services, a new on-site pharmacy, and to develop mental health beds for people with behavioral health disorders.
As a council member, Jed funded Claremont’s first mental health first responder team. PACT, which stands for Psychiatric Assessment Care Team, is composed of clinical psychiatric professionals who respond to calls for service in behavioral health crises. This groundbreaking program not only relieves the workload of public safety officials but also creates a direct, streamlined mental health service delivery system, operating within a public safety framework.
Jed will work in the state legislature to ensure that we all have access to the mental health care that we need when we need it.
Small Business
As a small business owner himself, Jed understands the challenges that business owners face trying to create economic growth while also being good stewards of the community. At the immediate start of the COVID pandemic, Jed reached across the political aisle and worked in a bipartisan effort to provide badly needed relief funding for local small businesses. Jed worked tirelessly to find new, innovative ways for all sectors to retain revenue streams while also complying with the new realities of the public health crisis. Jed championed new outdoor dining opportunities and incentive programs through Community Development Block Grant funding to spur economic development during a time of unparalleled uncertainty.
Safe Streets
As a parent of a school-age child, Jed is committed to improving the safety of our streets and is an advocate for traffic calming measures and the designing of complete streets. On two of Claremont’s biggest thoroughfares, Jed helped make complete street improvements that prioritize safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and wheelchairs.
In 2022, after consulting with a Berkeley traffic engineer outside his son’s elementary school, Jed started Claremont’s first “Walking School Bus,” a weekly program that gathered parents and children to walk in a pre-approved route with appropriate safety precautions. The program increased physical exercise for children, reduced vehicle emissions and congestion, and alleviated parking demand. The program served as a model for the community inspiring other walking school bus programs in the San Gabriel Valley.
Sustainability and Climate Change
History will define our generation by the way we choose to respond to climate change. If we fail now, we will not have another chance, and our children will have to bear the devastating consequences. Jed will be an advocate for our climate now and for our future generations.
In Claremont, Jed helped decrease the city’s greenhouse gas consumption by almost 50% by setting the city’s default electrical consumption to 100% renewable energy. He also approved the retrofitting of city buildings to energy efficient HVAC systems and solar panels, leading to a staggering reduction in the agency’s carbon footprint. Jed looks forward to working with other cities in the region to gain energy independence and is committed to ensuring new technologies and innovation are accessible to all communities.
In Claremont, Jed also championed the creation of an electric bike rebate program with the goal being to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in short commutes. In 2020, Jed advocated for the improvement and adoption of Claremont’s first “transit oriented development,” which places hundreds of new residential units, mixed use commercial space, and walkable amenities next to major public transportation amenities. Jed is committed to bridging opportunities in transportation and housing because creating housing that is accessible to transportation infrastructure and incentivizing the use of transit will be critical to meeting our greenhouse gas reduction goals in the future.
