Matt Mahan

I saw this when I was knocking on doors.

When I was running, I knocked on over 10,000 doors.

And you might think that

Like lower income neighborhoods or communities of color would be the most progressive.

It was the opposite.

They were the neighborhoods most impacted by crime, by homelessness, by our failure to address these issues.

And that's who I want.

I mean, I want to be responsive to the people who most need public services and government to work to fix problems.

And it's not the wealthiest or best educated people most of the time.

It's folks just grinding out in their daily lives, trying to build a better future for their kids.

So the barriers are many.

I mean, I think part of it though is just philosophic more than anything.

I think it's what you described.

I think it's people thinking that somehow it is some horrific violation of someone's civil liberty to mandate that they go into a detox center for 30 days.

I don't see it that way at all.

I mean-

We've had 50,000 people die on our streets in California in the last decade, about half from overdose and suicide.

That's clearly not compassionate.

I actually have a cousin who spent a couple of years cycling on and off the streets with addiction.

And what saved his life was very serious intervention, was my aunt and uncle going out there and physically pulling him out of the streets and trying to use the law to compel him to come indoor.