Can Richmond take the next step?

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My next guest is running to be the mayor of Richmond. Alexa Loo has spent 12 years on city council and says that experience, along with relationships at every level of government, put her in a strong position to get things done. So let's talk housing, let's talk homelessness and public disorder. Richmond's got some challenges, and they need somebody to grab this community by the reins. Alexa, happy Thanksgiving. Welcome to the program.

Happy Thanksgiving, Rob.

Well, you've been on the council, as I mentioned, for 12 years. Um, what are you most proud of over that, uh, decade-plus, and where do you think the city still has a little work to do?

Well, some of the things I'm really proud of is, uh, when I first got on council, we got installed some traffic camera- some cameras at our intersections. Unfortunately, because we've been fighting with the, uh, provincial government over it and the Office of the Privacy Commission, we haven't been able to use them to combat crime the way we wanted to, but they're installed and they're ready to go. Uh, another thing I'm really proud of is I really worked hard with, uh, the late Linda McPhail. She and I were on council together. We found out about the CAR80 program that has a mental health nurse riding alongside of an RCMP officer to deliver compassionate care to people in distress when people, when the public calls for, for police intervention and for help. And so that, you know, people who have mental health issha- issues or drug issues, they're treated compassionately first, and s- but the situation is under control because a RCMP officer is there. So I'm really proud that we were able to get that, and since then, we've actually piloted the Yankee 30 program, which is a youth CAR that does the same purpose-

Hmm

... but specializes in treating our youth to make sure that, you know, our youth are getting the right treatment and appropriate treatments.

So we'll talk about public disorder, and we'll touch on homelessness before this segment is done, but one of the things that is most prominent right now when it comes to citizens of Richmond is housing affordability. It's on so many people's minds. What kind of housing do you think Richmond needs more of right now, and, and, and how would you make sure that it actually gets built?

Uh, some of the stuff that Richmond needs is we need more, like, townhouses. That's where people really wanna be raising their kids is in sort of a townhouse space where you have access to the grass right away, uh, that kind of thing. Um, and there are, is more opportunity to be working on those, um, small multiplex homes on