Ellis Raskin enjoys working as an environmental attorney, but the former planning commissioner especially loves engaging in conversations over coffee with anyone who would like to discuss the most significant issues facing Santa Monica. He welcomes dialogue regarding the development of affordable housing along boulevards designed to promote walking, biking, and the use of public transit.

“We should be prioritizing transit-adjacent and transit-oriented developments in places where it’s feasible,” he said. “Here in Santa Monica, to the extent that we can develop livable, walkable cities that can address our climate goals, we absolutely should do that. But to the point about reasonable disagreement, I’ve always tried to be the type of candidate and type of planning commissioner who will sit down and meet with anyone in the city…Then usually folks will say that they respect that I’m honest and upfront about what my values and priorities are going to be.”

As he extols the possibilities for neighborhoods with less pollution, Raskin admires the abundant potential for public transit along Santa Monica’s boulevards, which flank the Expo Line and bus lines, but he also seeks to ensure that such new housing developments do not fall prey to past inequalities.

“There certainly are equity issues that are implicated by the way in which we build out our cities, and the way in which we may either concentrate development or disperse development across areas that have historically been redlined and segregated in our community, and that’s not something we take lightly,” he said. “One of the key objectives of our last housing element locally was to address past inequality, and it took some tinkering for us to get that right. I think we still have a long way to go…We’re still dealing with the living memory of that and the fallout from that decades later.”

For example, in a recent zoning code update, Santa Monica chose to limit how affordable housing could be built in the Pico Neighborhood in an effort to distribute new multi-family housing units more equitably across the city.

As a former chair of the Santa Monica Planning Commission and an elected member of the steering committee of Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR), Raskin fought against evictions and displacements from rent-controlled apartments in the Pico Neighborhood, saving a building on Virginia Avenue, where rent-controlled units were slated to be turned into luxury condos.

“We were able to keep the people in their homes, and they’re still there today,” he said.

As an environmental attorney who graduated from the UC College of the Law in San Francisco, he helps local stakeholders and local governments across California prepare themselves for 21^st-century challenges, ensuring that communities have sufficient infrastructure to grapple with climate change. His most recent projects involve working with school districts and other public agencies to build housing for teachers and senior citizens in Northern California, a project he hopes to bring to Southern California.

In 2017, he was appointed to the Urban Forest Task Force, where he wrote a draft of an expansion to the local tree ordinance, and he is also an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club. He is immensely grateful for the work of Santa Monica’s City Councils from decades ago, who carefully planned for the future when developing water policies.

“We’ve now got water infrastructure in place that allows the city to be self-sufficient in a way that is really going to be crucial as we move towards the future,” he said.

On the other hand, he lacks any such praise for the current city council, which he critiques for engaging in a variety of controversial measures.

“One of the cornerstones of my campaign has been ethics, and one of the goals that I’ve talked about publicly is creating an ethics commission to have some oversight over our elected and public officials,” he said. “It was very disappointing to me to see a majority of our city council vote to exempt themselves from ethics rules [and] vote against investigations into leaks of confidential closed session meetings. These are the types of violations of the public trust that really undermine public confidence in our civics and local government.”

He also notes that a council majority voted to direct city staff to take an action that would have violated state law regarding a county program that provides needle exchanges in public parks.

“We understand that it’s a county program that the city has no jurisdiction over, and that in order to effectuate meaningful change, we need to work collaboratively with our partners at the county level to figure out how to make improvements with the program,” he said.

When he speaks of collaborating with colleagues, he refers to the slate that includes Barry Snell, Dan Hall, Natalya Zernitskaya, and himself. Known as the “United Democrats Slate,” the four candidates have been endorsed by the Democratic Party, Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, Santa Monica Forward, the L.A. Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO), and the Sierra Club, among others.

“I want to make sure that folks know that we are the slate that is running to be pro-renter, pro-environment, pro-ethics, and pro-accountability,” he said. In contrast to the current city council, which he criticizes for making “empty promises,” he said, “We’re the slate that has a plan. We’re a slate that will work with people to make realistic change here.”

He particularly takes issue with those who claim that the United Democrats Slate is not focused on public safety.

“The accusation that our slate is not safety focused is not just wrong, but very wrong,” he said. “Except for Dan Hall, who fought on the front lines in Iraq, I believe that I’m the only candidate who worked for a law enforcement agency…My first law job was working for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as a law clerk, where I helped them develop ‘use-of-force’ policies and jail housing policies. I bring that up because our opponents keep trying to characterize us as not knowing anything about public safety, and I’d say, well, just look at our records.”

Photo courtesy of Ellis Raskin.