AUSTIN CITY COUNCIL • DISTRICT 4
ABOUT
Greg Casar is the son of Mexican immigrants, a labor and community organizer, and the youngest person ever elected to the Austin City Council. On Council, he’s passed policies to disrupt mass incarceration and mass deportation, protect Planned Parenthood, end inexcusable tax breaks for the wealthiest, and protect residents from being pushed out of their homes by out-of-state investors. He's the sponsor of Austin's paid sick days law that the Austin American Statesman called, "the most progressive local labor policy in Texas and the American South."
Today, Greg’s running for re-election to the Austin City Council to heal our community from the effects of COVID, to transform our system of public safety to end racial discrimination in policing and prioritize low-income communities, and to tackle our mobility and affordability challenges.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
WHAT'S NEXT?
Recover from COVID
Trump has failed to address COVID-19. Our state has suffered, and North Austin families have gotten sick and died needlessly because of the federal government’s inability to respond to the crisis. We’ve opened free COVID testing centers across Austin, we’re standing strong on our mask and social distancing protections and we’re doing everything we can to make sure no one loses their home in this crisis. We have to address both the public health crisis and the economic disaster we’re facing. Austin must lead, and we must end the economic and racial divides that made us so vulnerable to COVID-19 in the first place.
Reimagine Public Safety
Our community is reeling from the deaths of unarmed people of color at the hands of the police, here and across the nation. We’ve banned police chokeholds, banned needless use of force, and created an independent police oversight body, but that’s not enough. We must rethink policing and stop relying on jails and prisons alone to solve our safety problems. We must invest in solutions that prevent violence and harm before it ever happens. That’s why we’re shifting dollars from policing over to mental health response teams, gun violence intervention programs, substance use services, housing for the homeless, new family violence shelters, and more. The City’s status quo is not working for our communities-- it’s time to make a transformative change in public safety.
Healthcare is a Human Right
When Texas legislators tried to close the City-supported Planned Parenthood clinic in East Austin, I fought back-- and we kept that clinic open. We helped open the People’s Community Clinic in St. John and to bring health care outreach workers to North Austin neighborhoods. We need more health clinics in low-income parts of the city, not fewer. I’m working to bring more health care options to communities that are underinsured and neglected by our broken system.
Ending Displacement
Working together, this city voted on and passed the largest Affordable Housing bond in our history that will lead to the creation of homes for tens of thousands of working Austinites. Even with this historic investment, we still have work ahead of us to build a city where longtime residents aren’t gentrified out of their current neighborhood, and all Austinites have the choice to live in a neighborhood with access to good schools, healthy food, and job opportunities. Proposition A on this year’s ballot includes not only a mass transit system, but a historic $300M investment in anti-displacement funding to keep families in their neighborhoods.
Austin's Own Green New Deal
This November we have the opportunity to make a historic investment in a mobility system that will not only save us time stuck in traffic, but gives our community the option to walk, bike, or take rapid transit, greatly reducing our city’s contribution to climate change. Propositions A & B will also create thousands of jobs in our community building sidewalks and bike lanes, engineering a rail and bus system, and creating a more fair and green Austin for generations to come.
More for District 4
District 4 has the least parks space of any City Council district. North Lamar Boulevard has had major gaps in sidewalks, and some of our public pools have been shut down or neglected for years. I’ve successfully advocated for tens of millions of dollars worth of investments, and I know there’s a lot more work to do. We’re opening new parks, bringing rail and rapid bus to District 4, getting sidewalks and streets repaired, preserving and fixing affordable housing, and we’ve even worked with ACC to turn Highland Mall into a college campus. I’m committed to ending the years of neglect of North Central and North east Austin.