Yarrow Silvers is one of three candidates running for Anchorage Assembly District 5, representing East Anchorage. We asked each candidate the same five questions and gave them 90 seconds to answer each one. Read the transcript of Silvers’ answers below and click the play button above to listen to where she stands. Find the rest of the Anchorage municipal election candidates’ Q&As here.
1. Why should people vote for you for Anchorage Assembly?
Well, I'm running for Assembly because I believe that the people of East Anchorage deserve a strong and independent voice at the table. I'm really passionate about local government issues, the types of issues that matter in the day-to-day lives of the people that live and work here, and I'm committed to making sure that the decisions made in City Hall serve the needs of the people in East Anchorage. I've been advocating for my community for a while now on issues like government transparency, sustainable solutions to homelessness and making it easier to build more housing. I've fought against the unconstitutional and unjust gerrymander that would have paired Eagle River, or… yeah, Eagle River with East Anchorage and basically given our representation away. And I spoke out against some of the infrastructure proposals that would have damaged our communities. My experience as a legislative aide and as the vice chair of my community council has given me the experience that I need to be ready to lead on day one. We have a lot of challenges that we need to tackle, but I also believe that we have great potential. I think the people of Anchorage and the people of Alaska are strong and resilient, and I'm ready to work alongside them to create a community where we can all thrive.
2. What is the single biggest issue facing the city and how would you address it?
I think the single biggest issue facing the city right now is our lack of housing, and so I think that's contributing to a lot of our problems. It's contributing to homelessness, it's contributing to outmigration and it's contributing to having a city where working families are having a hard time getting by. They're having a hard time affording, you know, being able to afford to live here. And so I think that we really need to have a serious conversation about how we got here, and maybe start reversing some of the things that we've done to make it more difficult and more expensive to build. They're building plenty of housing out in the Mat-Su Valley, and I really believe that we can go back to doing that here. I also think that we have some really good opportunities ahead of us if we make good use of them. So for example, ASD has turned management over of 22 acres by Totem theater to the municipality, and so I think that there's a good opportunity to put a lot of housing there.
3. What do you see as the best way to reverse Anchorage’s trend of outmigration in recent years?
I think that there's a lot of different aspects to this that need to be addressed. And so as I said before, I think housing is a really big one. I think if people can't afford to stay here, they're not going to stay here. I think the other one is we need to make sure that we have affordable, quality child care. If people can't find child care, they're not going to be able to be able to work and stay here. And I think we need to have quality education from pre-K all the way through college. You know, if we want our families to stay here, we want our young people to stay here, they need to be able to have a quality school to go to and a quality university to go to. And finally, I think we need to make sure that we have clean, safe streets and parks. I think people want to feel safe in their homes, and they want to feel safe in their neighborhoods. And I think that they want to be able to utilize, you know, the beauty around us in Alaska, and I think if they can't do that, that kind of takes away one of the reasons that they have to stay.
4. How would you reduce homelessness in Anchorage?
So homelessness is a really huge issue, and it's taken us a long time to get here. It's taken us years of not building housing, and it's taken us decades of not paying attention to mental health care needs, and so I think that we really need to start focusing on the issues that got us here. We need to be building more housing. We need to focus on mental health care, substance abuse treatment. One of the things that I would really like to see us doing is kind of shifting our resources away from this cold weather shelter, which is kind of a hamster wheel where we put people up in the hotels in the winter and then we let them out on the streets in the summer. So I'd like to start shifting those resources towards some of the long-term solutions that I just mentioned. And I think the other thing that's going to be really important is I think we need to have some sort of a diversion program, because what we're seeing right now is that more people are becoming unhoused, then we have people moving out of, out of homelessness and back into housing. And so I think we really need to be able to divert people from becoming unhoused if they're going through, you know, like a short-term issue, and we can give them a hand up and keep them from losing their housing, you know, and having an eviction on their record, and losing their jobs, and, you know, joining our unhoused people. So we're going to really have to tackle that if we want to make headway.
5. How would you improve public safety in Anchorage?
Well, I think public safety is really important, and I think people do want to have clean, safe streets and parks, and so I think we really need to make sure that we are having our fire department fully staffed and our police force fully staffed. Right now, our fire department is staffed for three firefighters on a rig, and it's recommended that they have four. And our police force is about 70 officers short, and so I think we need to have those fully staffed. And you know, I think if we have them fully staffed, then they can work in the community more. I also think things like the Mobile Crisis Team are really important, and then I would like to see the Community Safety Patrol beefed up.
Read the candidate Q&As with Silvers’ competitors: John Stiegele and Angela Frank.