Jose Rodriguez, 35, is running against six other candidates for one of two available city council seats on the National City dais.
He wants to take on the challenge of creating small business growth and developing prospects for more home ownership among National City residents as well as focus on increased union-driven labor, points that are in alignment with his unsuccessful 2016 campaign and his self-described focus on lower and middle class workers.
“Everyone is just talking about building units, units, units but we’re not talking about what those units are going to be— I think there needs to be a priority to build more home ownership opportunities,” Rodriguez said.
He says part of the issue is lack of inventory but a second, a complicating factor is that little recent or upcoming development is designed for people to own what he calls “their own little piece of land.”
“Real Estate agents will tell you this everyday: you cannot find anything decent in National City for less than $450,000,” Rodriguez said.
He would like to see incentives for developers to build new homes in the more realistic $250,000 to $300,000 range that would open up the possibility of home ownership for essential workers and their families.
At the same time, he said he would also like to see higher standards of living for everyday workers as it would provide them with the security needed to buy those proposed homes and, he believes, incentive to invest back into local neighborhoods.
A former organizing director at the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, Rodriguez strongly supports hazard pay for essential workers who have been going about business as usual throughout the pandemic. He pointed out grocery clerks, everyone in the food distribution chain, merchandisers, day care and home care providers, and first responders, believes the influx of local COVID-19 cases is related to the disproportionately high number of workers who call National City home.
“I really believe in hazard pay for those folks who risk their lives every single day. These big Walmarts, McDonald’s, any big chain still operating and doing very well should have to provide some kind of hazard pay for their own employees who are getting sick left and right,” Rodriguez said.
In analyzing the relatively high number of families living below poverty level in National City, Rodriguez isolates two groups he says contribute to that cohort: an aging population and low-income workers.
“We have Morgan Kimball Towers, Summercrest— retirement communities where most everyone is on a fixed income so there’s not much we could do to increase that… the other thing, though, is we need to make sure we raise wages,” Rodriguez said.
Additionally, he touts project labor agreements and would like to pass a local ordinance in which the municipality is required to award contracts exclusively to locally run, unionized businesses. He says doing so would give the city two economic advantages: taxpayer dollars spent on wages would see a return to the local economy, and the strong local-hire.
