This seat belongs to the community By Ericka Lesley, candidate for Santa Monica City Council

You took twenty years to save for that house. Or you have held onto a rent-controlled unit through three landlords because it is the only reason your family is still in Santa Monica. Either way, you were here first, and you are not sure anyone at City Hall remembers that.

You have seen public land that could hold homes sold off instead. You called code enforcement about the leak, or the permit, and waited. You went to the meeting, and your three minutes became one, and the vote went the way it was always going to go. And underneath all of it is a feeling that is hard to say out loud: that it isn't an accident. That nobody is listening.

I know that feeling from the inside. Before I ever sat on a board, I lost my housing. I was a gig economy worker with young children, and I was denied housing because I didn't have a regular job. Low income and perfect credit do not go together. That is why I said yes to the Rent Control Board, and why I spend my working life connecting families to housing and the services that keep them in it. I have spent years keeping people housed. I have been you.

Here is what I would ask of you, and it is only three things.

Look at the specifics, not the slogans. Mine are these. Split code enforcement into two divisions, commercial and residential, so permits move and tenant complaints get answered. Go after the thousands of illegal short-term rentals in the coastal zone, which puts homes back on the market and pays for the enforcement we need. Build affordable housing, not market-rate, on land the city already owns and in the empty office buildings where the infrastructure is already there. Answer homelessness with permanent housing, credit repair & jobs (if they are physically able). These people belong to somebody. And listen before the vote, every time.

Plug in. Knock on a door, host a few neighbors in your living room, forward this to one person who hasn't decided.

Vote. Your ballot is in your hands now. Election day is tomorrow, November 3, and you have three votes for three seats. I am asking for one of them.

If we get this right, Santa Monica stays a place where working families, seniors and long-term residents can afford to live, and where the people who will live with a decision are in the room before it is made. If we don't, the neighborhood changes around you and nobody asks, and the people who decided it are the same people who will decide the next one.

You have been governed. You deserve to be represented. This seat belongs to the community, and I intend to keep it that way.

Ericka Lesley is a Santa Monica Rent Control Board Commissioner and a candidate for City Council. erickalesleyforcitycouncil.com