Nicole's Plan

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Nicole’s vision is for stronger neighborhoods that keep longtime residents in and connected to the heart of our communities by focusing on projects that are community-centered, close to schools, work, recreational spaces, and other essential amenities. 

• Rein in the cost of living by focusing on projects that expand opportunity for home ownership and keep rents affordable.
• Work with the San Diego Housing Commission to create programs that expand housing opportunities and subsidies for seniors and working families.
• Programs that help support families and seniors access childcare, healthcare, and essential services needed to thrive in their neighborhoods.

Our infrastructure in District 2 is in desperate need of repair. As your next Councilmember, she will work alongside our County and State partners to ensure execution of a one year, five year, and ten year roadmap that will deliver world class streets service and infrastructure to our communities. Nicole’s safe street priorities include:

• Protecting our kids, whether they are crossing the street or riding their bike by supporting proposals to improve our crosswalks, lights, and road safety.
• Repairs for our streetlights, potholes, sewers, sidewalks, and roads.
• Ensuring pedestrian and biker safety in our neighborhoods.

As a mom, Nicole believes community safety must always come first. As a Chief Deputy City Attorney, she worked throughout her career to protect children from gun violence, prosecute hate crimes, and represent survivors of domestic violence. She led the team that implemented the nationally recognized Gun Violence Response Unit in San Diego. Nicole’s public safety priorities include:

• Protect our communities from increased wildfire risk by ensuring our firefighters are fully staffed, prepared, and trained to fight and prevent the next wildfires that hit our area.
• Ensure full staffing for our police to improve response times.
• Support public safety legislation that keeps illegal guns out of our neighborhood.

All San Diegans deserve to be treated with dignity and have access to housing. As a Chief Deputy City Attorney, she was part of a dedicated team that created the first program in the City for comprehensive contact, review, and support for our most vulnerable community members. Getting people housed with proper treatment and support makes our neighborhoods safer and healthier for everyone. Nicole’s priorities to address street homelessness include:

• Develop partnerships with the County to deliver essential behavioral health services to our neighbors experiencing substance use and behavioral health disorders.
• Support expanding shelter beds where needed and preventative homelessness measures.
• Prevent our seniors from entering homelessness by building public senior care and housing facilities on government-owned land to prevent some of the City’s most vulnerable from ending up on the streets. In San Diego, the largest demographic entering homelessness is our seniors, who have been hit hardest by inflation and the rise in cost of living due to living on fixed incomes.

The natural beauty of District 2 is one of its greatest assets, but it’s under pressure. As your next Councilmember, Nicole will fight to protect our beaches, bays, and canyons from threats like pollution, overdevelopment, and illegal dumping. Her priorities for preserving our environment include:

• Protecting our precious coastline, Mission Bay, Mission Beach, and Ocean Beach, so families, surfers, and seniors can continue to enjoy them for generations to come. 
• Holding polluters accountable and ensuring development respects the health of our bay and coastline. 
• Preserving and maintaining our canyons as vital open spaces that clean our air, protect wildlife, and offer our community a place to explore nature without leaving the city.

As a mom, Nicole is personally invested in safeguarding these natural treasures for her daughter and all the children of District 2. Her commitment is clear: the beaches, bays, and canyons of District 2 aren’t negotiable; they are essential to our community and must be safeguarded for future generations.

As a prosecutor and public attorney, Nicole has spent her career upholding the Constitution. As your Councilmember, she will bring that same commitment to serve and protect every San Diegan.

On the Council, she will work to ensure that all residents, regardless of immigration status, race, or identity, are afforded their full constitutional rights, including due process and equal protection under the law. Nicole will defend reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ protections, strengthen San Diego’s sanctuary city policies, and ensure that local law enforcement resources are never used to facilitate ICE operations that violate the rights of our community members.

Nicole is committed to utilizing her legal expertise and experience to defend our communities against federal overreach.

We must prioritize creating housing solutions that are affordable, safe, and accessible. This requires deliberate and smart planning to accommodate inevitable growth, while protecting the character of our existing neighborhoods. Nicole’s housing priorities include: 

• Standing up against short-sighted ADU policies that create haphazard buildings, enriching predatory developers. ADU developments need to be held accountable when it comes to trash can pile-ups in our neighborhoods. 
• Creating new home ownership opportunities. By prioritizing gentle density such as townhomes, making space for families on existing land, and offering affordable homeownership that is free from ADU policies and maintains existing onsite parking requirements.
• Ensuring housing is built for San Diegans and not corporate entities. Nearly a quarter of housing in San Diego is bought by corporations, blocking our young families from becoming home owners. Nicole will pursue policy reforms that eliminate tax incentives for large companies to swoop in and buy up residential neighborhoods, as well as put a 100-day waiting period for large corporate bidders.

Neighborhoods should be where our residents thrive. In San Diego, there are almost 6,000 entire-home short-term rentals that sit empty roughly half the time. That vacancy presents a real threat to small businesses, hotels, and schools. 

When we allow entire homes to become hotels full-time, we send families packing and force our teachers,  nurses and firefighters into long commutes far from communities they serve. We have already seen the consequences. The loss of permanent residents in neighborhoods saturated by these short-term rentals has been tied to declining school enrollment and even school closure. Short term-rentals also overburden our first responders, costing tax payers and increasing emergency response times. As your Councilmember, Nicole will fight to keep neighbors in our neighborhoods by: 

• Pursuing common-sense reforms to improve the lives of long-time residents, such as extending San Diego’s current two-night minimum stay to match standards set by cities across our nation. These policies will encourage owners to convert these entire-home rentals back into long-term housing that local residents can afford.

We must invest in transit that supports people who do not have access to it in San Diego. From Nicole’s home in Clairemont, she has to walk over a mile to get to a bus stop with infrequent service. One of the two routes is through a hilly canyon with no sidewalk or streetlights. People in the community with children and jobs, who want to take public transportation, and the individuals whose very survival is based on public transportation, need to be met where they are. With increased gas prices and the impacts of climate change, the city needs to invest in public transportation as an affordable travel option for those who depend on it. We must prioritize safe and accessible transportation as we make a better San Diego for our future.