I am concerned about how we, as a city and county, are spending our taxpayers’ funds to address the homelessness crisis.

With tens of thousands of homes in District 2, what are the odds that a candidate stumbles on his competitor’s campaign event?

A recent spate of ideologically motivated massacres have prompted local lawmakers to think of ways to keep hate crimes in check.

Houseless people and those of us who advocate for them have been told, “wait for permanent supportive housing.” We have waited and waited.

NIMBYs have come out in full force to oppose one of San Jose’s most inventive solutions for homelessness.

Councilman-elect Sergio Jimenez, who represents the Edenvale-Santa Teresa neighborhoods, starts his new job a month early and without pay.

Political donors have spent more than $1.6 million on three San Jose ballot measures and another $822,000 on three City Council contests.

Council candidate Steve Brown owns a security company that regulators ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in wage theft judgments.

San Jose’s District 2 and the broader city face many of the same challenges my family faced years ago. We can only solve them by getting to work.

San Jose council candidate Steve Brown has spent most of September on a damage control tour, but he still has trouble giving straight answers.

Steve Brown is a special guy. How else to explain his position to allow businesses to discriminate against gay people? Then there’s his voter record.

Both Steve Brown and Sergio Jimenez come from humble, if not hardscrabble, beginnings, and these origins led them to vastly different views of the world.

Judge Arthur Weisbrodt drew boos from a handful of San Jose Rotary Club members when he quoted an anonymous source as saying “I would tell the voters that voting for Cindy Chavez is the same as voting for George Shirakawa or Ron Gonzales. The same corruption, dishonesty and back deals.” Weisbrodt was moderating a debate last wednesday between Chavez and Teresa Alvarado in the runoff election to fill former county supervisor George Shirakawa Jr.’s seat.

As an active resident in Santa Clara County’s District 2, I, like so many others, am ashamed of George Shirakawa. The former supervisor blatantly violated the trust of the most vulnerable residents of our district. His deplorable actions have led this district, which suffers from high rates of poverty, gangs, drug issues, under-education and lack of healthcare, to have absolutely no representation until August.

Integrity is the single most important ethos the public has a right to expect from anyone who participates in the political arena. Beyond party and philosophy, it is the one essential element of governance that each of us must insist upon when doing the people’s business.