When Chipalo Street decided to run to represent the 37th legislative district in Washington’s House of Representatives, he did so through the lens of investment: Where could he spend his time in a way that maximized his impact for his community?
Street believes in the value of direct service and has volunteered in South Seattle schools teaching computer science, a field that brought him to Seattle 15 years ago for a job with Microsoft, where he works in the office of the Chief Technical Officer. But to move the needle on problems directly impacting his community would take a different role.
“The legislature and creating the policies that shape our state — I think is one of the best ways that you can leverage your time,” Street said.
Street sees an opportunity to push forward on statewide housing policy, shore up data privacy protections and tax Washington’s wealthy to take the burden off of lower-income people. His opponent, Emijah Smith, shares many of the same goals — the two differentiate themselves largely based on style and experience, each careful to stress their own credentials and avoid acrimony.
Street sat down with Real Change to outline his policy goals and priorities for the 37th.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What makes you better for the job than your opponent?
We are lucky to be in the 37th where we're going to get a good Democrat out of this. And so what my message to folks is: Who's going to be the most effective legislator and who has skills that are unique? I have worked both in the private sector and been very successful there. I have advocated for public policy, I have volunteered and given back to the community. So I have a diverse set of experiences, and then some of those experiences are unique.
I work for the Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft. I think it's really important that we have people who understand technology in the legislature. It is changing our society, and understanding it is really important. And before three or four months ago, we could kind of joke about federal hearings where a senator was like, oh, why did my tweet go to my inbox? And just like, oh Lord, no, this is bad. But with the Roe decision, I think we're seeing some very tangible impacts that data privacy can have on our lives. We don't want people using our data to go after folks seeking abortions or even providing abortions.
We have providers who do telehealth across state lines, and if I was a provider doing that, I'd be really scared right now because am I liable for advising on an abortion in a state that has outlawed it? Could someone sue me? Could someone subpoena me for data? Could I lose my license? Those are all very scary things. So I think we need to make sure that we can protect everyone involved in the abortion ecosystem and, that's experience that I have in terms of technology and being able to bring that to bear. So I think that's, number one, a gap in the legislature, but also very pertinent to this time.
What do you identify as big issues facing the 37th, and what levers can you pull at the state level to work on them?
The first thing I would start with is just housing. That's the thing that I hear at the door the most. And like I mentioned before, I think everyone throughout the state is seeing increases in house prices or increases in rent, but it affects the 37th in specific ways, where seniors who may have bought their own homes can't afford the rising taxes so they're basically forced to sell their houses, or generational homes that have been passed down through families — they can't access the equity, or again, their taxes are going up and may not have the means to pay for those and so are basically forced out.
So housing is a real big thing. I sort of think of it in three buckets. One is, how do you stop harm now? Stopping harm now would be anti-displacement measures, so some kind of tax breaks for seniors on fixed incomes or families that have generational houses but can't afford taxes, and then increased tenant protections. That could be anything from listing the statewide ban on rent control, limiting how the types of fees that landlords can charge on renters, because if you're hardly making rent right now, and then you get a $200 fee, you're going to miss next month's rent, and then you get another $200 fee. So you basically just raise rent $200 on that person.
We allow landlords to discriminate against people who have felony or involvement with the criminal justice system in terms of providing them housing. That's crazy. People need a place to live when they come out of the criminal justice system. If we don't like, we're setting them up for failure. So we should prevent that. And renters also don't have a good means of recourse against their landlords. My understanding is that, yes, you could take your landlord to court, but it would take multiple months, and the harm has already been done, as opposed to some way to sort of resolve the issue before harm is done.
There's a lot of things I would love to support in terms of stopping harm. Getting more units on the market looks like state investment in low-income housing through things like the Housing Trust Fund. The private market doesn't really build it because they don't make a ton of money at it. We also have to figure out something about workforce housing.
Jessica Bateman has a great bill around "missing middle" housing that would basically make sure that density is a statewide like we're in it statewide right now. We sort of push density into, usually, lower income and Black and Brown neighborhoods, and the more affluent folks get to keep their single family houses. We're not saying you can't have a single family house, but we should be able to build more units on any single family lot.
And who are, what organizations do you take ideas and inspiration from? Whose voices are coming with you if you were to go to legislature?
It depends on what the issue is. Different organizations have expertise in different areas. So, one in education that is near and dear to my heart is Technology Access Foundation. That's where I volunteer-taught computer science. That is not necessarily a statewide view of things, but Trish has done a ton of work in terms of bringing technology and the sciences and increasing access to Black and Brown kids. That's an area that's near and dear to my heart, specifically, because I got to where I am through tech education. Then in terms of housing, [the Low Income Housing Institute], the Low Income Housing Alliance, some of those folks are leading the way in terms of either providing housing solutions for folks without homes or protecting tenants, and things like that. Children's Alliance, I believe, was one of the main drivers to finally get our capital gains tax implemented, the revenues for which goes towards early learning.
I'm the only candidate who's been a member of a union. I stood with that union during a work stoppage, so supporting our other working brothers and sisters to advocate for better compensation, working conditions, benefits, I think is really important.
Former Rep. Kirsten Harris-Talley wrote in the South Seattle Emerald about why she didn't want to run for reelection, including the fact that it was a toxic work environment and regret over certain compromises she felt she was forced to make. So if elected, how do you handle that?
Some of the things that she talked about is to be expected. And in some ways I have sort of navigated similar institutions for a lot of my life. Like, I went to Brown University, which is a primarily white institution. And the difference between there and DC was very striking. DC is a majority Black city. Especially when I was growing up, it was lower income for the most part. And so just understanding how different populations, what they expect out of institutions of power, how they interact with them and sort of the privileges and just sort of daily interactions is really important.
That's also the same in Microsoft. Microsoft is... I've been there for 15 years and while the culture has definitely changed for the better, thankfully … And even when I was there earlier, it was a very top down, white male-oriented culture. And so being able to be successful in that culture, I've learned many ways to establish relationships with people that I may not see similarly to.
I kind of joke like my job right now is advising our executives on how to integrate emerging technology into their products. And I have no power over them. I don't give them head count, and I don't tell them where they put their resources. And so the only way that I'm effective is establishing a trusting relationship with them regardless of how we see an issue and then trying to slowly move them towards my point of view. And that's exactly what you have to do in the legislature, especially when our majority is going to get narrowed. Everyone in the Democratic caucus doesn't vote the way that we would like them to, and so making sure that we have really trusting relationships with folks that we can talk to, not only from using data but lived personal experiences, I think will help to bring people closer and make the change that we want to see.
State legislatures have been taking a front line role guaranteeing or curtailing rights like abortion and LGBTQIA plus protections. Some politicians in the legislature have signaled — and prefiled — that they would like to roll back some of these rights if they could. What should Washington's legislature do to protect groups and rights like these? How do you make that more durable than an election cycle?
We had [Initiative 120] that was passed by the voters to protect abortion. I think it would be great to get it into the constitution so it's even more enshrined in the founding of our state. ...Short term, we need to make sure that our clinics are funded for the increased traffic that they'll see from our neighboring states. We need to make sure that those clinics are safe, because not only will we see people searching services, we'll also see people protesting and probably doing some crazy things around protesting and intimidation. So making sure that the providers and the folks searching for abortions are protected and safe is important.
Marriage equality. … The first thing is making sure that we don't go backwards on marriage equality.
To your question about how we make sure it's more than one election cycle, I guess that really is the Constitution. I haven't thought about that one, but yeah, that's definitely something that we make sure it does not slip.
The issue of policing has been front and center. The state legislative took steps to rein in police powers around car chases in ways that have received blowback from law enforcement groups. Do you agree with the steps in legislature? What do you want to see happen from here? And how do you, as one lawmaker, seek to make that happen?
I agree with the process they went through. I was really glad to see advocates for the police reform like Jesse Johnson work with the police force to understand the impact of the changes that we made. That said, I don't think I would have landed on the same side about rolling them back. I would like to remain open to working with them and understanding those and the possibility of that having and I don't understand all of the details, but based on my personal experience, I don't think I would have landed at the same place.
When I was at Brown University, me and my friend were walking around campus, and we have an open campus, so anyone can be there. We walked from campus onto a public street, and Brown police asked us for our IDs. And I was like, I didn't do anything. I'm just going to keep on walking. My friend stopped, gave him his ID, told him who he was and who I was. That didn't stop the police from calling out for backup. Providence police picked it up.
And if you believe the police report, a Providence police officer walked in front of me. I walked around. The police officer even walked in front of me again. I pushed his arms away and spun away with my hands up. And then they use the least amount of force to safely restrain me. And that least amount of force forced them to take me to the hospital before they took me to jail. But I don't really believe the police report, because all I remember is getting hit in the back of the head and beaten and just being able to call out so I don't disappear.
I believe without understanding all the details of exactly the language — and I think those details are important — that that interaction wouldn't have ever happened if we had the police reforms that were passed earlier. And I think we need to be very clear that if we're interacting with the police in a nonconsensual manner... But if the police have a reason to detain me, it is for a very good reason. It's not for a hunch. And so Terry stops. My understanding is it's more of the police have judgment. If it's a hunch, then they can stop you and search you.
I think you should have a higher reason, higher bar for sort of detainment and searching and forced interactions. So I have a hard time believing I would have voted to roll them back. However, I really do appreciate the fact that both sides interacted with the police force to understand what those implications of that law were.
I think that's what we have to do because police are part of public safety, but we need a level of professional accountability for them. We also need to set them up for success. When we have police respond to mental health crises, I don't think that serves the person who needs services and I don't think it sets the police up for a good interaction. They're not trained for understanding how to deal with the mental health crisis, and so having mental health professionals there to lead that interaction I think would be far more effective. Putting police in schools doesn't make sense. They don't know how to deal with kids.
When you use the term “public safety,” what do you mean?
Basically how do we have a society that we all feel safe and are happy to live in? Gun reform comes into that. I lost my first friend to gun violence in the seventh grade. I think with 60 or 70 percent of Americans agree on some very common sense gun laws that don't get implemented because politicians can't agree right now at the federal level. But we should be able to move that forward on the state level. And so it's basically, how do we get to a society where everyone can be a contributing member without crime?
That goes also to how we structure our criminal justice system. It is strictly a purely punitive system now. We don't try and rehabilitate, we don't try and give people skills so that they can have a job when they get out of jail. We prevent them from having housing sometimes through allowing landlords to discriminate and not provide housing. I think all of those things then lead to someone trying to do things just to survive, which then sometimes end up in people breaking laws. Basically what we want is we want a society where everyone can be a productive member of it and how do we get there?
And so that's why I say thinking more comprehensively about public safety as more than just like police officers and locking people up will get us to a point where we have the type of society that we want to live in.
We're on a new front in drug policy after the Blake decision knocked possession down to a misdemeanor. That legislation expires next year. Where do you want to see drug policy in Washington go? And if that is less punitive than in the past, what's the state do for people who have been caught up in the system in the past?
Yes, I think getting to the point of decriminalization is a great idea. The War on Drugs ends up punishing the users, mostly. We should definitely go after the source of folks bringing in illicit drugs, but punishing the end user, it doesn't fix the source of the root of the issue. And then usually folks addicted to drugs have other issues that they need to work through, and that is just another symptom of issues that they're working with, and throwing them in jail is the least effective forms of treatment and probably most expensive, as well. It's just counterproductive in so many ways.
I think decriminalization is a good place to start. In terms of what would we do if we were to decriminalize, I don't think it makes sense to hold people in jail for something that we realize now is not the crime that we thought it was in the past. ... First of all, we should just let them out, full stop. But at a minimum, things like home confinement is a better alternative to locking them up. They're around their family. They can have social connection with our community.
Where do you stand on equity licenses in the cannabis industry?
Seems like a good idea. The first thing that I would want to dig into is: Is it funded? I know there is a shortage of licenses in general. So it's great that we are looking at how to sort of more equitably distribute them, but if the folks getting them don't have access to capital to start those businesses then does it really matter? Or does a person get brought into sort of a joint venture as the token equity person? ... [T]he goal of this is my understanding is really to sort of build power within the community and build those businesses of the community as opposed to just bringing on a figurehead so that you can have another way of getting that license.
I think it's a good start but understanding to make sure that we have all the pieces in place for it to be useful is going to be a very important question.
Homelessness is a growing issue in the region and the state. Why is that, and what do you see as the top policies that the legislature can advance to improve the situation?
My understanding is rising house prices and probably even more specifically rising rent because... Those are the two things. That's another interesting one of what is the interaction between the state and different municipalities? Dealing with homelessness, I think, has to be a regional thing, and we have to support it from the state with the proper funding and the proper policies that get us to reasonable housing markets.
We can form markets and put regulation in place at the statewide level that, again, align to the morals that we want to see, but then also working with municipalities at a regional level to make sure that the funding gets used correctly. … But I think housing insecurity is one of those things that there are many different reasons for it, and understanding the different populations within our own unhoused community is important so that when we give funding, we target it at the right places, in the right forms.
What is your opinion on the tax code, and how would you see it change?
Yeah, so I think it's the most regressive in the state. It needs to be made more progressive so that every individual and corporation can pay their fair share. Again, so I think it's: closing corporate tax loopholes so that large corporations like small businesses aren't only ones paying corporate taxes or business taxes, keeping our capital gains tax, increasing our estate inheritance tax, ideally doing income tax. And since we probably can't do income tax, then let's explore our billionaire tax.
The one thing that gives me hope is we see so many things get caught up in the federal legislature and just stymied. But we actually can make progress at municipalities and state levels, so maybe we're the ones who need to pilot this and then it can take off the cost of country, because the billionaire tax is not mutually exclusive with income tax. You can have both of them. So maybe we can make some progress there.
Okay, easily the most controversial question we have. What is your favorite place in your district?
I would probably say Lake Washington Boulevard, and then the different sort of bike trails around and start bike paths around the district. I'm a big proponent of getting out of cars. I work at Microsoft, live in the Central District. I tried to bike to work two times a week before the pandemic, partly because I was also pro soccer referee, and that got me some exercise, and I didn't have to think about exercise after that. But it's also just a great way to get toward a greener climate future, do stress relief. And so, I love biking. And if I do a Lake Washington loop, then we come up around Lake Washington Boulevard, there's all those great trails around Beacon Hill under the power line. Just anywhere I can get out on my bike is pretty awesome.
Ashley Archibald was the editor of Real Change through July 2023, and is now a communication specialist for Purpose. Dignity. Action.
Read more of the Oct. 5-11, 2022 issue.