The Issues

Your Medical Home

Health care is a fundamental right of every resident living in Seattle. You deserve a patient-centered medical and mental health care home that provides compassionate coordinated quality care.

By investing $25 million a year in preventative healthcare, we can help to turn our system around at the local level. It will allow us to develop solutions leading to improved patient outcomes, and recouping more than $400 million of resources associated with medical waste and charity care at local hospitals.

Given the current political will and climate, Seattle has the unique opportunity to lead the way in creating robust, accessible, affordable, high quality healthcare for all its residents. We have a strong network of Federal Qualified Health Centers in Seattle, and we have the resources to invest in innovation in those and other local centers.

Your Physical Home
You deserve an affordable home because you work hard, play by the rules and consider housing a matter of social justice. Affordable housing is a fundamental right of every resident living in Seattle.

When we talk about affordability we’re talking about senior citizens living on very fixed incomes who fear losing their homes. We’re talking about people of color being displaced from neighborhoods their communities have built for generations. We’re talking about young people trying to buy their first homes. Middle-income people are finding affordability to be an extreme issue.

Just like in medicine, I am for practical solutions that will work, such as strong partnerships between developers and the City. Also, just like in medicine, I believe in urgency on this issue and so I’m in favor of strategies to build quality affordable housing NOW in the areas that need it most. Two top recommendations from HALA that I urgently support are:

1. Use surplus city property for low-income housing.

2. Change the design review process to expedite approval and construction.

As our neighborhoods grow, we need to go beyond affordability to ensure Seattle’s livability: this means parks, arts, quality schools, health care, sidewalks and transit. These amenities are not luxuries. They create a culture of empathy and they transmit our community-minded values to newcomers.

25% is a number pulled out of a hat. It can only work under circumstances where the city or other governments put in a lot of additional money, or when height limits are significantly increased in residential neighborhoods. (See New York City and San Francisco.) As a standalone policy, 25% doesn’t work, and may backfire, causing market-rate prices to soar, displacing even more middle-class families. We need the right revenue policy for Seattle.

Your Safe Home

As a Psychiatrist, I understand de-escalation techniques and the importance of that training to help people in mental health crisis. It is time to support our community by calling for Police Officers to get robust training in de-escalation techniques.

Police Officers need to have 40 hours of de-escalation training taught by Mental Health providers. Officers should get annual training to keep up on these techniques and get new information provided by the medical community.

We can save lives. Read my comprehensive plan here.

Your Cultural Home

You deserve a city that embraces your diversity, uniqueness and talents. A city committed to building stronger and more resilient communities.

Preserving the culture of Seattle requires responsible development, committing to diversity, retaining the arts and fostering community. Everyone who lives in Seattle belongs in Seattle.

Arts education should be a corner stone in education, so that we can actually help kids be successful, stay in school and equalize the disparity that we are seeing. Four of the six developmental milestones happen before the age of 5. Why is that important? The reason that is important is that we should be investing in pre-K, which we are doing now. When we’re also talking about education we know that arts are incredibly important for increasing peoples quality of life, improving their test scores on STEM, improving their creativity. It is a social and racial equalizer. We know that the more arts education you have the better you do, the more arts education you have the more likely you are to stay in school and finish. We know that arts education is a deterrent to crime. We know if we give you arts education year after year it pays off. There are great arts organizations here like Arts Corps & Creative Justice who have demonstrated success. So when we are thinking about how we develop an education program, lets fund the arts and actually help kids feel successful.

Your Transportation Home

Transportation has to be reliable efficient timely.

In order to make transportation more effective, we need to look at neighborhood density. In some of our neighborhoods, there are 12 single family homes per acre, which means that transportation comes every 30 minutes. In order to improve transportation to those areas, we have to increase density. If we can increase density by two folds, we can improve transportation times to every 15 minutes.

Support:

“…with a combination of humility, compassion, and laser-focused policy acumen that’s rare to find in any candidate, let alone someone making his debut on the local political stage….” – Sol

Villarreal

“…That level of empathy is not one we find often in politics…” – Michael Maddux

“Hisam brings a unique perspective and experience informing policy proposals around public health, equity, and community firmly grounded in empathy and compassion…” – Seattlish

“His nuanced understanding of the multiple system adjustments needed to address our obligation to provide housing for all people is one we hope will inform policies now and in the future.” – Honorable Mention from The Urbanist

Hisam received the highest scores possible in the SEAMEC Candidate Ratings

Endorsed by: 32nd District Democrats; Former Seattle City Council Member Tom Rasmussen; Doctors; Nurses; Social Workers