DaQuanta Copeland, community organizer and advocate and vice chair for Wake County Health and Human Services Board, is running for Raleigh mayor. The focuses of Copeland’s campaign include affordable housing, ending gentrification and police accountability. 

Copeland: plans to support efforts to make affordable housing in Raleigh more accessible and available. In an interview with INDY Week, Copeland said she disagrees with the City Council’s current plans for affordable housing. “We’re losing affordable housing by the thousands,” Copeland said to INDY Week.

Copeland said the council should work to provide incentives and extra support through grants and bonds to property owners to make creating and keeping affordable housing more appealing as Raleigh continues to grow. 

“If we blanketed that property owner so that the families didn’t have to eat that higher cost that they can’t afford, then we as a city, we will take care of our business owners as well as taking care of our family,” Copeland said to INDY Week.

Copeland: wants to address gentrification and displacement in Raleigh. Copeland said Raleigh’s continued growth and rising housing prices have led to Raleigh natives being pushed out due to new houses and apartments being built over historically affordable housing, according to The News & Observer. 

“We can’t help the fact that Raleigh is continuing to grow,” Copeland said to the N&O. “There’s no way to tell someone ‘Don’t move here.’ But what we can do is stop waving the flag and advertising that you should ‘come here, come here’ when we still have so many homeless people who are here.”

Copeland: if elected, also plans to implement effective leadership, inclusive communication and create healthy and strong communities. Copeland’s campaign website said, “Our vision of an inclusive, caring society motivates us to work tirelessly and never give up.”

Learn more about Copeland’s campaign here.