As the morning sun begins to shine off the California State Capitol, Assembly member Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, has already finished her first meeting of the day. Meeting with anyone who cares to wake up early to complete a two-mile walk around the capitol.
The Assembly member has weekly “walk and talks,” where anyone can meet with her one-on-one to have an open discussion. At the end of the walk, Quirk-Silva and her guest reward themselves with a cup of coffee.
“It’s a nice way to start, but it’s also a nice way to get a few extra meetings in,” Quirk-Silva said. “It usually gets me about 20-30 minutes of walking, which, at my age, I need.”
The Orange County legislator says she typically meets with her staff, fellow legislators, or members of the media, but anyone who can meet before sunrise is welcome.
Quirk-Silva started these “walk and talks” back in 2004 when she was a Fullerton City Council member. It provided her the opportunity to explore her city’s different neighborhoods and meet her constituents. It also helps her learn the pressing issues people face as she got to learn about the struggles her community faced with housing affordability.
“That is what’s compelled me to run again — to make our communities more livable, safer, and to give people that chance that many of our families have come here for: that American dream, to work hard and to move forward,” Quirk-Silva said.
She recently began her fifth term in the legislature. Before getting into politics, she worked as a public school teacher for 30 years.
“The families I taught in Fullerton, I started to see more and more needs that were not met. Many times it was health care, many times it was dental. I had 1st graders that had never been to a dentist,” Quirk-Silva said.
Homelessness is another important, personal issue for Quirk-Silva. In 2018, she lost her brother, Billy, who battled with alcoholism and addiction. She described her brother as funny, charming, and hardworking, when he wasn’t dealing with addiction.
It’s that personal experience, along with the thousands of people who’ve died on the streets like her brother, that makes homelessness a top priority.
“In Orange County, my district, 45 people die a month on the streets… and I expect that number to be higher these last two months with the weather we’ve seen,” Quirk-Silva notes.
This year, Quirk-Silva has introduced several pieces of legislation to tackle the issue of homelessness.
One bill, AB 271, would allow counties to establish a homeless death review committee in order to identify the cause of death and find strategies for prevention. The assembly member says this will allow different agencies to work together to reduce homelessness deaths.
At a recent housing committee hearing, Quirk-Silva questioned the Newsom administration for not declaring homelessness a state of emergency like they did with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We declared COVID. We saw what we could do when we had an emergency in health and this, in fact, is an emergency,” Quirk-Silva emphasized.
She also believes the administration could do more to create housing by utilizing state-owned land that is currently not being used.
Though Dr. Mark Ghaly, the Health and Human Services Secretary, points out the state has imitated projects to help launch Project Homekey during the pandemic.
“We are always looking for approaches to streamline, make things move faster,” Dr. Ghaly said. “I think the renewed effort that I hope will quickly become apparent to use those properties more effectively with more urgency.”
Dr. Ghaly said projects like Homekey have created about 13,000 short-term and permanent housing units.
Though Quirk-Silva stressed, there’s a lot more to do.
“There isn’t a lack of effort in the last decade that has happened for homelessness and yet we are dying our way out of homelessness,” she adds.
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