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DISTRICT
City of Ann Arbor
PHONE
734-353-9426
WEBSITE
voteyousef.com
Number of years as resident
32
I have served Ann Arbor in public office for 16 years: six years on the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners, including as Chair from 2013-2014; and six years in the Michigan House of Representatives, including four years as the Democratic Floor Leader. In 2023, I returned to the County Commission, where I now serve, in addition to working as the Legislative Director for the Michigan Nurses Association. I am the only candidate to have served in both state and local government.
I am a graduate of Ann Arbor Public Schools and the University of Michigan. I began my career at the City of Ann Arbor and have spent my entire professional life building connections with constituents and community leaders to make our city a better place.
Ann Arbor is completely unaffordable to working families and seniors. Government should exist to lower costs and make life easier. As your next mayor I will:
-Make historic investments in publicly-owned, permanently affordable housing by leveraging our bonding capacity and land without increasing taxes.
-Fix the roads and infrastructure while expanding direct public services by eliminating bloated consultant contracts and shrinking administrative overhead.
-Ensure public work is done by public workers, public land is used for public purposes, and public money is used for public services.
-Put our community in the center of the decision making process. No more performative public engagement where the outcome is pre-ordained.
Local businesses are closing, our infrastructure is crumbling, desperately needed services are not being offered all while our rent, rates and taxes skyrocket. At the same time, corporations, consultants and well connected developers find seemingly endless public cash to benefit their bottom line. It's time to change that. The budget is a moral document. We can do big things like build a reliable, affordable and 100% green public power system; pass a real ICE-Free zone ordinance and defend it from the Trump administration’s overreach; and construct housing for workers, seniors and those experiencing homelessness. We can support our local businesses, repair our infrastructure and expand services all while giving city workers a fair contract.
Ann Arbor will be a beautiful, vibrant, and safe community where housing is a human right. To achieve this we must Democratize Density meaning the community has an actual say in what happens and is given tools to add housing from the ground up not “trickle down”. We must adopt an anti-gentrification unit, Tenant’s Bill of Rights, and a community benefits ordinance while making major investments in the Housing Commission, co-ops, and community land trusts. Future growth is mixed-income, mixed-use, and transit oriented with more housing options like ADUs, duplexes, and triplexes built into our community fabric. New buildings are unique, well designed and inspire joy and curiosity. Historic buildings are preserved and green space is expanded.
