Newly-appointed Oxnard councilmember Gabe Teran stands strong on housing

Max Ghenis
Ventura County YIMBY
3 min readFeb 6, 2021

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Last night, the Oxnard City Council voted to appoint Gabe Teran to fill now-Supervisor Carmen Ramirez’s District 2 Council seat. We applaud the Council’s excellent choice in appointing our endorsed candidate.

Teran’s response to a particular question re-asserted that we made the right call. Councilmember Bert Perello asked him (here’s the video):

Mr. Teran, [you’re a] highly qualified individual, but there is an issue with endorsement by YIMBY. That endorsement went contrary to what the council’s and the planning commission’s action was, and I was wondering why would you take an endorsement going against the council and planning commission.

It’s not clear what Perello was referring to here. We couldn’t find any guidelines against applicants for appointed city council and planning commission positions in Oxnard accepting endorsements. And we’ve had a healthy relationship with the planning commission and council, disagreeing with some of them on some issues like apartments at Fisherman’s Wharf while also endorsing two sitting councilmembers in November (Oscar Madrigal’s successful re-election and Ramirez’s run for supervisor), as well as now-mayor John Zaragoza.

Whatever Perello was objecting to, Teran took it in stride:

Thank you for that question, councilmember Perello. I looked over the stances that YIMBY had on housing [in our questionnaire] and I have to say that, as a councilmember if I were appointed, I may not always go with what my colleagues go with. I have to look at what the research says, I have to look at evidence that shows what we can do to increase and to improve our housing situation for our residents. Because at the end of the day, we have residents who are struggling because they don’t have access to housing. They don’t have the ability to afford housing, and when I look at the information that [YIMBY] had provided to all of the applicants, I agreed with many of those stances that they had and many of the potential policies that were in place. Now I have to say, it would be a discussion, I would be one person to bring that forward, and maybe it’s something that we have discussion on and it goes forward, maybe it doesn’t. But it’s incumbent on me, representing our residents, to see what are ways that are looking like they’re evidence-based and have success in other jurisdictions that might serve our community. And that’s why I did that. Thank you, Councilmember Perello.

This is the leadership Ventura County needs. Teran recognized the residents harmed by lack of access to housing, committed to improving these constituents’ lives with evidence-based decisionmaking, and showed that he would be a collaborative yet values-driven councilmember.

Congratulations to Councilmember Teran for the well-deserved appointment, and the demonstration of integrity during the interview making his selection all the more justified.

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Co-founder & CEO of PolicyEngine. Founder & president of the UBI Center. Economist. Alum of UC Berkeley, Google, and MIT. YIMBY. CCLer. Effective altruist.