Editor's note: The Business Journal conducted a lengthy interview with Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Each day this week we will publish key excerpts from the interview covering a range of important business-related topics. Today's final part of the series: Addressing Arizona's homelessness issue, the housing shortage and affordability issues.
We're going to ban urban camping. We're not going to have camps along the side of the road because it's not compassionate for the homeless person to allow them to fester and fall further into despair. And frankly, we need these people to get cleaned up. We need these contributing citizens. We need to get them skills training so that they can become painters and maybe help with the construction industry or whatever skills they have.
For starters, we're going to put pressure on these cities to do broken windows policing, and we're going to make sure our state monies are kind of tied to that. You are going to start pushing law and order in your cities and we're going to ban the camping. Martin versus Boise says that you can't ban urban camping [unless you have enough shelter beds for the homeless]. So we're going to quickly build inexpensive shelter beds. It's a numbers game.
In attracting businesses, housing prices are going up and we have a lot of demand. What do see from the governor's office about making housing either more affordable or just having more housing in general?