Jose Ugarte, a candidate for City Council district nine which includes USC, said if elected he would work toward “a clean, safe and affordable South Central L.A.”

Ugarte said he would do that by banning RVs, campers and trailers in his district and advocate for a citywide ban.

“It brings a lot of trash,” Ugarte said. “It takes us so much money to clean up RVs, campers and trailers have hazmat crews, clean up feces. It’s just impossible for the city to keep up.”

In an interview with Annenberg Media on Sept. 23, Ugarte described himself as the “American dream for South L.A.” and said he found out he was undocumented when he was 17.

“I got a piece of paper from every single school that I applied to, including USC, that said I had to pay out-of-state tuition because I did not have a social security number,” Ugarte said. “I didn’t know what that meant at the time.”

He said his first ID read “illegal alien resident card.”

“I got lucky that my dad was a resident before I turned 18, so I automatically became a citizen,” Ugarte said.

He worked for congressional campaigns, on behalf of propositions, California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and City Councilmember Curran Price.

Ugarte pushed back against the idea of abolishing or defunding the police and said he wants more officers on the street.

“We’re down about 1,500 officers in the city of L.A. I grew up in South Central in the 90s where it was bad,” Ugarte said. “I have a three year old daughter that I’m raising here in South Central. I don’t want her to grow up in the same area that I grew up in, it’s tough.”

He said he wants city councilmembers to have the ability to directly hire and fire police officers and said he wants more female officers, officers with a college degree and local officers.

“The biggest thing is that 50% of officers live outside the city of L.A.,” Ugarte said. “Orange County, Ventura County, San Bernardino County and to me that’s a job to them. It shouldn’t be a job, it should be a career and if we have more local officers who live in the community that they grew up in they mostly respect the community they stay out of trouble they don’t get complaints against them that’s the kind of public safety I want to see.”

He also said he wants more officers on foot, horse and bike patrol.

“When we talk about abolishing the police and defunding the police it doesn’t work in South L.A.,” Ugarte said. “I grew up in a domestic violence household where if you didn’t call a cop and the cop didn’t show up on time people could be killed.”

He said the city needs to hire more officers rather than paying the officers they have overtime.

“We give officers double overtime and triple overtime instead of hiring new officers,” Ugarte said. “Officers are human beings. You can’t work on a 20 hour day and still be capable of doing your job. To me it’s not right.”

He said that Measure ULA, also known as the mansion tax, needs to be reformed to exempt affordable housing developers. The measure passed in 2022 with 58% support and puts a tax on properties sold in Los Angeles over $5 million dollars.

“Were losing all these jobs,” Ugarte said. “That means nobody’s developing. That means we kind of shot ourselves in the foot and the whole goal for this mansion tax is develop more and it’s not working.”

Ugarte also said that the city needs to pivot how it tackles homelessness from a housing issue to a mental health issue.

“If you house somebody and they’re not mentally stable to stay in that house and to be under a roof and have rules, no drugs, no alcohol, no paraphernalia, then if they don’t want to stay there they can leave,” Ugarte said. “That’s the problem. But they can go in and out and no matter what taxpayers are still paying.”

He said he wants to cut Measure H and Prop HHH money from being allocated to housing and divert it to mental health resources.

He also responded to his former boss, City Councilmember Curran Price being indicted on federal corruption charges. Ugarte served as a deputy chief of staff to Price based in his district office.

“If you look at the trial my name doesn’t come up in it at all, a couple of my coworkers do,” Ugarte said. “They have to go to court and testify. My name doesn’t come up at all because I worked in the district office, local community stuff.”