Erika Gonzalez

🏡 Housing Residents Can Actually Afford

Rooted in: Watching my own community, including myself, get priced out of the neighborhoods we built.

I've spent the last year in the room where this actually gets decided. As a member of the Planning Commission and the TRPA Living Working Group, I've watched our short-term rental regulations get rewritten in real time, and I've seen where the city has room to work within those parameters and where it doesn't.

I don't think the answer is eliminating the vacation rental market. I think it's understanding it. That market is also how a lot of people in this town make their living, including the housekeepers and small operators who depend on it to run their own businesses. If we get rid of it wholesale, we don't just lose rental units; we lose income for the people we're supposedly trying to protect.

What I would like to do is keep looking at the short-term rental market using the tools we already have and identifying where those tools fall short. I want us to look honestly at whether local ordinances need to change, including staying engaged with TRPA to keep updating regulations to match where we are as a society. I want the city to continue actively pursuing grant funding and other revenue streams to pay for deed-restricted workforce housing, not just talking about wanting it. And I want us to actually look at what makes South Lake Tahoe different, not just import solutions from the rest of California, because our environmental constraints and TRPA regulations shape what's even possible here in ways most housing policy debates don't account for.

💼 An Economy That Works For Locals

Rooted in: Being one of the people South Lake Tahoe raised and then couldn't stay.

I left South Lake Tahoe for school and a career, the same way a lot of people I grew up with did. Not because I wanted to. Because there wasn't a job here that matched what I'd trained for. When that happens enough times, a community doesn't just lose people; it loses the workforce it grew, and ends up needing to import the one it needs instead.

My family has worked in South Lake Tahoe hospitality for generations; it's why they came here in the first place, and I don't think that's something to run away from. This will always be a tourist economy. The lake and the mountains aren't going anywhere, and neither is the industry built around them. But being a tourist town doesn't mean being dependent on tourism's every season. Right now we are, and it shows. Storefronts sit empty, not because nobody's trying, but because a business built to survive on summer and winter alone can't make it through October or April when the visitors thin out.

That's not a sign the city isn't doing anything. South Lake Tahoe has a strategic plan aimed at growing and diversifying the economy, and staff has already started reaching out directly to local business owners to understand what they're up against. What we need is a council that actually carries that work forward instead of letting it stall as a line item on a plan nobody revisits.

Carrying that work forward means getting specific about what year-round survival actually looks like. Supporting businesses that don't depend entirely on summer and winter crowds. Making South Lake Tahoe a place where a business can open in a shoulder month and still make it to the next season. That's how you stop losing the people this town raised.

📋 Decorum & Trust

Rooted in: Watching our council meetings lose sight of their purpose, and hearing from residents how much trust in this council has eroded because of it.

We are living in a moment defined by opposition for its own sake and grandstanding for talking points. That's true nationally, and it's true here, at the local level, where it matters most because this is the government closest to your daily life. When council members are more interested in the soapbox than the solution, when meetings run past midnight because everyone needs to make their point on the record, the people actually doing the work—staff, residents, the person who came to give two minutes of public comment—all pay the price.

Respect and decorum show the community two things: that we know what we're doing, and that we know how to work in partnership. A ten-hour meeting isn't rigor; it's often the opposite. Respect and decorum mean coming prepared, knowing the staff report, asking real questions instead of performing outrage, and treating the people who work for this city and the people who show up to critique it with basic dignity and respect. That includes how we talk to each other on the dais, how we talk to staff, and how we talk to the community members who disagree with us.

What I hope this campaign shows is how I show up for this community, with a principled stand and a clear perspective, even when it's not the easy one, so that my approach becomes something residents can point to and recognize as what leadership here should look like.

🗣️ Civic Participation: Our Tahoe, Our Voice

Rooted in: Believing people can only make real choices when they actually understand what's happening.

In my work, the foundation of everything is informed consent: making sure someone understands their options, in plain language, before they're asked to decide anything. I think local government owes residents the same thing.

People care about what happens in this city. What's hard is finding out what's actually happening, figuring out when a decision is still open versus already made, and understanding where and how to actually weigh in. That takes real transparency and a government that's genuinely accessible in the everyday experience of trying to navigate it.

I want city projects to keep doing what's worked before: keeping clear, plain-language information available throughout a project, not just at the start, so residents can ask real questions as things develop instead of finding out after a decision is final. And I want that same standard applied to how meetings themselves work: timed well, explained clearly, and structured so people don't have to already be an expert in city process to participate.