HARRISONBURG, VA (Rocktown Now) — The following is a transcription of an interview with Harrisonburg City Council Candidate Javier Calleja. To hear the full conversation, as well as the interviews with other City Council Candidates Laura Dent, Nasser Alsaadun, and Deanna Reed, click here.

Question 1
Why do you believe you should be elected to the Harrisonburg City Council?

Javier Calleja: Well, first of all, thank you for having me here today and giving me the opportunity to speak to your audience. It’s a pleasure and an honor and an immense responsibility to be here and trying to represent all of them. We believe that I will be a fit candidate and a great candidate for our city to represent our people because we want to exercise social responsibility, but what it means is we need to break that down while my platform portrays. We want to have smart planning, and smart planning is a lot more than sitting down and do a planning in one piece of paper for only one aspect of our city.
And my star belief, our core belief that we need to be an attractive city for business and business owners to make sure that people can really, truly invest in our city. That a small business can open doors and remain open. And for that we need to relook, I think, at our tax codes and how we do taxing in the city. But also, for those who do not have business, right, for people who are paying high taxes right now and their properties in the city. This is pushing people out of the city at the moment.
Sometimes people would rather sell their homes, in their hometown, where they have grown their entire life and move across city borders because they pay less property taxes. So smart planning is about looking at the city in a historical context, see the trends that have happened in the past, predict with some type of accountability what the growth will be in the future, so we now can predict the problems that we’re going to be facing in the future, so when those problems arise, we are prepared for it and we don’t have to always go back to raising the taxes year after year after year.
Now we know that there are, there is a micro and macro economy. There are concepts that we cannot control at a national level and on a worldwide perspective. But there are elements that we can certainly control within our city and make the life of the people better.
One problem that we have when taxes keep going up and up and up is that maybe some people will be able to afford three or four hundred dollars more a year. But there is a percentage of the population here in Harrisonburg that, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to do so. And the most vulnerable are little kids. And that is a concern, and that’s why I think that I’m a fit candidate. And I’m just driven by the social responsibility, making sure that everybody can afford and live in Harrisonburg like we had.
I was homeless when I first arrived to Harrisonburg in the year of 2000. And I remember that no one gave me a dollar. That’s not what they did. They didn’t give me a hand down, but they gave me opportunities. And I just want to have that city again. I want to make sure that we have a city that can employee people, that can give them the opportunity to move forward. And that is the plans and the ideas and the experience that I want to bring to other City Council members. I was unhoused, I didn’t have proper food nutrition. And I can bring that first-hand experience to the City Council.

Question 2
Affordable housing has been a large element that the city has been trying to deal with. What are your thoughts on trying to find a way to bring affordable housing to the city?

CALLEJA: So affordable housing, we need to define. We will need to define and ask people what is it? Is it the supply and demand? What are the laws that we put in place in the city or regulations that make a housing more expensive or less expensive?
I remember that I misspoke earlier and I said building codes, which those are established by the state and there’s very little that maybe sometimes we can do right. But if we put regulations in place when builders are going to build the house and then that cost gets passed down to the home buyer and that therefore makes the house more expensive. So that will be one element that we can for sure look into and say what are the elements that we do not have to have yet, right now, so then the homebuyer can make a purchase and we can make the House affordable, right? Because if you have a house that starts, let’s say, $350,000, there’s going to be a slightly small percentage of the people with lower salaries being able to afford it and that actually will qualify for the loan when they go to the bank. Because you have to have a percentage of your salary free after your mortgage payment to be a secure loan to make sure that the bank will actually give you the mortgage, the loan right. And so that the demand would slightly decrease.
And how we secure and we release land within the city too, how we do the mapping will also be a way that we can make housing more affordable. If we say we cannot build here or we cannot build in the other places, that reduces the spaces where housing can go actually go up. And that makes the price, the demand, higher because you have less supply. Less supply actually means more pricing and I guess into very technological terms and it shouldn’t be that difficult, right? We actually have ways to make housing happen for people in an affordable price, but the affordable prices have to go along with the salaries that we have in the city. If we make houses that are not affordable for those who need it, that is not affordable housing, that is just housing for those who can’t afford it.
So affordable housing has a lot of layers into it and we need to really look into are we building houses or are we actually building houses that can be purchased by those who we want them to be homeowners.
So in the year 2000, I was homeless and I was 18. When I was 25, I was making $9.25 an hour, and I was working in a fast food restaurant. I was working at McDonald’s. I was making $9.25 an hour. That year, when I got my pay increased to $9.25, I purchased my first home. And I was 25. I would like our kids, when they graduate from college, for them to be able to stay in the area if they want and be able to afford their home. Right. But with $15.00 an hour today, it’s going to be very hard for them to afford $300,000 home. I’m not sure if the banks will qualify them for it.

Question 3
What is your main goal if you are elected to the Harrisonburg City Council, what’s the one thing that you would like to concentrate on specifically?

CALLEJA: I would like to concentrate on transparency and accountability. I want the citizens to realize that anybody elected there, works for them. They are there on their behalf and they are there to represent all of them. Whether they are Democrat, Republican or independent, or they have no home anymore, politically, we’re gonna be there to be their servants. We’re there to work hand on hand. This is our city. I have lived here for the past 24 years, longer than I ever lived in the country where I was born. This is the home of my kids. This is the home of my wife. This is the home of my friends and this is the home of the future generations. I want them to realize that if they have a question, it should be answered. If the question is respectful in nature, it should be answered. We need to reestablish a line of respect with each other and that begins by I work for them, they don’t work for me. I have to answer to them. They don’t have to answer to me. The city has no money. The city has the residents’ money, right? The taxpayers money, the business money. And I want to bring that idea to to the city council making sure that we all understand that all line of government, local, state and federal, they work for us. And then if we establish that trustworthiness between each other, there is nothing that can stop our city for striving like it has. And then we want to continue to drive on what we have built. I do want to do some things differently, obviously, that’s what I’m running. But I think that our city has a great deal, a great potential that we can elaborate on.