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

Question 1
Why do you want to be a member of the Harrisburg City Council?

Nasser Alsaadun: Well, I think the answer takes me back to when I joined the American Army in 2003, during the war. My first purpose was to have a better life for my community, at that time.

Question 2
And where was that?

ALSAADUN: In 2003 in Iraq. I worked as an interpreter. And for that purpose, actually, I lost my father. For the sake of having a better life for my community, I came here, to the U.S., in 2008 with my family and I started working, having the same intention and the same purpose, to elevate my community.
So, I started working with the Refugee Resettlement Office in Harrisonburg to welcome the newcomers, the new refugees, and try to help them with their new life by providing translation, transportation, hot meals and welcoming at the airport. And I started since then to work with different organizations. So that actually kind of built something inside me to do the help of the community that I lived in, because I feel part of them. So I decided to expand my hope and my purpose and my interest, support the Harrisonburg community by being the first refugee running for City Council.

Question 3
What do you believe is the biggest problem the city of Harrisonburg faces? And how would you plan to deal with it?

ALSAADUN: We see that the city is growing pretty fast, which is something good for us as citizens, and that actually leads to housing being increased, like the prices and also the rent for people, which is usually the lower income being also increased. So, the housing, actually affordable housing, is the biggest problem that we are facing here as Harrisonburg residents.
Things that, actually plans, that I am looking forward to work is that my biggest thing is that to have or create a housing fund trust which is something that is very helpful and to help other organizations so they can assist their people, like their renters for example, or home owners, new home owners. I believe that there are like a lot of opportunities in providing and creating that Housing Fund Trust in that we may, like we may gain like $7.00 like every time we contribute a dollar, we can have $7.00 from the federal agencies.
We can use  this money in in helping our citizens, like trying to at least have this problem better or because it’s a nationwide problem, the housing. So, by helping, by creating that Housing Trust Fund, I think we are going to help, I will not say like 100%, but at least 50% of the problem.
And then other things that we are going to work on is that we’re increasing the affordable housing development, advocating for those, like the developers like try to give them incentives. For example, tax breaks or Anything that they can help with in order to have in their projects like affordable housing mix, low mixed income in their projects. So also trying to help as much as we can.
I’m looking to also to have a housing tax force and having all stakeholders, citizens, developers and also from the city personnel to work on having how we can come, how we can lower the prices.

Question 4
Let me follow up on the housing issue because that brings up another issue that the city is facing and that is paying for housing, education, police, fire. How do you solve homelessness issue? How do you deal with these issues? But at the same time keep it affordable so that people could live in the city.

ALSAADUN: Yeah. I know like as we said, the housing affordable housing is a nationwide problem it’s not only Harrisonburg. But comparing to the other cities, I think we can work together with stakeholders in order to provide affordable housing. As I said, we can offer tax incentives for developers to include the mixed income housing so people can buy these houses. And also we can create a program for renters in order to help them, like renter assistance in order to help those people in our need who cannot afford it and also we can have, what do we call, land community fund, which is trying to have like making the new homeowners buying the houses in reduced prices because we have like the land.

Question 5
Your main goal in serving on the Harrisonburg City Council will be what?

ALSAADUN: My main goal actually, as I said here, is to have a Harrisonburg community inclusive for everyone, no matter the background, and also to have it equitable for everyone, and also livable. We can’t have people with low income living here without having means for that accessible affordable housing, accessible for other services that this the city is offering.