Mary Jobaida

People First Party

Mary believes that youth and young adults living in poverty are unfairly penalized by incarceration instead of being given the support they need to thrive. Mary has observed the racial disparities in incarceration rates. She supports expanding programs and resources for youth and young adults in low-income communities and strongly opposes the school-to-prison pipeline.

Mary will fight to expand mental health support and provide skills-based training, helping people connect to meaningful jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Paid childcare empowers parents, promotes healthy development, and helps end inequality that starts at birth. Every child deserves a strong start and every parent deserves support.

Mary also believes that housing policy must center equity. In many immigrant and minority neighborhoods, homeowners face discriminatory lending practices and far fewer financial resources than wealthier, whiter neighborhoods. By providing state-backed support, transparent protections, and accessible financial tools, New York can help close the racial wealth gap and ensure that families who have built communities over generations can remain in them.

Mary supports restoring CUNY and SUNY to their original promise: truly free, fully funded public education that empowers all New Yorkers — working-class students, immigrants, parents, first-generation college-goers, and returning adult learners. Free tuition is only part of the solution. Mary believes that campuses must also offer strong student support systems: mental health services, academic advising, disability services, childcare, tutoring, and job placement programs. When these supports are available, students can focus on learning, not surviving.

Mary supports freezing in rent rise for rent stabilized apartments and investments in massive public housing projects to create deeply affordable housing for low income working class people. Mary supports community land trusts as a way for New Yorkers to develop long standing deep affordability and community ownership. Mary wants to get rid of the income floor for affordable housing units to make them truly affordable for some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

Leadership should serve the people, not cling to power. Term limits promote accountability, strengthen participatory democracy, and open the door for new voices and bold ideas in our political system. Mary supports term limits because she believes politics should be a tool for service, not a pathway to lifelong power or career.

Housing is a human right, not an auction to the highest bidder. Affordable, dignified housing is a right, not a privilege.

A core part of Mary’s approach is expanding mental-health services and crisis response teams so that people in distress can receive immediate, appropriate care. She wants to build robust community-based treatment programs, harm-reduction initiatives, and outreach networks that meet people where they are. These programs save lives and reduce strain on the criminal justice system, freeing up resources for genuine public safety needs.

Mary supports restorative justice. She does not believe in punitive systems. She champions community-centered, humane solutions focused on prevention, healing, and keeping families and neighborhoods safe, not incarceration except in case of violent crimes.

Mary will support sustainable solutions that help small homeowners keep their houses and receive legal help and fair compensation if they face unjust rent losses.

Education should not be commodified. It should lift us up, not weigh us down with debt. Education is a powerful equalizer, and Mary is fighting to make higher education truly accessible for every New Yorker.

Mary supports investing in every child’s future from the beginning. As a public school parent and a regular substitute teacher in underserved schools, Mary has seen the inequities in our education system up close. She knows that a child’s future should not be determined by their zip code or their parents’ income. Every child in New York deserves a high-quality education rooted in equity, not privilege.

Everyone deserves access to care, no matter their income or status. No one chooses to suffer from illness, and untreated disease puts entire communities at risk. Healthcare is a human right.

Mary knows firsthand the struggles parents face. She’s fighting to lift the burden of childcare off families’ backs and ensure every child has access to quality early care.