Dr. Ala Stanford - The Chestnut Hill Local Candidate Forum

I am a small business owner, and I have been going on 10 years, for a medical practice. I understand how challenging it is and to have the expertise to keep your business viable. At a federal level, programs will be those with low interest rates, for example, to get a loan to start your small business. There will be incentives to hire locally.

I’ve seen firsthand that when you have a business in a community, how it brings up others, like restaurants and other businesses with different goods, that when people come to the health center, they know they can also get other things in the community.

All of this leads to economic viability. It leads to the generation of generational wealth for communities in a city like Philadelphia, where we are one of the poorest, the second poorest in the nation, and how we get to that is by having sustainable businesses that we can invest in and that the community themselves can be proud of.

Question 2 — The Chestnut Hill Conservancy: How would you support federal funding and policy that help communities preserve historic buildings, protect open space and watershed resources, and expand access to local history?

For a project like this, you’ve got to work inter-agency, meaning city and federal funding and possibly even state. I’m going to give an example of Marian Anderson, who was a great soprano, national figure, but from Philadelphia. [Her] house collapsed in South Philly, and I watched them work tirelessly to have funds to restore and keep that history in Philadelphia, and they shouldn’t have had to work that hard with fundraisers.

We need to clearly delineate the process [in which] federal funds are available, communicating with our city and local agencies in my constituent offices, so that if you have land or you have a building, and you can demonstrate why it’s important that we preserve it for Philadelphia, and we don’t have to watch us lose this history that’s so vital to not just Philly, but to our nation.

My constituent services will be apt and ready, because I know how valuable it was to keep Marian Anderson’s legacy alive in our city of Philadelphia.

Question 3 — Face to Face Germantown: What laws do you think Congress can pass in the current political environment to increase housing supply for low-income renters?

In the current climate, I think everything is difficult, but in January 2027 when I hope you elect me to be sworn in, we will be able to flip the House. With that, and also with bipartisan support, I would be voting for better and more availability of Section 8 housing, for people to keep a home that maybe was left to them, and also to be first-time homeowners.

Why it’s so important to me is that it wasn’t uncommon growing up to come home and see an orange sticker on the door. My brother and I knew what that meant, that we were about to get evicted. We had to go to the ACME right on Germantown Avenue and get the boxes to pack up quick to get to the next location before the landlord found out that my mom couldn’t pay the rent.

So it’s how do we disseminate these federal programs and the information so people know what is available to them, working with our city government for our renters, but also having low interest loans for people to be first-time homeowners. I’ve been over to [the Philadelphia Housing Authority] with [President and CEO] Kelvin Jeremiah, and I see homes that can be purchased that are income driven, where people can get into a home and have that stability.

In this country, wealth is measured by home ownership. Home ownership is linked to education, and education is linked to health outcomes. It’s all a continuum, and so for someone who knows how important it is to have a stable place to lay your head, particularly as a child and even as a parent as you’re trying to comfort and keep your children safe, I will push federally and legislative-wise for these programs so that people can have low rent and own their homes.

Question 4 — Friends of the Wissahickon: As flooding, extreme heat, and biodiversity loss intensify across Pennsylvania, what role should urban forests and watershed parks play in the federal climate strategy, and what concrete steps would you take to increase federal investment in places like the Wissahickon Valley?

As a kid who grew up in Philly and loved Fairmount Park and playing hide and seek, I understand how important it is to preserve these areas, but what I believe we would need to do first is have the funding for a needs assessment to see what needs to be pruned, what needs to be cut down, what needs to be rebuilt, what is not on a solid foundation.

We will need the city and we will need the environmentalists and the arborists to come through and help us so that we have as much information as we need to support the preservation of these spaces. It’s not just for the climate in the environment, but it’s also, I will say, for mindfulness and peace and beauty that it brings. But there needs to be funding, and there needs to be a congresswoman that understands the importance of the preservation in these spaces.

I’ll do that by working with the community and with the city and seeing where we are now, because there has not been support in this space, but I will be committed to preserving that land.

Question 5 — West Mt. Airy Neighbors: Can you recall a moment from your career where you wish you did things differently? What did you learn from that experience?

I would say the moment from my career that I wish I did things differently is right now. Why I say that is that I was so committed to “How do I impact as many people’s lives as I can?” As a surgeon, I did it one patient at a time during COVID; it was 100,000 people, and people came to know my name from service. I thought, “How do I use this name recognition and this influence to have significance in people’s lives?”

So I thought about being a congresswoman, because it serves over 800,000 people, and I thought about how I was able to serve without a title and without the infrastructure of the federal government. What might I be able to do to impact lives in Philadelphia with that support? What I would do differently is because I was so excited about the opportunity, I would have asked more questions about this space, because in medicine, integrity is everything, values are everything. You have to have trust, and when you lie or you tell half-truths, you can’t keep a job and no one will rehire you.

In this space where I was there and you were there, but the story you’re telling we both know is not true, but people say it with a straight face. I don’t think anyone could have told me that in a way that I could understand it until I experienced it. So what I might have done differently is dug a little deeper, but it hasn’t changed my commitment. It just meant that I entered this in a selfless way, wanting to impact people’s lives.