{"id":1761,"date":"2018-08-04T22:03:05","date_gmt":"2018-08-04T19:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=1761"},"modified":"2018-08-04T22:03:05","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T19:03:05","slug":"state-senate-race-sylvia-santana-vows-to-fight-for-lower-auto-insurance-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/state-senate-race-sylvia-santana-vows-to-fight-for-lower-auto-insurance-rates\/","title":{"rendered":"State Senate race: Sylvia Santana vows to fight for lower auto insurance rates"},"content":{"rendered":"

DEARBORN –\u00a0The Yemeni American News<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

State Representative Sylvia Santana, who is running for the State Senate, said she has been addressing the disparities that the region\u2019s residents face, including in car insurance rates and job opportunities.
\nSantana, who was elected to the State House of Representatives in 2016, said she also wants to empower the next generation of leadership within the Democratic Party to push \u201cour Progressive agenda.\u201d
\nIn an interview with the Yemeni American News, Santana said she has tried diligently to engage all of her constituents.
\n\u201cWe have a change in Warrendale Community where we see more Arab and Muslim families in our district and I think it\u2019s very important to make sure they\u2019re a part of the neighborhood association so that\u2019s how I reached out to individuals,\u201d Santana said.
\nSantana, who represents parts of Dearborn and Detroit, said she invited \u201cright-wing Christian Republicans\u201d from Lansing to visit the Arab community in Detroit and Dearborn.
\nIn a joint effort with her Democratic colleague Abdullah Hammoud, Santana had lawmakers meet with the mayors of Detroit and Dearborn, visit the Arab American National Museum and eat at Arabic restaurants along Warren Avenue.
\n\u201cI want to make sure that we get past some of those barriers that they may have in their heads about the Arab community and Muslim community,\u201d Santana said.
\n\u201cI want to make sure that my colleagues understand who this community represents and who we are in this community.\u201d
\nSantana, who succeeded her husband at the Legislature in 2016 after he reached his term limits, added that she entered the realm of politics after working for 15 years in finance to \u201cfill the gap\u201d of inequality that underprivileged people face.
\n\u201cAnd so as I visited around the community I saw where there was some disparities,\u201d Santana said.
\n\u201cYou didn\u2019t see businesses along the commercial Corridor that were hiring individuals from the local community and so that was the reason I went to Lansing. And I said I want to make sure that I can help with some of these disparities that people have with transportation, getting access to job opportunities right in their local community and support the small business owners to grow their businesses capacity-wise so that they could hire local individuals.\u201d
\nSantana is now is looking to fill the seat of State Senator Morris Hood III, a Democrat who reached his term limit in the Legislature. It\u2019s a safe Democratic seat that will likely be decided in the August 7th primary.
\nThe district includes Dearborn, Melvindale and parts of Detroit.
\n\u201cThere is a significant amount of poverty in the city that we have to deal with,\u201d Santana said.
\n\u201cI grew up in poverty so I know what it looks like and I live in Detroit as well and I understand some of the disparities that people have when it comes to the job opportunities when it comes to transportation and infrastructure issues.\u201d
\nDetroit and Dearborn both suffer from astronomical auto insurance prices. The issue is especially prevalent in the Motor City, where almost 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line. The high rates with low income and absence of reliable public transport limit residents\u2019 mobility and access to the job market.
\n\u201cAs I knocked on doors as a state representative I found that people were concerned about their auto insurance rates and so that became the conversation as a state representative that I was having in my community,\u201d she told YAN.
\nAdvocates have accused insurance companies of \u201credlining\u201d – the racially charged practice of systematically refusing services to residents in high risk areas.
\nSantana had backed a bill that would lower prices by allowing companies to put reasonable limits on medical coverage, which is now uncapped. The measure, which was supported by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, failed to pass.
\nSantana vowed to continue to fight for a solution to the issue if elected to the Senate.
\n\u201cOf course you want to change the redlining piece of auto insurance that\u2019s hurting urban communities, so that\u2019s something that we need to work on,\u201d Santana told YAN. She added that non-driving factors like credit score and education level should not be considered to determine rates.
\nSantana said public safety is a priority for her, and one way to address it from the Legislature is to make sure that police officers and firefighters get adequate pay and benefits, including health insurance.
\nOn education, Santana said: \u201cI know that we spend money on education but we\u2019re not spending enough money to educate our children in this state and we want to make sure that children are set up for success, making sure that they\u2019re prepared for the jobs of tomorrow – whether that be in STEM, technology, we want to make sure that they\u2019re set up for the industries to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DEARBORN –\u00a0The Yemeni American News State Representative Sylvia Santana, who is running for the State Senate, said she has been addressing the disparities that the region\u2019s residents face, including in car insurance rates and job opportunities. Santana, who was elected to the State House of Representatives in 2016, said she also wants to empower the […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1763,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions\/1763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}