Terrance “Truth” Ruth is running for mayor again in Raleigh.

Incumbent Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin is not seeking reelection.

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Ruth is one of five candidates in the non-partisan race to replace Baldwin. The others are:

Ruth is a nonprofit executive and former educator. He ran for mayor in 2022, and he received 40.55% of the city’s vote (62,498 votes).

WRAL News spoke with each candidate about their views before Election Day on Nov. 5.

Note: WRAL News’ questions in bold and candidate responses follow

Affordable housing is a huge issue in Raleigh. We're seeing little drips of progress, but there's still so much to be done. What are you going to do to address this?

Number one, I would love to make sure that residents are informed as to the crisis that we're in. Most individuals do not know that we are in a countywide 65,000-unit deficit, which equals to $3.2 billion as a county. So, we've had an $80 million bond recently, which is the largest in our city history. Durham had a $90 million, was the largest in the state history. And so, you compare that to $3.2 billion. We need all hands-on deck for this crisis. Most residents don't know the urgency when you say affordable housing. I want to make sure that residents understand the term.

When people think affordable, they normally think of $50,000 or below. … For a single person to live affordably in our city, they need to be single and they need to make [between $100,000 and $210,000 per year].

The number one thing I want to do is have a regional approach. How do we come alongside the municipalities and lead the region on affordable housing? When I say region, I mean the county, Wake County.

Number two, they've already created a fund to make sure that affordable unit development moves at the rate of market development. They've already have dollars to incentivize affordable housing across the county. What they need now is a local champion, somebody to champion this effort.

There’s some work to be done in terms of building a strategy that sits across multiple municipalities. And, I think we can do it. I think we can do it. I think it's urgency. I think the crisis demands that level of intensity.

The only way we can keep units affordable is if the city owns the land, or if the county owns the land. We can't force developers to provide affordable housing. We can incentivize it, but we can't force it. We have a lot of unused land that we own. How do you turn that into plots of land for housing?

Building affordable housing is expensive, so that part is complicated, but if we own the land itself, we can help mitigate some of that.

[We need to] start recruiting developers who are interested in this effort. And in the very last thing, neighbor to neighbor, just built an affordable housing ownership model.

Why don't we bring in different players who are trying to actually address affordable housing, and I've been working with the faith community to really rethink their property and land as well with the county, and that's another audience that's ready to engage, but they feel that they are really not being asked to come today at this moment.

You have said our prosperity hinges on our ability to invest in our local workforce, educational institutions and in downtown revitalization. Those are all big ideas. What does that vision look like to you?

The governor a couple of years ago said that we have a talent pipeline issue. We need to make sure that we have homegrown talent to absorb these amazing jobs that were coming to our area, especially the Triangle. And right now, it's difficult to really see that pipeline. And so, I think as a city, we can invest in that pipeline.

I'm a former teacher. I'm a former principal. I know what it means to have the school, the value of that school, the reputation of school, linked to community, to home values. They're connected to each other

Matter of fact, most people make their decisions about housing based on the school quality.

And so, for me, I think investing in young talent.

What do they have in our city to really make sure that skill and allow for them to enter into these jobs that's available?

I want to talk to you now about downtown revitalization. We see pockets of downtown that do have a lot of energy, a lot of offerings, but they're kind of connected by areas that really don't have a lot going on. So, what do you want to do to try to give the city more character? And perhaps, what should the character look like?

So character is a term that links you to some story. And right now, we're sitting on stories that could really bring amazing character.

We go to New Orleans because the story, the richness of the history, the richness of the foo.

I could just name one individual in our history that we really don't have shown anywhere .. and that's Ella Baker.

Ella Baker's famous for the sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement. She organized at Shaw [University]. She was the one that really encouraged Dr. King to do the Poor People's Campaign. And her DNA was here.

And so, I think that's a place in which people will come to learn that story. People will come and be a part of that history.

How do we make and make a place that really centers the stories that this city sort of rests on? And right now, I think we are leaving some of those stories untouched.

A lot of that, though, will involve bringing businesses in. We've seen some businesses leave, right? They don't have the clientele because of post-Covid and because of crime. So, businesses need to be there. You've got to get people who want to be there. How do you how do you create that?

The first thing, and I've shared this several times, we have residents now that don't feel secure about the future of our city. In their minds, we have to create that security again, and part of that is, what are they experiencing or hearing from downtown?

When I was running two years ago, the small businesses were telling me that it was it cost to have to have employees travel from far away to come and work here. They told me that they were seeing some small crimes that were occurring. They were telling me that there were some areas around downtown that needed additional revitalization.

And also, I think we are leaving one huge aspect untouched. Tulsa has something called Tulsa Remote where they pay [a] $10,000 [grant] for people to come in remote work in their [city].

We have empty buildings. We have businesses that are not coming back to downtown. How do we then remodel our downtown to engage that remote culture? It's a different strategy, it's a different game plan, but I think our city has the bones, the DNA and the universities to really entertain that audience.

I think we just need to hyperfocus on what downtowns are shifting to, rather than what they used to do.

Let's focus on public safety now. Your website says you want to adopt a holistic approach to safety beyond traditional policing. What does that mean? Do you want more patrol officers on the streets? Or do you want to direct all funding towards something else?

Officers [are] an element of safety. Safety is actually a very broad term.

Very early on, we can engage in youth programs that allow for us to touch kids in at-risk or high-risk areas before they become adults.

I went to a kickball game in southeast Raleigh.

It was 300 southeast Raleigh native residents organized this kickball game, and each team had a mother that was over the team, and the team was made named after their child that was killed by gun violence … It's called Women Wellness Kickball. And the reason why it was even called Women's Wellness is because the parents were in depression. They lost their child. And so, the community came together said, how do we create a ceasefire, cease violence and provide health to these mothers who are losing their children?

I think there's some efforts to invest in already existing strategies that the community have already established.

But the other element to that is we have the highest concentration of Ph.Ds in this region.

In Boston, they have a whole separate entity that allows for community to design things, to create, to ideate.

We have design thinking here. We have some of the best tech firms here.

Why don't we unleash our community to design, create, beta test solutions to safety, prevention, to safety, and let's be known for our ability to beta test, to create, to innovate, not just because innovative companies are here, but because the citizens themselves are actually creating the solutions we need in our city?

It's very clear that you see citizen involvement and engagement as a big priority. Critics will say we are not paying our officers enough. Do you believe that we need to be paying our officers more?

If you look at any city staff, including law enforcement, they are hovering around $50,000. I already shared earlier that $100,000 minimum is what you need to live in this city. But we want community policing. So, you can't be a community. You can't have community policing if the officer can't live in the community.

So, I think at bare minimum, let's have community policing bare minimum. Let's do that, and right now we can't even offer that.

Also, there are municipalities that surround us.

So, officers come, they learn, they train, we pay them while they're while they're in training, and then they go get a job that pays more in other municipalities, and we lose that officer.

We're losing costs just on retention alone. Forget salary.

I think there's some ways and strategies that we can use to retain talent so that we don't lose that cost.

Right now, we're just being outbid by other municipalities on law enforcement, and I think that has affected our law enforcement morale.

Okay, you got more than 40% of the vote in 2022. What have you learned since that election that you hope will push you to victory this time around.

What I've learned is, number one, people want to feel secure. They want to feel seen, heard and represented well.

And right now, that's what I'm hearing, that they don't feel that they're represented.

They want to feel that that I am using them as my top priority … that residents feel that if Terrace makes this decision, I was the first priority for him in that decision.

And right now, residents do not feel that they are the top priority beyond the residents.

This job is a very collaborative effort. You need to have those relationships. What makes you the best candidate for the job?

One, I have always been and will always campaign with a strategy. I don't mention any names. I stay right on issue.

My platform allows for collaboration. I am only a board chair. If I win that seat, I need the whole entire board. I need some votes. And so, for me, all the issues are pretty consistent. You talk to everyone they're going to say affordable housing, you talk to everyone they're going to talk about safety.

For me, it's really negotiating what those details should be and can be. But my vision and my strategy [doesn’t] exclude anyone. And, I think for some of the tension we've seen on the council, we have seen where exclusion has provided the space for some tension.

My platform allows for people to actually negotiate, dialog and have their vision included for their section of the city.

You're elected day one in office, what's your first priority?

Number one, we have to launch town halls. We have to actually get a chance to hear from residents who didn't get a chance to vote.

We actually get a chance to hear from districts that feel that they're not downtown. We talk about downtown all the time. There's some parts of our city that feel that they're ignored.

How do we get a town hall in each area so we can actually hear from the whole city, and then from there, create a moment in which each resident can come and listen and hear from the mayor directly on policy issues?

I want to remove … the middle man, and talk directly to residents. And, I want that to become a norm in our city. So, for me, just launching a town hall to actually hear from every part of this city, and I think that will help start the breadcrumbs for building trust again. between the council and residents.