Cheryl Turner is a civil and consumer rights trial lawyer earning her B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Southern California (USC). For over 20 years, she’s managed her own legal practice with an emphasis on civil rights, consumer rights, business, tax, real estate, transportation and law. Ms. Turner also advises and assists clients with tax and regulatory compliance issues. Cheryl is a former Real Estate Broker and currently holds a Public Works Construction Management Certificate. She was appointed by the Governor to the Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians where she worked to ensure that qualified persons are licensed vocational nurses and psychiatric technicians by enforcing educational requirements, standards of practice, and by educating consumers about their patient rights.
Ms. Turner supports small business grants and tax incentives to help sustain businesses in order to create and expand job opportunities in California that pay livable wages. She has advocated to award government contracting opportunities to small, minority, women-owned, and disabled veteran-owned businesses for them to provide services towards the construction of public works projects. She supports the local hiring of those who live in the area where public projects are being constructed. As we work towards building a more sustainable environment, new jobs and other opportunities will be created to meet those needs and demands.
We must keep people housed. As a board member and President of a housing association, Ms. Turner has worked for fair housing policies by developing best practices in the industry and for rent affordability. She also serves as a member of a redevelopment corporation that constructs and manages housing projects so that low-income Senior Citizens will permanently have affordable places to live. During the pandemic, Ms. Turner was one of the first to advocate that the government take on the task of creating rent and mortgage assistance programs to help keep tenants and homeowners housed during the economic shutdown.
Ms. Turner cares deeply about the environment and nature. She will work to preserve and maintain our parklands and coastlines. Her philosophy is that everyone is entitled to clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. She has served as our Los Angeles area representative to the South Coast Air Quality Management District and fought for clean air in our neighborhoods. As a lawyer, she brought legal challenges to stop the use of harmful pesticides causing toxic exposure to us from chemicals in the food we eat, injuries to farmworkers, and damage to the environment.
Ms. Turner believes that a good education is the foundation for future success. As a lawyer, she successfully brought a legal challenge and obtained an injunction to stop the civil rights violations of high school students in the Compton Unified School System when the district used an illegal grading system that artificially lowered the student’s grade point averages and prevented them from being accepted into college. The illegal grading system was stopped, and ultimately the school district was returned to local school district control. Ms. Turner serves on a commission that oversees the licensing of healthcare educational institutions throughout the state of California. She supports the allocation of the state’s budget towards ensuring that teachers receive decent pay; that students of every zip code receive necessary educational resources; funding for pre-k education to prepare children for their future educational success; internet access for students, training programs, and early apprenticeships in trade technical colleges and free community college for first-time students.
We can address the homelessness crisis by creating public-private partnerships to build more affordable housing through tax incentives, and by removing the “red-tape” obstacles that exist to building more affordable housing. We must fight to overturn the restrictions that prevent the government from building needed low-income housing. Effective supportive services must be provided to those suffering from mental illnesses, domestic violence, drug addiction or other social issues to help keep them housed.