Where does mayoral candidate Helen Gym stand on taxes and rent control? She won’t say.

Does mayoral candidate Helen Gym believe Philadelphia should institute a rent control system?

“This is not a yes-or-no question for me,” Gym said at a recent forum.

Does she think the city should cut or increase the wage, business, or property tax rates?

“I think we need to evolve our tax structure,” said Gym, a former City Council member. “I called for a 21st Century Tax Commission. This isn’t about single taxes.”

What about the opening of supervised drug consumption sites to reduce overdoses?

“I will work with communities to both end the open-air drug markets ... and also take action to save the lives of people dying from overdoses,” she said in the statement. “Community buy-in is essential as we build out our efforts on harm reduction and new models for treatment, recovery and care.”

Gym, one of the leading candidates in the crowded field of Democratic contenders, has been notably reluctant to take specific stances on hot-button issues facing the city during candidate forums hosted by various interest groups and neighborhood organizations.

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On some issues, such as the 76ers’ proposal to build a new arena in Center City, almost all of the candidates have dodged attempts to get them to give yes-or-no answers. (Gym said she has “skepticism about the viability of a 76ers arena and will rigorously vet that project.”)

But on other issues, Gym has been alone in not offering a clear position. Almost all of the major candidates, for instance, have given specific answers on how they would change the city’s tax structure (most support cutting the wage and business taxes) and rent control (they’re against it).

Gym’s approach to those questions is intentional.

“I have avoided yes/no answers to certain questions that cover complicated issues or pit communities against one another,” Gym said in a statement. “Our biggest problems in Philadelphia result from thinking narrowly and in silos.”

On the surface, it may appear strange that Gym has given squishy answers on policy issues, given that her ideological leanings are perhaps the best-known of all the candidates. A leader of the city’s progressive movement who has been compared to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Gym on Council championed stronger worker protection laws and increased assistance for renters, and she was an early backer of overdose prevention sites.

But that record may also explain why deflecting certain policy questions could be advantageous for Gym: Avoiding firm stances on hot-button issues like rent control could make it harder her opponents to characterize her positions as extreme.

“There’s a lot of money in this race, and if someone decided it’s a good time to attack Helen, taking ultra-left policy positions would be fodder for her opponents,” said Anne Gemmell, who led pre-K efforts under Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration and now runs a consulting firm. “She’s being careful not to give these alternative candidates a really great opposition ad or attack ad.”

Gemmell said she sympathizes with Gym’s desire to not simplify complicated policy questions into one-word answers. But Gym’s plan to put off questions about how the tax structure should change until she appoints a commission is “absolutely ludicrous,” she said.

“I’m not a fan of yes/no questions. I’m certainly a fan of clear policy position,” said Gemmell, who worked on the Service Employees International Union’s local efforts to re-elect President Barack Obama in 2012. “Launching a commission — that’s not courageous, to say the least.”

On some issues, Gym’s record offers clues as to where she may stand. She was the only co-sponsor of a 2020 resolution by Councilmember Kendra Brooks to hold hearings exploring the possibility of creating a rent control system in Philadelphia. And last year she voted against cuts to the wage and business taxes, saying the city should prioritize funding for the Philadelphia school district over cuts for large corporations.

» READ MORE: Helen Gym wants to finish the fight she started 30 years ago.

In a speech explaining her vote against the tax cuts, Gym said her Council colleagues “spent far too much time catering to powerful interests and the [Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia], rather than the 100,000 families in the School District of Philadelphia.”

In response to questions submitted to her campaign by The Inquirer last week, Gym said she is “committed to growing the tax base, attracting new businesses, and making our tax structure more equitable.”

“That’s why I will convene a new Tax Commission to overhaul our tax structure because piecemeal approaches to tax reform have not moved the needle on economic opportunity or small business and job growth for years,” she said.

On Council, Gym was a leader in the effort to reduce the 10-year property tax abatement on new construction, which progressives contended was draining resources from the School District of Philadelphia and fueling gentrification.

Asked if she would pursue a full elimination of the abatement if she became mayor, Gym said she was “proud to have led the first changes to the ten-year tax abatement in decades, but my focus right now is working with stakeholders to develop new subsidy programs that incentivize development for the future, not the past, and keep residents from being displaced as we grow.”

As for drug consumption sites, Gym was an early backer of bringing one to Philadelphia as a harm-reduction strategy in the fight against the opioid crisis.

“Safe-injection sites are going to be controversial and require us to think and act differently, but they are among the most promising new approaches to come forward while we work to end the opioid crisis,” she said in 2017. “I support establishing one in Philadelphia.”

It would be difficult to discern some of those stances from Gym’s campaign website, which was updated last week to include a more than 5,000-word section on policy issues.

The website includes policy specifics, such as declaring a state of emergency on gun violence and tackling Philadelphia’s trash problem by creating a new Department of Sanitation and Waste Management that is separate from the Street Department. Much of it also recounts her past accomplishments and states goals, rather than policy strategies.

Gym says voters should look to her record to learn what kind of mayor she would be.

“The biggest distinction between me and the other candidates is that I have actually succeeded in fixing and turning around broken systems,” she said in a statement. “In order to be this successful, I delivered smart and effective policies and earned the trust and confidence of a wide group of stakeholders by constantly engaging, fixing problems, and getting results.”