Funding Housing for All
Housing is a basic, universal, and human right: in the richest country in the world, chronic homelessness and mass displacement cannot be the status quo. Congress is woefully out of touch with the nationwide housing crisis, especially in Chicago and its suburbs. Double-digit rent increases are becoming the norm and homeownership is becoming less possible for everyone. The private market has had its chance to solve this crisis by itself and it has failed: Congress needs a champion with a personal stake in the fight for public housing and against corporate real estate.
My life story begins in public housing, where my family was one of the first Black families to integrate Lincoln Square following the landmark 1976 Supreme Court decision in Hills v. Gautreaux. Growing up in a multi-generational apartment, in a multi-ethnic building, and living nearly all of my life as a renter, I bring firsthand lived experiences to the debate and know what will be needed to push bold housing policy so that everyone is housed with dignity.
Housing holds together a community’s history, culture, and people. This connection is under attack in all corners of the country, especially in Illinois’ 9th District where private equity companies are buying up whole blocks and driving up the rent. Now more than ever, we need fighters for public, social, and cooperative housing so our communities and neighborhoods remain intact and affordable. We need Housing for All and rent caps. We need more members of Congress who have had tenuous relationships to housing in their lives or have come home to an eviction warning on their door like I have.
From my first months in the State Senate in 2021 when I called to extend an eviction moratorium during the pandemic, I have been a staunch fighter to keep people housed: especially renters and the most vulnerable in our communities. I have championed and passed several housing bills including those that:
- Creates the Rental Fee Transparency and Fairness Act to outlaw 11 different types of excessive and predatory renter fees, put money back into renters’ pockets, and target bad-faith and exploitative landlords
- Introduced legislation to ban credit checks and eliminate discrimination against tenants with poor or insufficient credit histories
- Created and funded the Cooperative Housing Fund, empowering the Illinois Housing Development Authority to allocate up to $5 million on cooperative housing development
- Amended the Illinois Affordable Housing Act to require any state-funded residential building to meet safety and living condition standards, specifically air-conditioning and heating, after 3 Rogers Park residents died of heat exposure
In Congress, I will use my voice and every lever of power (policy, federal funding streams, etc. target="_blank" to keep people housed and communities together. We need to dramatically reinvest in public housing and repeal the racist and archaic Faircloth Amendment that puts an unnecessary cap on national public housing supply. Congress must be intentional about building and preserving housing that is permanently affordable. This includes public, social, and cooperative housing. As your Member of Congress I would fight for a major increase in Community Development Block Grants for non-private housing providers, the organizations on the front lines of the fight against the housing shortage. I would restore and reinvest rental assistance programs that keep people affordably housed. And I would increase the oversight and enforcement against illegal discrimination against housing choice vouchers. Scarcity is a policy choice and it is time for Congress to take on the generational shortage of housing in too many communities across the country.
We also need to be seriously looking at the use of artificial intelligence in fixing and inflating rental prices and landlords using these algorithms to make the most profit. I believe this practice - and any loopholes bad-actor landlords will inevitably find - should be banned at the federal level. I intend to file legislation to ban algorithmic rental price fixing in Illinois during the Illinois Senate’s 2026 legislative session.
We have a growing crisis in the US of people who work 1–3+ jobs and are homeless or housing insecure. Further, thousands of students in the 9th District across Chicago/Cook County, Lake County, and McHenry County do not have stable housing when they’re not at school. This is all a travesty and a reckless policy failure at multiple levels. Many 9th District residents who are working and homeless may find short-term solutions by staying with family and friends, but a significant portion sleep in tents, cars, on the street or at motels and extended-stay options. In Congress we need leaders who will elevate this crisis without shaming our neighbors or playing respectability “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” politics. We also need comprehensive policy analysis and action on private equity and offshore ownership of extended-stay properties by corporate real estate firms driving every last bit of money out of their investment properties while skimping on repairs, and implementing exorbitant/junk fees and draconian eviction policies. We are beyond the crisis point on housing in this country.
