Housing is a human right, but it’s too often treated as a for-profit business. And every choice must be made keeping this in mind. In Los Angeles County, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), over 66,000 people in Los Angeles County are houseless - the second highest rate in the nation. In some parts of our district, the median income for a family of four is approximately $37,000 while the average monthly rent for a 1-bedroom apartment is well over $1800. When you do the math, you wonder how a family of four could live with this kind of income. They can’t. 

So many of us live with another family in the same unit; live on debt, with credit cards and loans; work 2-3 jobs; move out of town and/or struggle until we end up getting evicted and then experience houselessness for some time. Due to greater systemic issues of all sorts interplaying with each other, this experience is common to many of us.  This is unacceptable.  Housing is a human right — no human being should ever have to worry day in and day out about whether they’ll be able to eat, have a roof to sleep under, have access to good healthcare and education, or be able to pay for their basic living expenses and costs. Human value comes before economic value, and we must ensure that every American is able to have access to affordable housing.

Most low-income households pay more than half of their income on rent. This is wrong.

21 million households, disproportionately people of color, spend over 30% of their income on housing. This is wrong.

Only 1 in 5 households that qualify for federal housing assistance actually receive it. This is wrong.

We need to care for our people and ensure that all have the equal ability to pursue a happy life. This starts with directly addressing and responding to America’s systemically racialized housing emergency.

Additionally, with a shortage of 500,000+ units for low income renters in Los Angeles County alone and underproduced housing of 7.3 million homes from 2000 to 2015 federally, per Up for Growth’s Housing Underproduction in the U.S. report (HR 4351 YIMBY Act), we are in a housing crisis. And we aren’t even talking about the 3 million people experiencing homelessness in our country, or the 7,000 unhoused brothers and sisters on Skid Row in our district, or the 60,000+ unhoused neighbors living in LA County.

Even with the public housing that our country does have, existing public housing units require over $70 billion for physical improvements to account for dilapidation and poor conditions, with 66% of public housing residents being people of color. In Los Angeles, we have less than 10,000 units available compared to counties like New York, which has over 175,000 public housing units. This utter failure to fully address these issues further deepens housing inequality and adds to the decades of redlining and institutionalized racism for many more years to come. The time for change is long overdue.

Federal funding for housing assistance has stagnated in recent decades despite the need skyrocketing. In the $1.4 trillion omnibus Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 appropriations package Congress passed in December 2020, only $49.6 billion - or 3.5% - was for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), federal housing assistance has dropped from a high of 1.4% of GDP in 1978 to 0.23% of GDP in 2018. According to the Urban Institute, housing needs for low income renters increased by 24% from 2005 to 2015, while the number of households receiving HUD assistance increased by only 7% during the same time period. When adjusted for inflation, federal funding for housing support dropped by nearly 8% across most programs including housing choice vouchers, housing for the elderly and disabled, public housing and public-private housing partnership programs.

• HR 5385, Affordable HOME Act by Rep. Ilhan Omar, to make housing affordable and for other purposes -  not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• HR 4495, Downpayment Toward Equity Act of 2021 by Rep. Maxine Waters, to provide downpayment assistance to first-generation homebuyers to address multigenerational inequities in access to homeownership and to narrow and ultimately close the racial homeownership gap in the U.S. and for other purposes. - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• HR 4496, Ending Homelessness Act of 2021 by Rep. Maxine Waters, to provide a path to end homelesness in the U.S. and for other purposes. - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• HR 5269, ERAP Improvement Act of 2021 by Rep. Cori Bush, to expand public access to tenant financial assistance programs and for other purposes - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• HR 2664, Green New Deal for Public Housing Act by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to address energy efficiency and workforce development in the context of public housing. - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• HR 4497, Housing is Infrastructure Act of 2021, to facilitate the development of affordable housing, and for other purposes - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• HR 1532, Improving FHA Support for Small Dollar Mortgages Act of 2021 by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, to direct the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to report on barriers to making Federal Housing Administration (FHA) single-family mortgage insurance available for mortgages under $70K. - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• HR 5361, We Need Eviction Data Now Act of 2021 by Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, to require the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to establish a national evictions database, and for other purposes - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• H.Res 568 by Rep. Cori Bush, expressing that the United States is obligated to permanently end the unhoused crisis by 2025 and uphold, protect, and enforce the civil and human rights of unhoused individuals, including the human rights to housing, universal health care, livable wages, education, employment opportunities, access to public facilities, free movement in public spaces, privacy, confidentiality, internet access, vote, freedom from harassment by law enforcement, private businesses, property owners, and housed residents, and equal rights to health care, legal representation, and social services without discrimination based on housing status. - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/21
• HR 4237, Tenant Empowerment Act of 2021 by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, to protect and empower residents of certain federally assisted rental housing, and for other purposes. - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/2021
• HR 4707, Reforming Disaster Recovery Act by Rep. Al Green, to establish a community disaster assistance fund for housing and community development and to authorize the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to provide, from the fund, assistance through a community development block grant disaster recovery program, and for other purposes. - not co-sponsored by the incumbent as of 11/6/2021