No candidate understands the need for affordable housing on a personal level as Bernie does. Having grown up in a low income family who shared a small, rent controlled apartment, Bernie holds a deep passion for ensuring all Americans have adequate, affordable housing.
Bernie Sanders' last word to New York voters: The Democratic candidate for President lays out his affordable housing agenda
On Sunday, I went to Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood with Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and New York City Council Members Jumaane Williams and Ritchie Torres.
I came away from this visit more determined than ever to address the affordable housing crisis and to build an economy that works for all of us, not just those on top.
In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, the estimated 600,000 people who live in New York City’s public housing facilities should not be forced to struggle with leaky roofs, mold, unreliable heating, broken down elevators and vermin. As a nation, we must do better than that.
There is something profoundly wrong when we have a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires while we have the highest childhood poverty rate of almost every major country on earth. When it comes to the crisis of poverty and inequality, communities like Brownsville are ground zero. More than a third of Brownsville’s young men are unemployed. About 46% of Brownsville’s residents rely on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. The poverty rate in Brownsville is over 35%. And that poverty kills. People who live in Brownsville die 11 years earlier than people who live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene www.nydailynews.com/...
Bernie has a plan that will:
This plan will expand the National Housing Trust Fund, which was initiated by legislation I authored in 2001, to construct, preserve and rehabilitate at least 3.5 million affordable apartments and homes over the next decade.
It will provide federal funding to reduce the $17 billion in unmet capital needs at the New York City Housing Authority and it will substantially reduce the unacceptable backlog of capital needs in all of our nation’s public housing facilities.
It will provide enough housing vouchers to help the more than 3 million lower-income Americans who are struggling to stay in safe and secure housing today.
There is no greater barrier to equality than poverty.