Housing Plan

While housing foreclosure rates fall across the country, New Jersey continues to be the state with the highest rates of housing foreclosures. Here, 1 in every 75 homes faces foreclosure, and millions of our neighbors risk having their worlds turned upside down.

And it’s not just homeowners struggling to get by. Whether you live in a studio or a four-bedroom apartment, New Jersey renters pay at least $200 more than the national average. In 2018, New Jersey was the sixth most unaffordable state in the nation. To afford a mere two-bedroom apartment, a person would have to make at least double the minimum wage.

COVID-19 turned this untenable situation into a full-fledged disaster. Homeowners and renters lost their jobs or were unable to continue working due to illness. And while we continue to suffer, where have our so-called representatives been?

Black and Brown residents in our district continue to lose their homes, wealth, legacies, and neighborhoods. At the same time, developers partner with establishment politicians to enrich themselves by pricing us out of our communities.

The 10th Congressional District needs a representative who understands these issues first hand and is personally invested in seeing a change. I have lived on the same street and in the same house my entire life. Yet, we weren’t spared by the 2008 housing crisis, and my family home nearly went into foreclosure. It was only with the help of family members that we were able to keep the house I grew up in.

It’s time that we stop settling. Politicians say they will help, but more often than not, it just means relief for the wealthy and foreclosure for the rest of us.

As your Congresswoman, I will guarantee that Congress secures affordable housing and bring justice to families in our district that have been taken advantage of by greedy politicians, banks, and developers. I will:

  • Provide justice to those in our community — especially Black and Brown families — who have had their homes unfairly ripped away from them. I will introduce legislation for the Housing Crisis Survivors Program (HCSP) to give victims of predatory lending and other unethical banking practices low interest, zero down payment home loans so that they can regain their homes.
  • Establish a zero-tolerance policy towards banks that sell mortgages on the "secondary market" and fail to notify homeowners of that sale properly.
  • Require that loan payments remain precisely the same as before the transfer regardless of whether they are resold between banks or predatory debt buyers.
  • Institute the National Black Veterans Family Initiative (NBVFI), which will allow direct descendants of Black World War II Veterans — who were denied housing benefits under the first GI Bill — to receive low interest, zero down payment home loans and start building generational wealth.
  • Increase the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund from $800 million to $500 Billion and ensure that the fund adequately keeps up with inflation so that we can build high quality, affordable housing across the nation — especially in states like New Jersey— that low-income and working-class families can afford.
  • Form the Livable Cities Fund, which will finance cities and large municipalities that agree to create community land trusts, establish rent caps, and ensure 50% affordable housing units in medium and large housing developments built after 2018.