Housing Advocates Gain More Allies on Capitol Hill, by Way of New York City

"Two years after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset over 20-year incumbent Joe Crowley, progressives continued their shake-up of New York’s congressional delegation in 2020, pulling an already liberal congressional class considerably further to the left," writes Caroline Spivack.

Spivack notes the liberal politics of two newly elected congressmembers in particular: Ritchie Torres, who will become the first openly gay Latino to serve in the House, and Jamaal Bowman, a Black middle-school principal who beat a 16-term incumbent in the primary.

Those liberal politics includes strong support for public investments in housing. Brown, for example, "says he will push for a deep reinvestment in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and federal funds to build new low- and middle-income apartments in a policy agenda he refers to on his campaign website as the 'new deal for housing,'" reports Spivack.

Torres "cut his political teeth as a tenant organizer, and while serving on the Council championed affordable housing, fighting against what he refers to as the 'humanitarian crisis' in the city’s NYCHA developments," writes Spivack. "As the chair of the Council’s Committee on Public Housing, he investigated poor building conditions and played a role in exposing the city’s failures to address lead-paint contamination."

Add Brown and Torres to a congressional caucus that includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nydia Velázquez, and Yvette Clarke for some of the most ambitiously progressive housing policy proposals on Capitol Hill.