Like 88% of our district, Darializa is a renter. She knows what it’s like to watch the vast majority of each month’s paycheck go towards rent and dream about what life could be like if our leaders fought for homes we can truly afford in New York instead of their corporate real estate developer donors. For too many families across our community, the decades of rising rents have meant they’ve either had to leave the neighborhoods where they were or have been teetering on the brink of eviction, barely able to make ends meet. 

But she knows it doesn’t have to be this way. Together, we can renew the federal commitment to public housing so that NYCHA residents can live with dignity, protect renters, and invest in innovative models that offer permanent affordability and community control. As your Congresswoman, she would:

Protect Renters

• By fighting back against greedy developers and predatory landlords for more federal funding for rental vouchers, 

• By supporting federal legislation banning the all-too-common discrimination against tenants holding Section 8 and other vouchers, 

• By strengthening tenant rights, 

• By supporting Rep. Delia Ramirez’s Tenants’ Right To Organize Act, 

• By supporting federal legislation capping rent increases on existing units at 5% annually for landlords who own more than 50 properties or 20 million units, 

• By holding landlords who rent to Section 8 voucher holders but violate HUD housing quality standards accountable.

• By supporting the establishment of a federal rental registry alongside LLC transparency legislation, the policy would ensure that New Yorkers can readily identify their landlords rather than interacting with opaque shell entities.

Invest in Innovative Housing Models

• By supporting the Northern Manhattan Community Land Trust (NMCLT) and the creation of other community land trusts in northern Manhattan or the Bronx.

• By working to reform New York City’s outdated and unnecessarily limited ability to expand municipal or state bonding capacity to fund public services and invest in affordable housing.

• By co-sponsoring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Homes Act.

Renew the Federal Commitment to Public Housing & Invest in NYCHA

Everyone deserves a safe, accessible, habitable home to call their own and a landlord that treats them with dignity and respect — not leaking ceilings, broken appliances, and used-up lightbulbs in common areas that never seem to be replaced. The 520,000+ New Yorkers who call NYCHA home are no exception. 
But for far too many NYCHA residents, that is not the reality. And this is particularly true for our community in uptown Manhattan and the Bronx: 20% of NYCHA’s 150,428 units are concentrated in NY-13.

As your Congresswoman, she would: 

• Use all the tools in our federal toolbox to make decades overdue investments in NYCHA, such as replacing broken elevators, fixing run-down kitchens and bathrooms, replacing lead paint, and much more.

• Work to ensure NYCHA and Section 9 public housing units are protected as homes New Yorkers can truly afford, and not converted to market-rate housing.

• Fight tooth and nail to increase federal commitments to meet NYCHA’s capital needs and push the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to reallocate critical federal dollars to NYCHA developments.

• Push for the expansion of heat pump installation (which will ensure residents have access cheaper, more eco-friendly, and more reliable heating and air conditioning) and electric induction stoves (which will decrease indoor air pollution) in NYCHA houses in district.

• Support legislation that prohibits the discrimination and exclusion of New Yorkers with past convictions (and their families) from public housing.

• Co-sponsor Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal For Public Housing Act, and more.

She knows that the fabric of our communities  — and our city — are made stronger by affordable housing, and she would work closely with community members, tenants, tenant organizers, and housing justice advocates to enact truly affordable, accessible housing from Harlem to Kingsbridge and everywhere in between.