Decrying Policies That Serve the Powerful, Ocasio-Cortez Demands Housing Be 'Legislated as a Human Right'

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at a town hall in the Bronx Thursday night, discussed the need “to make sure that housing is being legislated as a human right.”

“Our access and our ability and our guarantee to having a home comes before someone else’s privilege to earn a profit.”
—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“What does that mean?” the New York congresswoman continued. “What it means is that our access and our ability and our guarantee to having a home comes before someone else’s privilege to earn a profit.”

Speaking in one of the New York boroughs she represents, Ocasio-Cortez—who garnered national attention for defeating a 10-term congressman in the 2018 Democratic primary—recognized the need to reform housing policies at all levels of government.

“Housing is one of the most complicated policy issues that we have, period,” she said. “Because you have everything from city council, from how things are zoned, to state rent laws, to federal tax breaks, and all of it comes together to make a picture that all too often enriches people who are already powerful and impoverishes people who are already vulnerable, and we cannot allow that to happen anymore.”

To address housing issues at the federal level, Ocasio-Cortez plans to re-introduce the Fair Chance at Housing Act and pointed out how housing policies relate to one of her landmark legislative proposals: the Green New Deal she unveiled in February with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a sweeping resolution on the global environment and U.S. economy.