Every person in this country should have access to safe and dignified housing. Unfortunately, after decades of underinvestment in public housing, skyrocketing rental prices, lack of affordable housing stock and the widening wealth gap, we are facing a housing crisis in America. On a daily basis, residents in my district face soaring rent costs and are finding themselves without an affordable place to live. My entire time in Congress I have advocated for significant investments in housing, and I am proud to have voted for bold housing plans. A transformative investment in housing is long overdue.
Public housing programs are an essential need for many hard-working Americans who struggle to find affordable housing. Our public housing infrastructure is aging and decaying before our very eyes. NYCHA, the largest public housing authority in the US, needs an investment of at least $40 billion to bring public housing units up to a state of good repair.
I am proud to represent a district with one of the largest shares of public housing tenants in the country. As their representative, I continue to fight every day to invest in public housing so that every single public housing tenant is able to live in a decent and humane home. The COVID-19 pandemic exasperated and highlighted long-standing issues of housing instability across the country. Unfortunately, the current federal safety net is simply not equipped to handle a housing crisis of the magnitude we are facing due to rising housing costs. It is time to re-imagine federal housing policy to create a housing safety net and provide desperately needed housing security. We must focus on the preservation and creation of affordable housing, investing in public housing and addressing the racial wealth gap in homeownership.
In 2022, I was pleased to grant $3,000,000 in community project funding to Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County’s Project Constellation for eight sites located throughout the Brooklyn neighborhoods of East New York, Ocean Hill, Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Rugby Remsen Village. The funding is used to build 71 units of affordable housing in Central Brooklyn that create positive neighborhood impacts by filling vacant lots and diminishing blights while acting as an anti-displacement measure in historically redlined and rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods.
For more information concerning my work on affordable housing for Brooklynites, please contact me.
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Rep. Jeffries Statement on Fort Greene Focus in his State of the District Address