Each month, one in three Bronx households faces the same impossible math: more than half their income gone to rent, leaving little for groceries, transportation, or a moment of rest.

When rent takes everything, even a small setback can put us in a financial emergency. The urgency of the crisis calls for a bold new vision: housing built for people’s needs, not corporate profit.

Our homes are controlled by corporate landlords who care solely about lining their pockets. The only solution is to take the profit motive out of housing. Step one: repeal the “Faircloth Amendment,” the federal ban that’s blocked new public housing construction for decades. 

New public housing builds will not only be good quality and fully modernized, they will be truly affordable, with rents that cost us no more than 20% of our income.

And for those already living in public housing, Andre will fight to accomplish what neither party has been able to do: fully fund the backlog of needed repairs – including thorough safety inspections – so no family lives in danger.

In addition to fighting for new public housing, Andre will push for tenants to receive immediate relief for sky-high rents.

It’s past time for the federal government to intervene and treat high rent prices as a nationwide crisis. In Congress, Andre will fight to make this a reality, by funding rental assistance to ensure no household in America pays more than 20% of their monthly income on rent. 

The national government would cover the difference through a fund covered by increasing taxes on billionaires and Wall Street and by slashing our bloated military budget by billions of dollars.

Andre is committed not just to easing today’s crushing rents, but to ending the stranglehold of corporate landlords over our lives, and building a future where tenants gain real power.

Eight out of ten Bronx residents are renters, yet much like the rest of the country, our rents keep rising while our wages have stayed the same. It’s time for our paychecks to stop funding big real estate. Upon taking office, Andre will back a nationwide Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, in which tenants get first right to purchase a property when a landlord sells it. A federal fund would provide tenants with a loan covering 97% of the purchase price, at zero interest, as well as providing funds for building maintenance to make sure rents stay affordable.

This bill would also seize housing from criminally negligent landlords who hike rent illegally, neglect mandatory repairs, force tenants to live in hazardous conditions, or discriminate against tenants with housing vouchers – returning this housing stock back to the tenants.

No one should work full-time and still live in poverty. Yet here in NY-15, more than 30% of our neighbors live under the poverty line. That’s why on day one Andre will fight to raise the federal minimum wage to $30 an hour.

We’ve earned it. Since the 1970s, worker productivity has more than doubled, but our wages have barely moved. The federal minimum wage is still stuck at just $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009. Meanwhile, the cost of everything we need to survive has exploded.

In the Bronx, the living wage for a single adult is already $25.48. Add just one child, and that number jumps to $45.66 an hour. Families are expected to keep up with inflation and corporate price gouging on paychecks that haven’t budged in over a decade.

It’s no wonder that 86% of Americans say grocery prices are a major source of stress. Wages need to catch up to reality, and Andre will make sure they do.

In the Bronx, immigrant and US-born workers live and work side by side, shaping one of the most vibrant, diverse communities in the nation. Yet Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and violent ICE raids terrorize our families, deepen divisions, and worsen our living conditions.

The billionaire class wants to divide us. Andre will fight to unite workers, immigrant and American-born alike, to build a country for everyone.

Upon entering office, Andre would sponsor a bill to grant full legal status to all undocumented immigrants, the only thing that would put an immediate end to ICE’s reign of terror in our neighborhoods.

Employers exploit deportation threats to force immigrant workers into accepting lower wages than US-born workers, creating a race to the bottom that drives down all of our paychecks. Andre will fight for a $30 minimum wage for all workers, reform exploitative guest worker programs, and win immediate legal status for whistleblowers who expose wage theft, unsafe conditions, or employer collusion with ICE.

The Bronx is at the center of a drug addiction crisis that has devastated our neighborhoods. While overdose deaths are finally going down across much of the country, here in the Bronx they’re still climbing, proof that our communities are being left behind.

Politicians have either turned a blind eye, or incorrectly addressed the crisis through overpolicing. What we need are immediate solutions.

Decades ago, young Bronx residents took over Lincoln Hospital and established “Lincoln Detox,” a program that offered rehabilitation while placing blame for the addiction crisis on the system, not the individual.

The blame for today’s crisis is also on the system. In the 1990s and 2000s, Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and McKesson spent billions pushing opioids they knew were addictive. Executives reaped record profits while overdose deaths soared – and places like the Bronx, still bearing the burden, saw none of that profit.

Andre will fight for a tax on the profits of these pharmaceutical corporations, with every dollar funding addiction treatment and healthcare in places like the Bronx.

Hip hop was born in the Bronx. Our culture shaped the world, yet the very community that created it still struggles with underfunded schools, shuttered community centers, and too few opportunities for young artists. Meanwhile, music industry executives and corporate labels rake in over $15 billion from hip hop each year while giving back little to the place that made it all possible.

It’s time to create a robust public fund for art and culture in the Bronx. Once in office, Andre will propose a Cultural Justice Tax on the corporate executives and record labels that profit the most from hip hop and other popular genres.

These revenues would go directly into a Culture for the People Fund, which would: Launch a free concert series across Bronx parks and neighborhoods; fully fund local museums, galleries, and cultural institutions; provide grants, residencies, and rehearsal spaces for young musicians in the Bronx, DJs, dancers, and artists; and invest in school and community programs to guarantee every Bronx youth has access to arts education.

Our opponent, Ritchie Torres, has accepted over $1.4 million from the pro-Israel lobby. It is no coincidence that he strongly supports all existing US aid to Israel, and refuses to call Israel’s war on Palestinians what it is: a genocide that has killed over 65,000 people, including over 20,000 children. 

But Torres himself is but a representative of the larger status quo in the political establishment, where pro-Israel lobbying organizations like AIPAC are able to pour millions of dollars into directly influencing elections and policies, unseating progressives and making sure that our government keeps the funds flowing for genocide and occupation. During the 2023-2024 election cycle, 65% of all members of Congress received funding from AIPAC.

An organization like AIPAC has no place in our government. Andre will fight to take corporate lobbyists like AIPAC out of politics by banning private money in electoral races.