The H.E.A.L. Act tackles the root causes of the housing crisis first by creating a living wage, eliminating out-of-pocket healthcare and education costs, and legally breaking up the Wall Street monopolies that drive up rents when a handful of corporations own too many homes. This will give families breathing room and a fair shot at homeownership. Once we pass the H.E.A.L. Act, we will enact rent stabilization and limit speculative corporate ownership of single-family homes.
But as an HR professional, I know that a long-term systemic rollout doesn't keep a roof over your head tonight. We cannot wait for Congress to fix the housing crisis; we have to use every existing administrative weapon at our disposal right now.
Wall Street private equity firms pay armies of lawyers to find legal loopholes to buy up single-family homes and hike up your rent. I am going to use my 13 years of HR compliance experience to use federal loopholes to take that housing back for District 7. Here is what I am doing for our community right now:
1. The McKinney-Vento Title V Loophole (Federal Surplus Property) Did you know that under Title V of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the federal government is legally required to offer unutilized, excess federal properties to local organizations to assist unhoused and low-income populations for free? If elected, I will hire a Grant Director and Coordinator to train District 7 nonprofits to scan the weekly Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and General Services Administration (GSA) suitability lists. We are going to aggressively claim empty federal land and buildings in Illinois for affordable housing before corporate developers can buy them at auction.
2. The Section 108 Funding Multiplier (Total Funding Warfare) Most politicians just cross their fingers and hope to win standard, highly competitive federal grants. We are bypassing that. If elected I would train local municipalities in our district on how to leverage the HUD Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program. This obscure administrative rule allows local governments to borrow up to five times their annual Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) allocation to fund massive affordable housing projects immediately. We don't need a new law to do this; we just need a Representative who actually reads the federal manual.
3. Auditing the Chicago Housing Authority (Operational Dominance) If you are a corporate Private Property Management (PPM) firm collecting our federal tax dollars while leaving District 7 residents in unsafe, neglected public housing, your free ride is over. If elected, I would empower local tenant unions with the exact templates needed to file formal, data-driven complaints directly to the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) Office of the Inspector General. We will use administrative law to force the termination of their government contracts and hand those properties over to accountable, community-led organizations.
We can’t get to deep, permanent reform until we fix the system. The H.E.A.L. Act is the roadmap, but I am fighting for your housing today.
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