Issue Position: Housing

Issue Position

Congressman Serrano is committed to the idea that low income and working families have a right to safe, decent and affordable housing in this country. As the population in the Bronx continues to grow, questions of how best to maintain housing affordability become even more important. Across the City, New Yorkers are facing fewer and fewer options in the area of affordable housing. Serrano believes that this trend is fundamentally wrong, and is working to prevent New York City from becoming a place where only the super rich can afford to live.

As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, he consistently advocates and votes in favor of funding increases in housing. He believes that whether the issue is fighting to ensure that this country's Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) are funded at their needed levels, or that Congress acts to establish safeguards against the loss of affordable housing, or that we crack down on predatory, unscrupulous housing lenders who prey on people's desire to own a home with hidden and flexible mortgage rates, Serrano is a firm believer that housing ought to be among our top domestic national priorities.

Over the years he has worked with the City of New York to provide more tools to prevent the loss of affordable housing, and he favors the establishment of a National Housing Trust Fund, which would create a permanent, ongoing source of money that can be used to build, rehabilitate and preserve affordable housing. As a life long New Yorker, Serrano feels very strongly that families who have spent their entire lives in New York, who have helped to make this city great, should not face the prospect losing their homes because incomes have not kept pace with rental increases, or private investors see they can turn even greater profit by forcing people of more modest means out of their homes.

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