Earlier this year, I was asked to testify in Congress in favor of the radical Homes Guarantee platform developed by People’s Action, a nationwide federation of community and tenant organizations. At the briefing, Reps. Chuy García and Ayanna Pressley heard not just from me, but from people who have suffered unimaginably at the hands of a housing market that only cares about profit, and a government which is always either asleep at the wheel or actively working to make things worse.

A grassroots leader from Chicago, David Zoltan, spoke about his struggle to find affordable disability-accessible housing after an injury on the job, and the need for universal rent control. Debra Miller, a leader with the Jane Addams Senior Caucus, spoke of the unconscionable conditions in her public senior housing, a legacy of decades of federal neglect and “managed decline” since the 1970s. Daisy Vega, a formerly undocumented immigrant who organizes with POWER in Los Angeles, spoke of the need to fight the Trump administration’s cruel and inhumane policy of evicting mixed-status families from public and subsidized housing.

These people, and many like them around the country who are heavily impacted by the housing crisis, today released a comprehensive platform for a Homes Guarantee — a transformative platform which democratic socialists, including the Sanders campaign, should adopt alongside community and tenant leaders.