Welcome. I'm Ritchie.

There is no issue more important to me than expanding access to safe and affordable housing. When I was growing up in the Bronx, public housing was a lifeline for my family. My mother struggled everyday to support her 3 children on $4.25 per hour, the minimum wage in the 1990s. I would not be where I am today without the stability affordable housing gave me and my family. I want to ensure every American, no matter their zip code, can say the same.  We need more affordable housing to tackle the homelessness crisis. Every day, I’m fighting for the development of more affordable housing, a universal housing voucher program, a sweeping reinvestment in our existing public housing infrastructure to address billions of dollars of capital needs, and building back our housing infrastructure better, faster, and cheaper. You can count on me to make sure the Bronx gets its fair share.

In the world’s wealthiest nation, poverty is a policy choice – not an inevitability. The continued public health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have laid bare the systemic inequities stemming from decades of racism, poverty, and economic inequality. Congress needs to commit to enacting policies that prioritize the needs of the 140 million people in the United States who are poor, low-income, or one emergency away from economic ruin. With the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now more important than ever that Congress supports and uplifts our most vulnerable populations – children and their families. The crisis of child poverty strikes close to home for me. I am committed to reforming and expanding the Child Tax Credit, which would slash child poverty in half. The National Academies of Sciences panel on child poverty found an enhanced Child Tax Credit to be the single most effective tool for reducing child poverty in America. In the South Bronx, 68 percent of children are deprived of the full benefit because their parents earn too little. We owe it to children and parents to make the Child Tax Credit work for them. I’m fighting every day to pass legislation that ensures the enhanced and expanded Child Tax Credit is made permanent. 98 percent of children in the South Bronx will benefit from the expanded Child Tax Credit. This critical investment in our children will improve educational and economic outcomes for future generations and break the cycle of racially concentrated poverty. In Congress, I am committed to ensuring that health, housing, schools, and jobs are viewed as fundamental rights for everyone. By radically distributing resources and reinvesting in social services, we can build a social safety net that will guarantee a better tomorrow for everyone

After the devastation and hardship New Yorkers experienced this past year, a post-COVID world cannot come soon enough. New York City risks becoming a shadow of its former self if we don’t make the right investments to get our economy back on track.  The dual crises of COVID-19 and systemic racism have magnified the economic inequality that plagues our country, and we can’t afford to return to the pre-pandemic status quo. We need to give hard working people a fighting chance at success.  As a member of the House Committee on Financial Services, I’m fighting every day to rebuild a more inclusive middle class. I’m in favor of increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, which would give millions of Americans a fighting chance at a better life by lifting people from poverty, narrowing racial pay gaps, and building a more equitable economy for everyone.  I’m also a strong supporter of the labor movement, which is our best hope to revitalize the middle class. Strengthening unions is a pivotal step towards mitigating growing income inequality and worker safety concerns. Congress needs to significantly expand the rights of workers to unionize and enhance protections for those whose efforts to unionize are impeded by their employers.