Political Quotes

“I thank Congresswoman Porter for her remarks. I could not agree with her more. That is why we are doing this Special Order hour on housing. We need our Congress to wake up. Mr. Speaker, can you imagine we were wrapping up a session, and you had nowhere to go, you didn't have a place where you could lay your head tonight. You had no roof over your head on the coldest day of the year, let's assume we were in January. The reality is that on any given night in America, more than 600,000 people experience homelessness, and nearly half of these individuals-- 250,000--sleep outside. In Illinois, the average age of someone experiencing homelessness is not 55, it is not 65, it is not 70. It is just 9 years of age. Can you imagine having a grandchild, a son, a sister, a niece not having anywhere to sleep at the age of 9? Homelessness is increasing across the country because more and more hardworking families and individuals are struggling to make ends meet; and in the richest country in the world, rents are far too expensive, wages are way too low, and decades of failed housing policies have brought us to this point. For example, the National Low Income Housing Coalition has found that a full-time worker must earn $28.58 per hour to afford a modest 2- bedroom apartment. It doesn't get much better for a modest 1-bedroom apartment because a person would have to earn $23.67 to afford it. To put that in perspective, Mr.…”