I want to hear from you!
What issues do you think I should be focusing on in Springfield? Please share your thoughts in the comment box below. Your feedback is vital in helping me shape my policy agenda!
Help shape my legislative agenda
I’m always eager to hear from my constituents about the issues that matter to you. Here’s a list of some of the policy priorities I’ll be working on in the 2023 legislative session:
Expanding and Preserving Access to Housing
I’m the chair of the Housing Committee in the Illinois House, and I intend to continue the fight for affordable housing for everyone and an end to homelessness in our state. Too many families are facing housing instability, and with the end of the COVID-era eviction moratoriums, hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans could be at risk of losing their homes. We're going to work on measures to protect people from needless eviction, support the creation and preservation of affordable housing, and prevent families from becoming homeless during the pandemic and beyond.
Non-Police Crisis Response
When someone’s in a crisis — sleeping on the street, overdosing on drugs, experiencing a mental health episode — people sometimes default to calling 911. But too often that means a police officer gets dispatched, who’s not trained in handling these kinds of crises. That’s a bad situation for our law enforcement and for the person in crisis. That’s why I’ll be focusing on building out a new system, where people trained in de-escalation and crisis intervention can be dispatched to these kinds of incidents. We’ll support the new 988 call centers and connect those to a network of non-police first responders who can be dispatched to communities across the state.
College Affordability and Student Debt
Higher education in Illinois is just too expensive. Too many students leave our two- and four-year institutions with an unsustainable debt burden. I believe public colleges and universities should be debt-free for every Illinois student. And I plan to work with advocates and stakeholders to increase scholarships, grow the funding for our institutions of higher education, and tackle those “other costs” of college too — like books, transportation, and travel. We also need to make sure our public scholarship dollars aren’t going to for-profit institutions that don’t deliver good results for students.