🚨Bill signing alert 🚨

Dear Neighbor,

Today I stood with Gov. Pritzker and a number of my colleagues as he signed a new law: the major affordable housing package that I worked on this session.

It was an incredible moment, and the culmination of years of hard work from lots of stakeholders. The bill will set aside hundreds of millions of dollars over the next four years to subsidize the construction of thousands of new units of affordable housing. It will draw down hundreds of millions more in federal tax credits and private investment. And it will create property tax incentives for developers who build new affordable units, and for landlords who rehab units and keep their rents down. Not to mention, it will finally require suburban communities to live up to a state law requiring affordability — a major step forward for integration in the suburbs.

I'm so proud to see this legislation come to fruition. As chair of the Housing Committee — and as the legislator from a district facing the challenges of gentrification and displacement — I know the crisis our neighbors are facing. Rising property taxes are pushing longtime homeowners out and causing rents to rise on longtime tenants. And for those who are forced to leave their homes, there aren't other affordable options in the community they call home. This measure is a vital step toward addressing this crisis here and across our state, and I thank the Governor for enacting it.

Summer is the time when the Governor takes action on all the bills we passed in May, and so far this year, Gov. Pritzker has already signed a number of transformative pieces of legislation that I was proud to support. We made law a major new expansion of voting rights, including making Election Day a holiday, expanding vote by mail, and increasing access to curbside voting. We also made permanent the increased access to telehealth that began with the pandemic and has provided care for countless people with physical, mental, and behavioral health challenges. We continued our work in criminal justice reform, including prohibiting law enforcement from lying to minors during interrogations and expanding restorative justice practices. And just last week, the Governor signed a bill making Illinois the second state in the nation to allow over-the-counter access to birth control.

The Governor's also signed four other measures I carried in the legislature so far, with nine more still awaiting his signature. He's enacted our bold new protections against wage theft, requiring employers to more fairly compensate their workers if they don't get paid for the hours they worked. We have a plan to collect data about college students who are also parents, in order to create policies at our public universities and community colleges that better enable those students to succeed. The governor signed our bill to encourage inclusion in youth sports by allowing Muslim girls and other religious students to wear uniforms respecting their traditions of modesty. And we'll require more transparency in corporate filings thanks to a newly signed law that will require the Secretary of State to post up-to-the-minute publicly accessible data.

This progress doesn't happen in a vacuum. The Illinois House Progressive Caucus has fought hard for these kinds of changes. And we do it in collaboration and conversation with you, our constituents in communities across the state, who help guide our decision making.

To that end, I'd love for you to join me at our next community coffee on Saturday, August 7 at Brew Brew Coffee & Tea. Please come by, have a coffee, and share your thoughts on progressive policies we can fight for in the future. Click here to sign up.

Meanwhile, we'll continue the fight for housing for all, healthcare for all, and a community that's safe and welcoming to all its residents.

Thanks,

-Will