Connecticut families face some of the highest energy costs in the nation while corporate profits soar, clear evidence that our affordability crisis is the result of policy choices, not inevitability. For too long, decisions have prioritized extreme wealth and corporate interests over working people. The Real Affordability Agenda charts a different path: lowering costs by expanding child care, creating a child tax credit, advancing a public healthcare option, building affordable housing, and holding energy companies accountable. This isn’t abstract, it’s already working in states like Massachusetts and New Mexico. With the right policies, we can rein in costs, expand opportunity, and build an economy that works for everyone:

 

• Make housing affordable and stable: Enact just-cause eviction protections for all tenants, cap excessive rent increases, support tenant unions, and give renters the first chance to buy their homes. Expand affordable housing, increase subsidies, and tackle zoning barriers that drive up costs.

• Lower the cost of homeownership: Invest in repair and improvement programs, prioritize housing for veterans, and empower municipalities to expand access and affordability.

• Take on energy costs: Break up utility monopolies, create a public power option, and allow towns to build or buy their own systems. Lower rates by capping profits, banning ratepayer-funded executive bonuses, and tying CEO pay to workers.

• Build a cheaper, cleaner energy system: Expand solar, microgrids, and heat pumps, modernize infrastructure, and transition off costly fossil fuels.

• Make child care truly affordable: Guarantee universal child care with costs capped by income so families can work without being priced out.

• Lower health care costs: Expand access to affordable, universal care so no family has to choose between treatment and bills.

• Put money back in workers’ pockets: Raise wages to at least $25/hour, end subminimum wages, and strengthen the right to organize.

• Fund it fairly: Tax extreme wealth, close corporate loopholes, and reinvest in housing, energy, food access, and family affordability.