Ocasio-Cortez: Guarantee of a Home Comes Before ‘Privilege to Earn a Profit’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) says the guarantee to a home takes precedence over another individual’s ability to earn a profit.

The New York lawmaker made the controversial remarks during a town hall event in the Bronx. She minimized the significance of her “luxury” living arrangements during the event, comparing it to a public housing unit she recently visited in Queens.

“I move into this building, and it’s marketed as a ‘luxury’ building in D.C.,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s an efficient building, it’s clean, it has public space, it has a rooftop garden—y’all watching my Instagram—it has clean air, it has clean water. And I think about this and I’m like, ‘Hm, this is what a luxury building is like.’”

She spoke ill of tenant-owned, for-profit buildings during the speech, stumping for the universal “right to a dignified home.”

“Another world is possible,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We can live in buildings that are not-for-profit, or tenant-owned, there are so many ways we can slice this and we can structure it in a way where all people have the right to a dignified home.”

She also proclaimed that an individual’s “privilege to earn a profit” should not come before another’s “guarantee” of a home.

“We have to make sure that housing is being legislated as a human right,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “What does that mean? What it means is that our access and our ability and our guarantee to having a home comes before someone else’s privilege to earn a profit.”

Dan Bongino translated her remarks, tweeting, “In other words, AOC believes you should go to work to pay everyone else’s mortgage. I’d laugh at this if she weren’t serious.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s luxury apartment, which is situated in DC’s Navy Yard neighborhood, hosts an array of features including an indoor lap pool and golf simulator studio. Studio apartments in her building reportedly start around $2,000 per month, while bigger apartments go as high as $5,000 per month.