Sen. Ayanna Pressley Blasts GOP, Affirms Support For the Pryde LGBTQ+ Senior Housing Project in Boston
Republicans Stripped Funding for the Hyde Park Affordable Housing Development Earlier This Year
“Republicans are prioritizing homophobia over housing, profits over people, cruelty over compassion. Their actions to target, attack, and dehumanize our LGBTQ siblings are nothing more than a show of contempt.”
WASHINGTON — Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) delivered a floor speech in which she slammed House Republicans for advancing a housing appropriations bill that excluded critical funding for The Pryde, an affordable housing development for LGBTQ+ seniors in the Massachusetts 7th. Earlier this year, the Republican majority on the House Appropriations Committee callously removed $825,000 in federal funding earmarked for The Pryde, which Rep. Pressley has championed during the Community Project Funding process.
After the funding was stripped from the House appropriations bill, Rep. Pressley worked closely with Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) to advance the funding in the Senate.
A full transcript of her remarks is available below and the full video is available here.
Transcript: Pressley Blasts GOP, Affirms Support for The Pryde LGBTQ+ Senior Housing Project in Boston
U.S. House of Representatives
November 6, 2023
Mr. Speaker, I oppose this legislation for the draconian cuts and dangerous provisions included in it. But also for the critical funding priorities that were excluded.
With this appropriations bill, Republicans callously stripped community project funding for The Pryde, an affordable LGBTQ+ senior housing development in the Massachusetts Seventh.
It would seem with my colleagues across the aisle that the word freedom is selectively applied.
It does not apply to my bodily autonomy. It is not applied to intellectual freedom for women, African-Americans, or LGBTQ siblings when it comes to our books.
And it does not apply to the freedom to love who you love.
This project satisfies the committee’s requirements and would meet a critical need in my district at a time when mortgages are skyrocketing, and one-third of LGBTQ seniors are living in poverty, and many are forced to re-closet themselves in order to age in community in their twilight years.
Unconscionable.
Republicans are choosing homophobia over housing, profits over people, cruelty over compassion.
Their actions to target, attack, and dehumanize our LGBTQ siblings are nothing more than a show of contempt.
While The Pryde has a pathway for other federal funding, this act of policy violence contributes to the physical violence that far too many LGBTQ folks experience.
As the Vice Chair of the Task Force on Aging and Housing. I want my LGBTQ constituents and siblings in the movement to know: you deserve safe and affordable housing. You deserve to be seen and loved, and I will never stop fighting for you.
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Rep. Pressley championed funding for The Pryde in this year’s Community Project Funding process. The project – which despite Republicans’ bigoted ideological opposition to it – met the requirements for Community Project Funding and will support the conversion of a former Boston Public School building into 74 units of high-quality, service-enriched affordable housing for seniors in Boston. The project will also include 10,000 square feet of community space and help close the gap between the capital funding secured at the launch of this project and the increasing cost to complete it.
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