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Constitutional Statute · Housing & Connection
CS-14 · Implements Rights 47 & 49
Portrait source: Attributed to Gilbert Stuart, Robert R. Livingston portrait. Wikimedia Commons. Source

A Roof and a Connection Are Not Luxuries

We built a country where you cannot get a job, see a doctor, do your homework, or apply for help without an internet connection — and then let it cost whatever the provider wanted. We built one where people sleep on the street in the richest nation on earth. This statute treats both as what they are: infrastructure. Broadband capped at 2% of your income. And no homelessness by government failure.

Before

Essential to live — and priced like a luxury

Every part of life moved online — jobs, school, benefits, doctors — and then broadband was left to cost whatever a provider chose, in whatever places it found profitable.Check it

Rural and poor communities simply weren’t wired. Kids did homework in parking lots. A household could afford the monthly bill and still be cut off because it couldn’t afford the modem.Check it

Meanwhile housing became a speculative asset. Rents outran wages, zoning strangled supply, and landlords could turn away anyone paying with a voucher.Check it

And in the richest country on earth, people slept on the street — treated as an unfortunate fact of nature rather than a policy choice.Check it

Now

Both are infrastructure. Both are guaranteed.

Broadband is affordable by definition: no more than 2% of household income for qualifying service. Below 200% of poverty, it costs at most $10 — and the subsidy is an entitlement, not a lottery.

Affordability includes the equipment and the installation. Universal service means everywhere — with speed minimums, so "served" can’t mean a useless trickle.

Government services must remain reachable offline. Not having internet can never become a penalty for dealing with your own government.

And housing: no homelessness by government failure, plus zoning reform, anti-speculation rules, tenant protections, and a ban on turning people away for their source of income.

Before · What "affordable" meant

Nothing. Providers set list prices, and if you couldn’t pay, you went without.Check it

Now · What "affordable" means

A hard number: no more than 2% of monthly household income for the qualifying tier — $40 on a $2,000 income, $100 on a $5,000 income — regardless of the provider’s list pricing. At or below 200% of the poverty level, no more than $10 a month, as an entitlement any eligible household that applies must receive.

Before · The hidden costs

People could afford the service and still be locked out by the modem, the router, and the installation fee.Check it

Now · The hidden costs

Affordability includes equipment and installation — subsidized at the same eligibility threshold. Access you can’t physically switch on is not access. And rates, fees, and data practices must be published in plain language.

Before · Who got wired

Providers built where it paid. Rural, remote, and poor areas were left with nothing, or with speeds too slow to matter.Check it

Now · Who gets wired

Universal service with real geographic coverage obligations and speed minimums — so "connected" means genuinely usable, everywhere.

Before · Government by website only

Agencies moved services online and left people without connectivity — often the ones who needed help most — unable to reach their own government.Check it

Now · Government by website only

Offline alternatives are required. Lacking internet may never disadvantage you in reaching public services — and applications for the broadband subsidy itself must be completable without internet.

Before · Sleeping outside

Homelessness was treated as weather — regrettable, inevitable, nobody’s responsibility.Check it

Now · Sleeping outside

The right to housing, with the principle stated plainly: no homelessness by government failure. Shelter becomes an obligation the government owes, not a charity it may extend.

Before · Why housing costs so much

Zoning choked supply while investors bought homes as speculative assets, and tenants had little protection against either.Check it

Now · Why housing costs so much

Zoning reform, anti-speculation measures, tenant protections, and inclusionary-zoning requirements for federally assisted development. Housing is treated as shelter first and an investment vehicle second.

Before · "We don’t take vouchers"

A landlord could reject you outright for paying with housing assistance — a legal way to exclude the poor from entire neighborhoods.Check it

Now · "We don’t take vouchers"

Housing anti-discrimination protections that expressly include source of income. Your voucher is money, and refusing it because of where it came from is discrimination.

Before · Rebuilding what was hollowed out

Communities stripped of investment for generations had no dedicated mechanism to rebuild.Check it

Now · Rebuilding what was hollowed out

The Community Reinvestment Infrastructure Fund — with defined eligibility, capitalization, and oversight — gives disinvested communities a real instrument, and individual rights of enforcement back the whole statute up.

Before · Buying, keeping, and losing a home

The same house appraised lower once they saw who lived in it — and proving intent was nearly impossible. In foreclosure, banks produced affidavits signed by people who’d verified nothing, strung borrowers along in loss mitigation while foreclosing anyway, lost the same documents over and over, and kept the surplus when the sale cleared more than the debt. Behind it all sat a mortgage system running on a public guarantee nobody had voted for — private gains, public losses, discovered only after 2008.Check it

Now · Buying, keeping, and losing a home

Neighborhood composition can’t touch a valuation, statistical proof of undervaluation shifts the burden onto them, and effect counts — no need to prove intent. You get the appraisal free before closing and a second one at their expense if it looks tainted. Foreclosure requires actual proof they hold your note; a robo-signed affidavit voids the case. Ninety days to cure, no foreclosing while your loss-mitigation application is pending, one real human to talk to, and any surplus from the sale is yours automatically. And the public guarantee behind mortgage finance has to be written down and voted on — losses hit shareholders and executives first, and any institution taking the backstop has to lend everywhere, not just where it’s most profitable.

This is the plain-language version. The binding text is CS-14, which implements Rights 47 and 49 of the Constitution.

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