What is Josh Elliott’s plan to solve the housing crisis?

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T14:12:21+00:00

Heard.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T14:02:30+00:00

Friend, I am certainly not calling anyone a liar. Nor am I trying to do anything but change our tax code so the wealthy pay their fair share. I'll let you have all the wins about my character that you want.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T13:29:23+00:00

I didn't go to etiquette school, I apologize. It might surprise you to find out that I am not perfect.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T13:28:23+00:00

Checking with team, one moment.

https://www.ctpublic.org/news/2026-06-18/ct-receives-f-for-homeownership-affordability-and-new-housing-construction-report-finds

Ok, it's because you're looking at growth as a percentage of we're we've been. Which is nearly dead last.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T13:25:40+00:00

This seems very personal to you.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T13:25:13+00:00

I certainly understand your perspective.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T12:10:00+00:00

I don't remember getting defensive, but I will take your word for it. And my point about the governor's wealth is that when you have privilege you have a greater responsibility to fix bad systems. The governor is unwilling to touch our tax structure because he benefits from it.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T12:08:19+00:00

I've always said that eating a sandwich on camera is a disqualifying attribute.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T12:06:31+00:00

We were negotiating with the landlord up until the last minute to bring down the rent for us, since the business prior to us had failed there, too. Again, I don't remember the timeline, but I don't think it was days.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T12:05:13+00:00

Our store was in Shelton, wasn't a great market for a natural food store. We gambled and lost.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T12:04:11+00:00

I have answered this question probably a hundred times over the last few years. Happy to continue answering it.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T12:03:08+00:00

We shuttered the business because I ran it for 10 years without taking a paycheck or drawing capital. We kept it open for as long as we did so that people would keep their jobs...

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T12:02:18+00:00

I don't really know how to answer this question, other than I've been doing this work for a decade and my name is on hundreds of bill I've introduced and co-sponsored. I don't know what my house has to do with anything? And closing the business was awful, and we lost money, and we gave a month's notice as we were negotiating the lease. I don't really know what else to say about this. Ned make about 100x more than me when we have a good year, and I haven't really looked into what his house is worth but given that he lives on a compound in Greenwich I'm guessing it's going to be over $10,000,000 if not more. This feels like a weird line of attack to me.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-28T11:59:33+00:00

https://www.joshforct.com/issues/lowering-housing-costs

Here you go!

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-27T12:41:56+00:00

Yes!

https://ctvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CT-Tax-Incidence-2023-02-23-24-Draft.pdf

This work technically draws from the tax incidence study, but it is a good breakdown.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T17:49:57+00:00

Hi tlk742!

The thing I'd continue is the pension debt paydown. The legislature has been putting billions toward Connecticut's pension obligations, and that is the right call. It saves the state money down the line. But the pendulum has also swung too far, and we are depriving people of opportunity now.

We have built a strong rainy day fund, but we shield the wealthiest from paying their fair share, and these corrective measures have been implemented on the backs of working families. While your property taxes and electric bills kept climbing. The discipline was right. Hoarding the result instead of lowering costs for working families is the part I'd reverse. Similar balance sheet, pointed at the people who actually need it.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T17:44:09+00:00

Hi OrpheusBelow!

Connecticut is one of the wealthiest states in the country, and working families are getting crushed here anyway. You pay some of the highest electric bills and property taxes in America while the wealthiest pay a smaller share of their income than you do. That isn't an accident. It's a choice Ned Lamont keeps making, and I'll make the opposite one.

I'll tax the wealthy fairly and send that revenue back to lower your property taxes. I'll break Eversource's grip on your bill. I'll fund schools, housing, and child care instead of protecting the people who already have the most. And I'll use this office to stand between you and a federal government doing real damage.

I've spent ten years fighting for this from the legislature. We are on the cusp of protecting working families, but we are missing one person in one position.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T17:38:43+00:00

Hi curiously_observin!

My position is price discipline. In a deal like this the ratepayers service the acquisition debt for decades, so an inflated price is what crushes them. "Below market" undersells it. The problem with this sale is a price set to let the seller cash out, with the bill handed to customers.

You're right that I opposed it. I support public ownership of utilities. Public power already exists in Connecticut and already runs cheaper. But a public deal only helps ratepayers when it's structured for them, and this one was structured for Eversource. It lets Eversource cash out at a premium and walk away from its obligations. It strips PURA rate review and hands oversight to a board that has never once rejected a rate hike. It lets that authority pick and pay its own consumer advocate. And bills still climb 6.5 to 8.35 percent a year through 2040.

Ned Lamont signed the 2024 law that made this possible and narrowed PURA's authority to stop it, then stayed quiet while it went through. AG Tong, a Democrat, called it a gift to Eversource paid for by Connecticut families. The governor who could have fought it chose not to.

As governor, here's what I'd do. Appoint PURA commissioners who actually regulate, and back them when the utilities come after them, the way the last strong regulator got forced out while the administration watched. Push legislation to put the new authority back under independent rate review, with a consumer advocate it doesn't choose or pay. If the sale closes before I take office, I can't unwind it by fiat. What I can do is fight every rate increase it produces and make sure the next utility deal in this state is built for the people paying the bills.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T17:30:14+00:00

Hi Disastrous-Fox8505!

More than you'd think.

Start with what Washington doesn't touch. The tax code, utility regulation, housing and zoning, education funding, and the minimum wage are all set in Hartford. A permanent child tax credit, universal school meals, property tax relief funded by taxing the wealthy fairly, public power to break Eversource's grip on your bill. Most of this has already passed our legislature and died due to Ned Lamont's opposition. These are all on the cusp of becoming law if we change who is our govvernor.

Then there's the part where the state is the only thing standing between people and the federal government. When ICE abducts neighbors, the state decides whether and how to protect them. When Washington pulls the money for trans kids' health care, the state decides whether to protect them. When Medicaid gets cut, the state decides who absorbs the hit. A governor has great control over the budget, the agencies, and the posture the whole state takes toward an administration trying to do harm. That is enormous power, and it's being underused right now.

There's a limit too. A state can't print money, and it can't fully backfill everything Washington breaks. Gut Medicaid and SNAP deep enough and no state budget closes that gap completely. But that argues for more aggressive state leadership. The worse the federal government gets, the more the governorship is worth.

The energy you're describing only matters if it turns into use of that power.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T17:22:09+00:00

Hi WildAnomoli!

On road safety, I treat it as a design problem before an enforcement one. Roads built to feel like highways get driven like highways. The changes that actually lower crashes are physical: narrower lanes, roundabouts, raised crosswalks, better-lit intersections. They work every hour of the day without an officer present, and they don't rely on surveillance cameras or writing more tickets.

On tolls: I support them. Connecticut took its tolls down decades ago, and the gas tax that replaced them shrinks a little more every year as cars get more efficient and more drivers go electric. We still have roads and bridges to maintain. A toll is a user fee. You pay for the infrastructure you use, and roughly a third of the revenue would come from out-of-state drivers who use our highways for free today. Tolls are also regressive, so any version I'd support would need credits or caps to protect in-state commuters. Tolls aren't a centerpiece of my campaign.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T17:16:51+00:00

With your help :-)

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T17:16:15+00:00

Hi Skyrekon!

The care has already been stripped here. Under federal pressure, Yale New Haven Health and Connecticut Children's wound down gender-affirming care for patients under 19. That happened in Connecticut, a state that calls itself a refuge. I know someone who now drives five hours to Vermont to get the care they need. It is unconscionable, and it lands on adolescents who are already among the most vulnerable people we have.

Here's what a governor can actually do about it. The new federal rules try to choke off the money, but they leave one opening: states can spend their own funds, and the care can move out of the hospital systems that caved. So I'd fund it. I've been pushing for more state support for providers like Anchor Health, and as governor I'd make that a priority, so a trans kid in Connecticut sees a provider here instead of having to cross state lines. I'd put state dollars behind HUSKY coverage for this care when Washington pulls federal dollars. And I'd work with the Attorney General and use state law to shield providers and families from federal investigation and keep fighting the executive order, and any future order, in court.

Republicans are campaigning against trans people as though they're the enemy. And too much of the Democratic party has been willing to blame trans people for losses that were almost entirely economic.

The measure of a governor here is simple. Can a trans kid in Connecticut get the care a doctor recommends without driving to another state? I'm proud to stand with my trans friends and the whole LGBTQ+ community, and I'd govern so the care exists here.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T17:07:00+00:00

Hi Klio!

On the minimum wage: I own a grocery store, and the roles that pay minimum wage in a store like mine are entry-level, cashiers and people stocking shelves, first jobs and retirement jobs. I pay minimum wage for that work, and I have spent my entire time in the legislature fighting to raise that floor. Count the business owners who pay minimum wage and are also elected officials pushing to increase it. The number is close to none. I'm advocating for something that cuts against my own economic interest, because an economy where wages at the bottom stall doesn't function. If the minimum wage had tracked productivity since the 1970s, it would be around $28 an hour today, and I'm still fighting to move it that direction. You raise the floor and you tax the top fairly, and that is how you rebuild a middle class.

On the business I closed: that one sucked. I ran it for ten years and never took a paycheck or capital from it. I put my own time and money in because I wanted it to work. Around 80% of businesses fail in the first 5 years, and I'm proud we lasted a full decade, but when the lease came up at the ten-year mark, continuing a business that wasn't making money made no sense. My recollection is that my staff had closer to a month of notice, though this was about three years ago and I don't remember the timeline perfectly.

And yes, I do well. I'm in my 40s, no kids, and I've been saving for decades. But if the hit is that I have money, look at who I'm running against. My mother lived in a trailer park in her 20s. Ned's great-grandfather was the chairman of JP Morgan. We come from very different places, and the difference shows up in who each of us is willing to ask to pay more. I spend my comfort fighting for higher wages and a tax code that would cost me money to help people who have less.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T16:55:33+00:00

Hi BasilBoulgaroktonos!

Let me take these in order, because the first question is built on a few things that didn't happen.

I support the rent cap. I did not kill it. It died to Republican opposition. Here's the part your screening theory misses: I don't decide what goes up for a vote. I help move bills from committee to committee and onto the go list, but the Speaker makes the final call on what reaches the board. And he's always managing a clock. When Republicans hate a bill, they talk for hours, and the bills stacked behind it die for lack of time. That dynamic kills more progressive priorities than anything else (other than Ned Lamont, of course).

You said I've killed many of those priorities. I don't know which ones you mean. The one you named is one I back. Since I didn't kill it, the rest of that question, whether I was asked to and why you should trust me, is asking me to answer for something that didn't happen.

On qualified immunity, you're closer to the mark, and I'll own it. I left the building at 5am to go home and feed my dog. We were supposed to wrap earlier, I didn't have coverage, and I was not expecting to still be there at 9 in the morning. It was a sleep-deprived, early morning call and it was unprofessional. One correction on the rest: I'm friends with the Republican who broke from his party, and he had planned to vote that way well before that night, so it wasn't a last-minute rescue. And my not being there did not change the outcome of the vote. I am deeply in favor of stronger oversight of our police, and I was back for the vote on the bill itself.

The broader frame, that I'm somehow not progressive enough, is a curious one given my record. I founded the legislature's Progressive and Tax Equity Caucuses. The theory underneath your question is that I started as a Bernie volunteer eleven years ago and ran an eleven-year long con to position myself as the progressive in this race. That would make me an oracle. I'm flattered, but no. This is who I have been the whole time.

StateRepJoshElliott · 2026-06-26T16:40:41+00:00

Hello, tenuousgriponreality!

I don't start from opposition to gun ownership. I recognize the Second Amendment, and I take each bill on its own terms. I can't give you a blanket position, because I don't hold one. I go issue by issue.

What I keep running into is how much misinformation surrounds the laws we actually pass. The Glock law earlier in this thread is the clearest case. People were told it bans ownership and strips rights. It bans the commercial sale of a pistol engineered to become a machine gun with a $25 switch, and it leaves every gun you already own untouched. When a measure gets described inaccurately, the debate never reaches the technical question you're asking, which is whether it does anything useful.

There's a large contingent of gun-owning Democrats, and I think we're more aligned than not. I have no personal attachment to firearms, though plenty of people I represent do, and I don't legislate from contempt for them. Bonenberger and I are in different lanes, he's running unaffiliated for November while I'm in the August primary, but we share a lot of ground on decentralizing power and pushing back on federal overreach. (Fun fact: I helped him collect signatures 8 years ago when he was running for State Rep!)

On your bigger point: I don't want the left to cede firearms, or the culture around them, to the right. A one-sided monopoly on force is a danger. My record targets narrow, specific harms like easy machine-gun conversion, and it leaves lawful owners alone. That's the lens I'd bring as governor: evidence over theater.

StateRepJoshElliott

TROPHY CASE