Representative Ritchie Torres is a fighter from the Bronx who has spent his entire life working for the community he calls home. Poverty and struggle have never been abstractions to him—he governs from lived experience.
Ritchie’s mother single-handedly raised him, his twin brother, and his sister in a public-housing project, paying the bills on minimum-wage jobs that paid $4.25 an hour in the 1990s. While Ritchie grew up with mold, lead, leaks, and no reliable heat or hot water in the winter, he watched the government spend over $100 million to build a golf course across the street for Donald Trump.
In 2013, at 25, Ritchie became New York City’s youngest elected official and the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to office in the Bronx. In the City Council, he passed over forty pieces of legislation protecting affordable housing and tackling the opioid epidemic. As Chairman overseeing NYCHA, he held the first committee hearing ever in public housing—leading to a $3 billion FEMA investment, the largest in NYC history.
In 2020, Ritchie was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he continues fighting for affordable housing, social justice, and the working families of the Bronx.