Cost of Living

You did everything right. The bills keep going up anyway.

Families in Katy and Cypress are paying more for insurance, electricity, child care and tolls every single year, while wages in Texas have been frozen by law since 2009. Austin has had the money and the power to fix this for years. It chose not to.

74%

Rise in Texas homeowners insurance premiums since 2009, after inflation. Household income grew just 11%.1

$3,556

Average yearly homeowners premium in the Houston metro. Flood insurance not included.1

$11,000

What the average Harris County family spends on child care each year. More than in-state college tuition.2

$7.25

The Texas minimum wage. It hasn't moved since 2009.

We can accomplish this using the following:

  • Rein in homeowners insurance rate hikes

    Texas lets insurers raise rates first and justify them later. I'll fight for prior approval, so the Texas Department of Insurance reviews big rate hikes before they hit your mailbox. I'll also push a state grant program to help homeowners install storm-resistant roofs, with a guaranteed premium discount when they do. Wind and hail drive most Texas home insurance losses, so this targets the real problem.1

  • Hold CenterPoint accountable and protect your electric bill

    After Beryl left millions of us in the dark, CenterPoint kept asking customers to pay more. Utilities should earn their profits through reliability, not just spending. I'll fight to tie utility returns to outage performance and to make sure the massive data centers and industrial users driving CenterPoint's grid build-out pay for the grid they need, instead of shifting it onto households.3

  • Make child care affordable for working families

    More than 30,000 Harris County families are on the waitlist for child care help.2 I'll fight to use state dollars to clear the subsidy waitlist, expand free pre-K to 3-year-olds, and raise pay for child care workers so centers in Katy and Cypress can stay open and stay staffed.

  • Raise the minimum wage to $15

    Nobody in this district can live on $7.25 an hour. I'll support a phased increase to $15, so the people stocking our grocery shelves, staffing our hospitals and teaching our kids' after-school programs can afford to live in the community they serve.

  • Expand Medicaid and bring our tax dollars home

    Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country, and every unpaid ER bill gets passed on to the rest of us through higher premiums. Expanding Medicaid brings billions of our own federal tax dollars back to Texas, keeps hospitals open, and lowers costs for families who already have coverage.

  • End tolls on roads we've already paid for

    Westpark, the Grand Parkway and the Katy managed lanes are part of daily life here. I'll fight to require tolls to come off once a road's construction debt is paid, and to stop toll authorities from raising rates without public review.

I've lived in this district for 43 years. I raised my kids here. I'm not asking for a handout for anybody. I'm asking Austin to stop picking the pockets of the families who built this community. Our Community. Our Future. Our Fight.

Sources

 

  1. Kinder Institute for Urban Research, "The Insurance Squeeze: Rising Premiums, Affordability, and Income Inequality Across Texas Counties Since 2000" (2026).
  2. Office of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Aug. 5, 2026, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics and University of Houston (2025) data.
  3. CenterPoint Energy Q2 2026 earnings release, July 28, 2026.