A teacher in Summit County told me he drives 90 minutes each way to get to his classroom. Not because he wants to. Because there is no home he can afford within 40 miles of the school where he teaches. He loves his students. But he’s thinking about leaving.

He is not alone. When I talk to Coloradans who work in resort towns – home health aides living in Eagle on multi-years-long childcare waiting lists, families in Glenwood Springs caring for an aging parent at home because the nearest memory care facility is two hours away, service workers in Aspen and Vail – I hear the same story: “I love this place. I built a life here. But I’m working harder than ever just to survive.” The people who make the Western Slope run are being priced out of their communities built by a system that has been deliberately rigged to benefit people who don’t live here. 

Wall Street investment firms now own tens of thousands of homes across Colorado, gobbling up single-family properties and converting them to short-term rentals to maximize profits. Corporate landlords use coordinated pricing algorithms to push rents to the highest the market can bear, regardless of what local wages can support. And in Washington, politicians who could stop this have instead spent years collecting checks from the real estate industry.

While rural hospitals across Colorado are at risk of closing, insurance executives are making millions of dollars in bonuses. Families on the Western Slope ration medication or skip appointments, knowing that one medical emergency could lead to financial ruin. This is what happens when the people in Congress writing healthcare policy owe their elections to the insurance industry.

This reality is what happens when the rules are rigged. I know what it looks like to fight back and win. I spent 15 years organizing teachers, tenants, young people and immigrants on affordable housing, immigrant rights and educational justice issues. For the past eight years, I’ve served in the Colorado State Senate, where I took on the corporate algorithms fixing rents in Colorado, passed the nation’s first cap on prescription drug prices, and led the fight to protect reproductive freedom — before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. I didn’t achieve those victories by waiting for permission; we built broad coalitions alongside the Coloradans directly impacted by these broken systems and stood up to corporate interests to pass durable and impactful policies that improve Coloradans’ daily lives. 

I won’t take corporate PAC money from pharmaceutical companies, insurance executives or the investment firms buying up your neighborhood. That’s how Coloradans can trust that I will actually work for them. Here’s what I’ll fight for: banning the rent-fixing algorithms and the Wall Street investors hoarding single-family homes. Building more housing — including public, nonprofit and affordable units, with federal investment that treats a home as the foundation of a life, not a vehicle for returns. Investing in universal childcare and eldercare infrastructure in rural communities, because you can’t hold a job or a family together without it. Enacting Medicare for All so that no family in Routt County or Grand County has to drive three hours for a doctor’s appointment, or skip one because they can’t afford it.

My family roots go back generations in southern Colorado, and our family ranch nearly burned in the Spring Creek fire of 2018. Though we escaped the initial disaster, a mudslide later washed out the ditch that had provided us water for over 100 years. I know firsthand how the climate crisis is impacting rural communities across Colorado, and I will fight relentlessly to hold corporate polluters to account and advance solutions that protect our water and our planet. 

I’m running for the U.S. Senate now because I am sick and tired of do-nothing Democrats offering more of the same, while Colorado families, including families on the Western Slope, pay the price. Imagine that teacher driving 15 minutes to teach in a community where he can actually afford to live, where he has the freedom to thrive. That is what I will fight for every single day in the United States Senate.

Colorado state Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, is a candidate in the Colorado Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.