Evelyn Castillo-Bach pitches affordability agenda for Florida governor race

Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Evelyn Castillo-Bach unveiled a grassroots cost-of-living plan focused on wages, housing, insurance and healthcare. The proposal targets Florida voters squeezed by rising rents, unaffordable insurance and medical debt, with new taxes and rules for utilities, data centers and healthcare companies.

Why it matters: - Florida voters are facing pressure from rising housing costs, insurance bills, utility costs and medical debt. - Castillo-Bach is trying to make affordability the centerpiece of her 2026 gubernatorial campaign. - The plan leans on voter frustration with Tallahassee, insurers and large corporations. - The campaign also cites a University of Florida Shimberg Center estimate that 44,234 families with children are homeless.

What happened: - Evelyn Castillo-Bach, a Florida Democratic candidate for governor, announced an affordability plan in Pembroke Pines on June 24, 2026. - Castillo-Bach framed the campaign around a “People First, Not Politics” agenda. - Castillo-Bach said the plan is built around three questions: what you earn, what you pay and what you owe. - The candidate tied the platform to her background as a criminal justice reform advocate, former single mother and mother who lost her autistic son to epilepsy.

The details: - Castillo-Bach wants Florida wages indexed to inflation. - Florida’s minimum wage is $14 an hour and is set to rise to $15 on Sept. 30, 2026. - The MIT Living Wage Calculator puts the Florida living wage for a single adult at $24.09 an hour. - Castillo-Bach said that estimate understates healthcare costs because it assumes health insurance costs $311 a month. - On property insurance, Castillo-Bach pointed to a 2022 state-commissioned report that found Florida-based insurers reported a $432 million net loss from 2017 to 2019 while affiliate companies reported $1.8 billion in net income. - The same report found that when 53 companies were included, insurers showed $61 million in net income while affiliates made nearly $14 billion. - The report also found executives paid themselves $680 million in shareholder dividends during the same period. - Castillo-Bach said property tax cuts are a distraction from what she described as an affiliate-company scheme driving up homeowner costs. - On utilities, Castillo-Bach proposed property tax breaks for homeowners who install solar panels, caps on utility profits and a ban on utility rate increases tied to hyperscale data centers. - Castillo-Bach also wants to ban nondisclosure agreements involving hyperscale data centers. - The plan would require hyperscale data centers to pay a perpetual mandatory fee into a proposed Florida Affordable Housing Fund. - Castillo-Bach said data center operators should be transparent and contribute to the fund. - The campaign says about 34% of Florida households rent. - Rents have risen about 39% since 2019. - More than 900,000 renters are paying more than 40% of their income for housing, according to the 2025 Statewide Rental Market Study from the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. - Castillo-Bach wants a Florida State Rental Voucher Program. - Castillo-Bach also wants protections against predatory corporate landlords while preserving the rights of mom-and-pop landlords. - Florida’s uninsured rate is reported at 10.9%, above the national average of 8.2%. - About 15.5% of Florida working-age adults are uninsured, compared with 11.3% nationally. - Florida’s uninsured rate for children is 8.5%, up from 7.5% in 2023 and above the national average of 6.0%. - Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S., responsible for 66.5% of bankruptcies. - In Florida, 6.6% of adults, or roughly 1.45 million people, carry medical debt in collections. - Castillo-Bach wants to create Florida Direct Care, a direct-payment healthcare system that bypasses insurance companies for uninsured, underinsured and working Floridians. - The Florida Direct Care plan would ban medical debt, ban reporting medical debt to credit bureaus, create a public database of healthcare prices, bar healthcare industry lobbyists from writing laws on health policy and cost, and require independent audits of state healthcare contracts. - The healthcare plan would be funded with surcharges on luxury vessels and luxury real estate, plus contributions from major retailers that do not provide employee health insurance. - Small businesses and mom-and-pop stores would be exempt. - Florida has rejected at least $11 billion in federal funds in recent years, including Medicaid expansion, according to an Orlando Sentinel report from January 2024. - The same report said Florida left $499 million in federal disability funds unspent and kept 23,000 children and adults on waiting lists. - The report also said Florida blocked KidCare expansion, denying coverage to 165,000 children. - Florida’s reserves for fiscal 2025-2026 total $14.6 billion, including $4.2 billion in unallocated general revenue.

Between the lines: - Castillo-Bach is positioning herself as a reform candidate who will borrow ideas across party lines if they lower costs for voters. - The plan targets industries with outsized public anger in Florida: insurers, utilities, data centers and healthcare companies. - The proposal combines policy ideas with revenue raises, suggesting Castillo-Bach wants to link affordability relief to corporate fees rather than broad tax cuts. - The campaign is also trying to convert statewide frustration over housing and healthcare costs into a broader governing message.

What's next: - Castillo-Bach will likely keep affordability at the center of her Democratic primary pitch. - The campaign said the goal is to win the primary with “integrity and transparency” and show voters how to fix what is broken. - The proposal will now face scrutiny over cost, legality and whether the Legislature would support the changes. - Castillo-Bach’s campaign says the broader message remains: “People First. Not Politics.”