🏡💚 A GND for Public Housing

Written By Zach Lou

March 22, 2024

Yesterday, AOC and Bernie Sanders re-introduced the Green New Deal for Public Housing. In a remarkable press conference, they made the strong case that we need to simultaneously tackle the twin crisis of climate change and housing affordability.

This is a sweeping proposal to invest up to $234 billion over the next 10 years to decarbonize, repair, weatherize, and remove toxins and toxics from all public housing units in the country. Decades of disinvestment have caused these units to fall into disrepair, with a massive backlog of deferred maintenance, and has deeply stigmatized public housing. This legislation tries to address this head on: not to just do the bare minimum repairs, but to reimagine public housing as the model for what housing should be.

“Public housing should be the gold standard for affordable, environmentally friendly, and safe communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an email to Guardian reporter Dharna Noor.

While public housing is often an afterthought in contemporary housing discussions, over 1.7 million residents live in and rely on public housing as a long-term housing option outside of the increasingly expensive private rental market.

Although the GND for Public Housing is not going to pass (at least not with this Congress), it stands in unapologetic defense of public housing at a crucial time. Right now, public housing is facing an existential crisis. It’s estimated that from 2009 to 2022 we’ve lost about 25% of public housing units (from 1.2 million to 900,000) as the result of demolition, privatization, or other conversions. And while public housing is not nearly as widespread in California as many other states (especially New York), we’ve seen this same process play out here. If interested in a deep dive, I highly recommend this 10-part series by Jacob Woocher in Knock LA detailing the decades-long War on Public Housing in Los Angeles.

The GND for Public Housing proposes to reverse that trend. Beyond updating and modernizing existing public housing units, the bill calls for us to actually start building more public housing units. In the press conference, AOC emphatically stated, “We have to return to an era of rebuilding public housing in the United States.”

Although public housing is a normal and celebrated part of the housing stock in many countries (about a quarter of the residents of Paris live in public housing, as discussed in this recent New York Times article), AOC’s affirmative declaration to build more is a radical concept in the US. As you may know, the backlash against public housing in America was so strong that a law was passed that actually prevents more public housing from being built. The Faircloth Amendment is an infamous federal provision that prevents housing authorities from ever maintaining more public housing units than they had in 1999. The GND for Public Housing would repeal the Faircloth Amendment, making possible the expansion of public housing beyond previous levels. In the short-term, however, the Faircloth Amendment is only an abstract obstacle to building more public housing. That’s because, as previously mentioned, we are losing so many public housing units that it would take as awhile to even get back to 1999 levels. The major obstacle to building new public housing units is funding and political will.

In its substance this legislation addresses the funding issue, and in its spirit it tries to take on the political will. The point of bills like this is to uplift a demand as a rallying cry for organizers, to get a debate into the public consciousness, and challenge those with more power to confront it. And luckily, they do not have to do this alone. This year, the re-introduction of the legislation is accompanied by a fantastic report by our friends at the Climate and Community Project who make The Case for a Green New Deal for Public Housing. Part of making that case is going into great depth about the state of our existing public housing units and how we’ve come to this point. Another part is demonstrating the additional benefits that this kind of massive public works project would bring: an estimated reduction of 5.7 million metric tons of carbon emissions (equivalent to 1.26 million less cars on the road), 280,000 good-paying jobs, a myriad of public health benefits from improved indoor air quality and home health. These are really helpful resources that can support the ongoing grassroots campaign to organize, mobilize, and build power to change what is politically possible. As Bernie says in his first remarks at the press conference: “Change is not going to take place from the [Capitol building] on down — change is going to take place from the grassroots on up.

For our green social housing campaign, this is an important reminder that public housing is social housing. While some may want to avoid the stigma and political baggage that comes with public housing, we should not turn our back on the thousands of people in California that rely on public housing for stable and affordable homes. Instead, like this legislation, we should stand in strong defense of them, and work with residents to try to live up to this vision of public housing as the gold standard for green, affordable, stable homes. The bill demonstrates what we mean when we call for a Green New Deal: a huge investment to simultaneously address the climate crisis, create good jobs, and advance racial justice.

AOC and Bernie at yesterday’s press conference. Source: Getty Images via The Guardian

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Zach Lou
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