Ocasio Cortez and Sanders aim to place housing at center of Green New Deal

With a sweeping legislative proposal, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders are attempting to place public housing at the center of the green energy transition, tackling the twin crises of global warming and skyrocketing housing costs.

“Public housing should be the gold standard for affordable, environmentally friendly, and safe communities,” Ocasio Cortez said in an email. “This bill is how we ensure that.”

The Green New Deal for Public Housing aims to decarbonize all of the nation’s public housing units – and build more of them – with an investment of between $162 and $234bn over the next decade. In doing so, it would avert 5.7m tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing 1.26m cars from US roads each year, while creating jobs and public health benefits.

The proposal is co-sponsored by a slew of other progressive lawmakers and supported by dozens of environmental groups, housing justice organizations, and labor unions. It is not likely to pass, but supporters say it can help build support for the vision.

The bill’s reintroduction comes as the nation faces an unprecedented shortage of affordable housing. In 2022, a record half of all Americans spent more than 50% of their income on rent, a January report from Harvard University found.

Public housing remains an affordable option that 1.7 million Americans rely on. But amid a chronic lack of investment, it is often allowed to fall into disrepair, creating a maintenance backlog of $70bn backlog.

In the absence of funds to mend these units, they are often demolished or privatized instead. As a result, the US public housing stock shrunk from 1.2m units to just over 900,000 between 2009 and 2022 – a 25% decline – according to an