AOC, progressives revive $234B ‘Green New Deal’ for housing, targeting gas stoves and CO2
It’s green in more ways than one.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a group of progressive lawmakers on Thursday revived the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which has the intention of building more public housing and slashing CO2 emissions by targeting things like gas stoves.
“We have to return to an era of rebuilding public housing in the United States. And we have to reject the idea that it’s broken policy,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) proclaimed during a presser.
The bill would invest up to $234 billion over the next decade to further the goal of expanding and transitioning the entire stock of US public housing into zero-carbon homes.
It is rife with a handful of far-left wish list items such as an effort to electrify household appliances.
This includes replacing “appliances reliant on fossil fuels, such as gas stoves and hot water heaters,” adding solar panels, and deploying “electric vehicle charging infrastructure for public housing residents.”
Electric vehicles notoriously tend to cost drivers as much as 25% more than traditional cars, according to Green Cars. Other objectives in the bill for public housing include the construction of “photovoltaic glass windows” and “renewable energy rooftops.”
“It is plantation capitalism, to have someone paying 40, 50, 60 percent of their salary towards rent,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) mused during the presser. “Rent should be capped at 20 percent of [salary].”
“The Green New Deal for public housing is a form of reparations for marginalized communities.”
The bill is almost certainly dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.
Ocasio-Cortez’s effort to revive the bill, which is similar to legislation she championed in 2021, is backed by 55 Democrats in the House of Representatives and eight senators including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
“Our elder matters, our disabled brothers and sisters matter. And we are sick and tired of having them priced out of our communities and treated as disposable parts of society,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
At least 1.7 million Americans are estimated to be residing in public housing, according to the Biden administration. An estimated 11.3 million households are forced to pay over 50% of their income on housing, per the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.
Backers of the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act claim that it will generate as many as 280,000 union jobs each year and slash carbon emissions by as much as 5.7 million metric tons.
That’s the equivalent of 1.26 million cars off the road.
The bill also seeks to address the roughly $70 billion maintenance backlog for public housing and tackle “racial injustice.”
One significant change to current law that it would make is repealing the Faircloth Amendment, which imposes restrictions on the Department of Housing and Urban Development constructing new public housing.
The Faircloth Amendment has been a longstanding grievance among progressives and prohibits the expansion of public housing beyond the 1999 levels, which were roughly 1.8 million.
“We need to mobilize millions of people to demand that every American has decent and affordable housing and at the same time, we address the existential crisis of climate change,” Sanders declared.
Funding in the bill would also be used to construct new childcare and senior centers, bolster clean transportation, and build up more resident councils in which occupants of public housing would have more input on decisions about their homes.
“Housing is a human right,” lawmakers backing the bill chanted during their announcement Thursday.
Other senators backing the proposal include Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).
“We are in the middle of a housing crisis and a climate crisis, and we need bold federal investments to tackle both,” Warren said in a statement, noting the bill “will transition nearly a million public housing units into zero-carbon, energy-efficient housing.”
Although the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act is almost certainly likely to fail in the House, progressives see it as a bid to change the political discourse, especially within the Democratic Party.
“I want to send this message very clearly, not just to all of Congress, but including the leadership of the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez went on.
“There’s a lot of different things to address, social housing mortgages, interest rates, but any true housing policy must include a commitment to public housing point blank, period.”
Last week, Sanders renewed another longstanding far-left objective and pushed for a 32-hour national work week.
During his State of the Union address, President Biden floated a mortgage tax credit for would-be homebuyers and has since campaigned on that.
The Green New Deal for Public Housing Act goes much further in size and scope. The White House was noncommittal on backing the ultra-progressive bill.
Ocasio-Cortez famously championed a policy she dubbed “The Green New Deal” during her early days in Congress. She unsuccessfully tried to pass a resolution on that suite of policies for drastic green energy reforms in 2019.
Critics pummeled her approach, claiming that it would cost trillions of dollars to achieve all of the objectives laid out in her Green New Deal plan.
