Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez Tout $180 Billion 'Green New Deal for Public Housing'
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York unveiled a $180 billion proposal Thursday dubbed the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act.”
The legislation would create a grant program with several goals, including “to upgrade and equip all public housing with cutting-edge materials, infrastructure, and all-electric appliances made in the United States in order to improve energy efficiency, water quality, and material living standards in public housing and to support United States manufacturing.”
The bill also seeks “to modernize public housing laws in order to maximize tenant participation and management by low- and very low-income individuals in the rehabilitation, upgrade, and transition of public housing through education, training, and jobs.”
A third goal is “to transition the entire public housing stock of the United States, as swiftly and seamlessly as possible, into highly energy-efficient homes that produce on-site, or procure, enough carbon-free renewable energy to meet total energy consumption annually,” the legislation reads.
Although Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez spoke about the environmental and employment aspects of the plan, it calls for more then just solar panels.
The legislation would also fund “the construction of childcare centers and ongoing costs associated with childcare centers; the construction of senior centers and ongoing costs associated with senior centers,” and “the construction of community gardens and ongoing costs associated with community gardens.”
The bill also said it would fund “bulk purchase of enough bicycles to offer 1 bicycle to every low- and very low-income public housing resident.”
As part of upgrading public housing, the bill calls for “the establishment and leasing of commercial activity that offers public housing residents on-site access to goods and services, including good-quality healthcare clinics, dental clinics, bookstores, learning and tutoring centers, and affordable organic groceries.”
Some were not enthused.
Comrades Bernie & @AOC want to spend $172 billion turning ‘the projects’ into ‘carbon-neutral communities with organic grocery stores, on-site child care and community gardens.’
Each of the 240,000 jobs supposedly created would cost $715,000.https://t.co/NYfgEuHfMc
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) November 14, 2019
The lawmakers, however, characterized the proposal as a transformative piece of legislation for public housing residents across America.
“I think it’s very exemplary of what we try to do with the Green New Deal, where we have a front-line community that has historically gotten the short end of the stick with environmental justice,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Washington Post.
Ocasio-Cortez said the proposal would create jobs “showing how the climate crisis is not a jobs versus environment paradigm.”
“We need electrical workers. We need construction workers. And it doesn’t have to just be fossil fuel pipelines that create these kinds of jobs,” she said. “We can create millions of jobs in this country by actually rising to the challenge of addressing what this crisis is going to represent.”
Sanders insisted that the $180 billion, spent over 10 years, would pay for itself over time.
“Today we are focusing on an issue that is too often neglected, and that is that we are going to be making massive cuts in carbon emissions by retrofitting and rebuilding public housing in this country,” Sanders said Thursday on Capitol Hill, according to The Hill.
“This bill will reduce carbon emissions equivalent to taking off of the roads over 1 million cars, it would reduce public housing costs by 30 percent and energy costs in public housing by 70 percent,” Sanders said. “This will pay for itself.”
Let us be clear: A Green New Deal for Public Housing is not a radical idea. Here’s why:
40% of all U.S. energy consumption comes from buildings. Our government owns 1 million homes. If we are to defeat climate change, we must transform this housing to produce zero emissions.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 14, 2019
“The Green New Deal for Public Housing would transition the entire public housing stock of the United States, as swiftly and seamlessly as possible, into zero-carbon, highly energy-efficient developments that produce on-site renewable energy, expand workforce capacity and family self-sufficiency programs and focus on community development,” a news release from Sanders’ office said, according to Fox News.
One noteworthy co-sponsor of the bill is Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is competing with Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.
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