A Green New Deal for Public Housing

A Green New Deal for Public Housing would deliver massive health and economic benefits to disadvantaged communities, including in Indigenous nations, in keeping with the president’s Justice 40 policy mandate to deliver 40 percent of climate investment benefits to disadvantaged communities that have suffered most from racism, disinvestment, and pollution; it would save public housing, a cornerstone of the country’s endangered affordable housing stock; it would turn public housing into green community infrastructure that raises the living conditions of those entire communities, providing resilience against extreme weather during crises, and community services every day; it would train a new generation of union workers in the green building industries, creating good skilled jobs in the communities that suffer most from unemployment today; it would breathe life into the American manufacture of green buildings materials and appliances; it would remove all lead, mold, and other toxins from public housing to help remediate environmental racism and racial health disparities; it would repair elevators in all public housing, meeting the basic needs of disadvantaged community members, including those with disabilities; and it would repeal the Faircloth Amendment, allowing towns and cities across the country to build new, green, healthy public housing. We know how to do this.