A Green New Deal for Public Housing
Daniel Aldana Cohen, Billy Fleming, Kira McDonald, Julian Brave Noisecat, Nick Graetz, Katie Lample, Xan Lillehei, Mark Paul, and Anunya Bahanda
Following the broad contours of the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, this report estimates that with $119 to $172 billion of federal investment over ten years it would be possible to decarbonize more than one million units of the country’s public housing stock—the equivalent of taking 1.2 million cars off the road every year. These same retrofits would eliminate lead, mold, and other health hazards that plague the nearly 2 million people who live in America’s public housing and backfill the massive existing and accrual needs that have plagued existing public housing for decades. All this would create over 240,000 jobs per year, including tens of thousands of high-paying construction and maintenance jobs for public housing residents and nearby low-income workers.
