Archinect - News

The Architecture Lobby endorses Bernie Sanders ahead of Super Tuesday election

2020-03-02T18:55:00-05:00

The Architecture Lobby (TAL) is endorsing Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party primary contest.

In a statement published to the group's website, TAL writes, "With this endorsement, we invite architectural workers to rise in the vision of a movement."

Previously on Archinect: "The Architecture Lobby decries 'a blatant attempt to leverage aesthetics in the service of white supremacy'." Image courtesy of Flickr user Jorge Láscar.

The statement adds, "Whether you are a graduate student balancing work in school with work as a TA and watching your student debt climb, a junior architect anxious over climate impact but powerless to make your supervisor act, a business development professional enraged by an RFP for an immigrant concentration camp, or a firm partner watching healthcare costs balloon every year, there is a place for you in this movement. We see a profession capable of change. With that vision in mind, The Architecture Lobby officially endorses Senator Be...

AOC and Bernie Sanders unveil "Green New Deal for Housing" plan

2019-11-14T10:05:00-05:00

New York City Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders have unveiled a bold initiative aimed at rejuvenating and decarbonizing the nation’s public housing stock.

The visionary Green New Deal for Public Housing Act aims to bring sorely needed maintenance upgrades to America’s 500,000 public housing units through a series of repair, weatherization, and retrofitting efforts. The improvements will come via seven grant programs aimed at addressing specific design and material shortfalls currently plaguing public housing complexes across the country.

Triple bottom line plan

The plan is expected to cost somewhere between $119 billion and $172 billion over the next decade, according to a study conducted by progressive think tank Data for Progress and the University of Pennsylvania’s McHarg Center and Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative research centers. The Data Progress study estimates that the plan could create up to 240,723 jobs per year. Those jobs, u...

Bernie Sanders lays out an ambitious plan on affordable housing

2019-09-15T13:19:00-04:00

Sanders railed against Trump’s housing policies and explained his own, which calls for federal investment of $2.5 trillion over the next decade and a national rent control standard. He said he will pay for the policy by establishing a wealth tax on the top tenth of one percent — or, according to his estimate, the wealthiest 175,000 families.

Major points of the $2.5 trillion plan include:

Establishing a national rent control standard that would cap rent increases at no more than 1½ times the rate of inflation or 3 percent, whichever is higher.
Promoting legal protections for fair housing and taking steps to eliminate racial discrimination and gentrification.
Expanding the National Housing Trust Fund, which allocates money to states to build and maintain affordable housing for low-income Americans.
Fully fund Section 8 rental assistance program and eliminate lengthy wait times that plague those seeking those vouchers.
$70 billion of investment to build and rehabilitate 7.4 million of affordable housing units.
Build 2 million mixed-income units.
$50 billion in grants for states, cities and towns to establish community land trusts.
$32 billion over five years “to end homelessness in America and provide critical outreach services to those who are experiencing chronic homelessness.”

Bernie Sanders unveils $16 trillion Green New Deal plan

2019-08-22T19:30:00-04:00

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has unveiled a transformative Green New Deal climate action plan that aims to eliminate fossil fuel use in the United States entirely by 2050.

Labeling the increasingly apparent effects of climate change “a national emergency,” Sanders seeks to direct a “$16.3 trillion public investment toward these efforts, in line with the mobilization of resources made during the New Deal and WWII, but with an explicit choice to include black, indigenous and other minority communities who were systematically excluded in the past.”

The Sanders plan would completely decarbonize the country’s electrical grid and transportation systems with 100% renewable electricity by 2030, according to The New York Times, with full decarbonization for the American economy by 2050. That effort includes removing some $15 billion in annual subsidies for the fossil fuel industries, forcing fossil fuel companies to “pay for their pollution,” and “scaling back military sp...