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.
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, under the plan, could be filled by public housing residents themselves, allowing the bill to play triple-duty as a social, economic, and environmental stimulus measure.
“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 tells The Washington Post.
Ocasio-Cortez added, “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. ... We can create millions of jobs in this country by actually rising to the challenge of addressing what this crisis is going to represent."
Addressing the glaring maintenance shortfall facing the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is central to the plan’s efforts. The authority, which, according to Data Progress, manages roughly eight-percent of the total number of apartments in New York City, has a repair backlog of $31.8 billion. This figure is expected to grow to a whopping $89 billion by 2030. This backlog includes much-needed lead remediation and indoor air quality upgrades, building utility decarbonization improvements, as well as the rejuvenation of shared and public spaces among the entity’s building complexes. In addition, many of NYCHA’s properties are currently located in flood-prone areas, a phenomenon that will continue to grow and get worse as sea levels rise.
Under a concurrent Green New Deal for NYCHA Communities initiative, $48 billion in building investments could bring “comprehensive green retrofits and capital repairs for every large, multi-family building that NYCHA operates (including roughly 174,000 units) over ten years,” according to Data Progress.
As a result of this work, up to 325,519 jobs could be created in New York City over the course of ten years; This work could have an estimated citywide economic impact of up to $96 billion and would wholly decarbonize NYCHA’s building operations by 2030 through a blend of reducing energy use and procuring electricity from 100% renewable sources.
But because America’s public housing is widely dispersed, according to Data Progress, the plan would also benefit a broad swath of Americans, both in terms of its economic and environmental potentials. In all, roughly 2 million Americans live in public housing. It is estimated that aside from creating 240,000 jobs nationally, the plan could eliminate up to 5.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year around the country, or, the equivalent of taking over 1.2 million cars off the roads.
For America’s architects, the plan offers a glimpse of a potential future for the profession guided by reinvigorated public sector clients. With political will finally coalescing around addressing the country’s housing shortfalls, architects can likely expect their work to take on the much needed social dimension that many in the profession are currently demanding.
Speaking with The Washington Post, Ocasio-Cortez summarized her intent behind the plan: “Public housing is one area of our infrastructure that’s in immediate crisis that is actually threatening people’s lives. It’s a perfect place for us to reimagine what a progressive economic agenda can do, particularly with a Green New Deal context.”
14 Comments
I am very, very skeptical that old stock buildings can be upgraded for the numbers cited here. Looking at my own mid-century modernist home in a northern city, my wife and I changed out all of our original windows two years ago. We opted for the best thermally broken system we could find. The system we chose- from Germany- clocked in at $60 000. During our first winter with the new windows, I discovered frost 'horns' forming outside our new window frames. Looking into this issue more closely, I discovered woefully inadequate installation procedures. Re-doing much of the installation, I have incurred another $40 000 to make things right. I still have a way to go, say another $20 000. So, that's one item at $120 000 for one house. If I also factor in earlier upgrades like new furnaces, additional insulation, a low albedo roof and new exterior cladding, I now have a home where the ecologically motivated upgrades eclipse the tax roll assessment of my house.
If Green New Deal promoters do not identify and price technically sound installations by knowledgeable people, this project will not be fully realized nor will it stand as a model worthy of emulation.
Private homes and large multi-family public housing projects are not on the same economic scale.
You raise a valid point; an apartment will have 1/6 the area exposed to the elements potentially.
The entire economy is a sham designed to penalize the working calls and reward the rentiers.
Employing the underemployed to maintain public housing is a great plan. As it stands now existing stock is ignored in favor of new construction.
You can't throw money at public housing without a fundamental redesign (or design in general). Design and transparency is at the root of construction graft, healthcare graft, education graft. We need a 180 in pop culture, government and design. Perhaps even a Department of Design.
You make a lot of bold accusations, and more bureaucracy is unlikely to solve them, assuming they're all real.
If the bureaucracy worked for us you wouldn’t have any complaints. But it doesn’t, so you do.
I came here for the hidden comments due to my ignore settings. I AM DISAPPOINTED.
fuckin' hippies...here is the fucked up part, there was a time when collusion and shady shit made the middle class solid and people were taken care of...we now have socialists who are not mobsters, so this shit is entirely moot....wait wait wait...did the liberal elite redefine us to defame us?
guessing you should hide this...;)
I do not intend to defend capitalism or capitalists. They, like everything human, have their defects. I only say their possibilities of usefulness are not ended.
Capitalism has borne the monstrous burden of the war and today still has the strength to shoulder the burdens of peace. ...
It is not simply and solely an accumulation of wealth, it is an elaboration, a selection, a co-ordination of values which is the work of centuries. ...
Many think, and I myself am one of them, that capitalism is scarcely at the beginning of its story.
For America’s architects, the plan offers a glimpse of a potential
future for the profession guided by reinvigorated public sector clients.
With political will finally coalescing around addressing the country’s
housing shortfalls, architects can likely expect their work to take on
the much needed social dimension that many in the profession are
currently demanding.
ha, what - no!
this is our profession, this guy \/
or these real guys
the AIA's contribution - fancy contracts that protect the client against aggressive workers (your grandparents who gave a fuck), legal exhibits, and some shit show propaganda for a world that doesn't exist and never will. You can not write yourself into history and you're not politically important if you're agenda was already paid for (by our clients!)
academia's contribution - $40k/year tuition kids with theories on living while living like no else. oh wait - failure = reality.
scrappy architects -
we'll get a piece, just enough to make a difference and just enough to know those in power are letting us down. We scrappy architects would paint the missing patching at cost of paint and half days work, or our brethren the "honest contractor" and his "mexican work horse" would solve it overnight...but the guaranteed 325,519, well only 10% will be mexican work horses and another 10% honest, the rest will be a shit show, millions down on paperwork and check boxes that are supposed to keep people honest, but every half ass wise guy knows, check the box wrong, cause some confusion, clean-up, hook cousin up and before you know it the budget will be double and the work half....but wait wasn't I arguing for this collusion shit - NO, not when it's our money (middle class taxes, poor don't pay - they don't work), only when it's rich peoples money (they don't need it, they have lots of it) - stealing from the rich is ethical (how did they become rich?)...
With political will finally coalescing around addressing the country’s
housing shortfalls, architects can likely expect their work to take on
the much needed social dimension that many in the profession are
currently demanding.
No man, no. Ain't shit going to happen. You have a former bartender with an idea and a President that is white trash NYC, in other words, politicians/lawmakers are not serious people. They mean nothing. What does Wall Street say, they might have a point? [most retard upstarts, WeWork, Ubers, etc...don't do well on Wall Street? because they ar bullshit]
I'm rambling, but how naive, how stupid, how ignorant, how brainwashed, how dumb, how clueless, is this generation?
serious people don't have public agendas, don't run for office, they don't even really exist.
Ref: Sturgeon’s Law
i like this law.
An awful lot of the public housing was made from third-rate horrible 'modernist' designs with cheap materials by poorly skilled or completely unskilled labor. It is like restoring a Ford Pinto. You can do it, but......why?
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