According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, our electric grid, the set of high-capacity wires that moves electricity all around the country, is in terrible shape, earning a D+ grade. The current system will simply not be able to handle a Wind Farm Network, or other renewable sources such as solar or geothermal.

We also want the grid to be “smart”, that is, able to integrate with information technology and sense and control problems and even home appliances in order to keep the national electric system running smoothly.

A well-designed grid could also include a substantial amount of storage of electricity. There are many types of storage, but we will assume a certain amount of large-scale battery storage.

Cost

According to a study by the Electric Power Research Institute, as explained in an article in the New York Times, an upgraded smart grid would require between $338 billion and $476 billion. The Climate Institute has also put forward a proposal for a Supergrid that would cost $500 billion, so let’s assume $500 billion. Let’s assume a 10-year construction period, at $50 billion per year In addition, a national set of large battery systems could be integrated into the network, providing another layer of protection against intermittency problems. Gar Lipow in his book Solving the Climate Crisis, chapter 15, estimates $1,000 per KW capacity , or $1.2 trillion over, say, 10 years, or an extra $120 billion per year to add in a battery storage system. The New York Times reports that the price of storage per kWh has declined to $300 to $400, with prices possibly declining to $100, so we could have about three times the storage capacity calculated by Lipow a few years ago, leading to about 4 terawatts of storage capacity. The solar electricity and storage program also would create about 15 terawatts more available for the grid.

Homes for All

Using US Census data, the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that the US has a shortage of 7.8 million units of affordable housing for very low income (7.5 million) and homeless (400,000) households and individuals. The study used the federal standard of affordability of 30% of income.

Public Housing

It is much less costly for government to directly build public housing units than to try to incentivize private developers to build affordable units with tax breaks and subsidies. That latter approach has been the dominant housing policy since the 1970s and the housing affordability crisis has only increased under this policy. Relying on the private market to provide sufficient affordable housing has never worked because more profits are to be found in upscale housing development than in affordable housing development.

It is time to return to public housing to provide affordable housing, but this time do it the right way by building high-quality, humanly scaled developments that house affluent and middle-income people as well as low-income people. Public housing is available to all income groups in many European countries. In some European cities, as much as 60% of the housing is not-for-profit housing in the public and cooperative sectors.

We estimate the costs for Homes for All in the Walkable Community Construction Program under the Green Economy Reconstruction Program. The Walkable Community Construction Program will create 2.5 million units of public housing a year. By making 40% of these units affordable for very low income people, 8 million affordable units for very low income people will be created over the course of the 10-year program and will close the affordability gap for very low income people.

The public housing we envision will be mixed-income like public housing in many western European countries, where low-income, working-class, and middle-class people all live together in public housing developments. Mixed-income housing will cost the public treasury less because the rents will be scaled to income and the higher income residents’ higher rents will partially cross-subsidize the lower rents that low income people will pay.

Mixed-income public housing will also break down the race and class segregation in housing that has persisted and actually grown more extreme since the 1990s despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. The old public housing increased segregation by concentrating poor people of color in housing projects that are often isolated from jobs, public transportation, grocery stores, educational institutions, and other resources, services, and opportunities. By mixing households across income levels in the new public housing, it will desegregate housing by economic class and by race because race and income stratification correlate to a significant degree.

The new public housing will be built to sequester carbon in building materials and to be powered, heated, and cooled by clean renewable sources of electricity. The developments will be located to redevelop out cities and towns into walkable communities that are more energy and resource efficient.

In sum, this public housing program will be a jobs program, a desegregation program, a walkable communities program, and a clean energy program as well as an affordable housing program.

Universal Rent Control

With the shortages of affordable housing, high rents are driving many working-class people out of their homes, often into periods of homelessness. The gentrification of working-class neighborhoods unnecessarily displaces many families away from their neighbors and community institutions even if they can find affordable units elsewhere. Displacement tears at the fabric of neighborhoods undergoing gentrification. We need to find ways to uplift communities – and re-densify poor urban communities that have lost housing and businesses – without displacing current residents. One way is to ensure new development includes sufficient affordable housing, which our public housing program is designed to do.

In the meantime, as affordable public housing units are being built, we need to protect existing residents from being displaced from their communities by rising rents. Rents are rising much faster than incomes and the cost of living in cities and towns across the nation.

We therefore advocate a federal program of Universal Rent Control that will cap rent increases each year and end evictions without a just cause so that people can stay in their homes. The federal government had national rent control during World War 2 when resources were devoted to the war effort and away from housing development, creating a tight housing market. We should do the same now to protect tenants in today’s tight housing markets. Oregon passed a state law in 2019 that ends evictions without a just cause and caps annual rent increases. We should do the same federally to help people stay in their homes while sufficient affordable housing is being built.

Geothermal energy comes in two main forms: large geothermal plants that are built deep into the Earth and generate energy around-the-clock, and shallow geothermal units built to provide the heating cooling needs of one building. Geothermal plants are not addressed in this study, mainly because of the lack of research, although a system of geothermal plants could theoretically be the ideal way to provide continuous electricity for any society. MIT has proposed a crash program to develop the technology.

On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of geothermal heat pumps have been installed in the United States. According to Oklahoma State University, “Ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) are electrically powered systems that tap the stored energy of the greatest solar collector in existence: the earth. These systems use the earth’s relatively constant temperature to provide heating, cooling, and hot water for homes and commercial buildings.”

While retrofitting, that is, insulating, plugging leaks, replacing windows, etc., to make a building leak less heat or cool air, has been a major goal in the past, it is becoming more likely that, in general, using solar panels and geothermal heat pumps make more sense, unless those two options are not possible

Cost

Geothermal heat pumps become more economical the larger the building with which they are associated, so that the 250-unit apartment buildings proposed above, for instance, would reduce the costs of installation. For a single family home of 2500 square feet, a cost of $20,000 is reasonable. The Department of Energy, on the other hand, has estimated that the cost of geothermal heat pumps is $2,500 per ton, which means a 2500 square foot house would cost only $7,500. Let’s say that on average, assuming a dense living arrangement, we could install a geothermal heat pump for $10,000 per household. With approximately 120 million households in the U.S., we would need to spend $1.20 trillion over 10 years, or $120 billion per year. If the household could not use geothermal heat pumps, then presumably the money would be spent on retrofitting instead, although retrofitting is generally more expensive than geothermal.

However, we also want to provide for the heating and cooling of commercial buildings, which totaled about 87 billion square feet. We are providing geothermal heat for $120 billion per year, for 120 million households. In 1950 the square footage per household was about 1000, and there were about 3.67 people per household; in 2011, average square footage per household was about 2500, with about 2.6 people per household, for new houses. So let’s say there is about 200 billion square feet for residences; thus we need half of $120 billion, or $60 billion, for the commercial spaces. Let’s add $20 billion for a total of $200 billion and to be more conservative, for both residential and commercial space heating/cooling.

However, a building self-sufficiency plan would use either geothermal heat pumps or retrofitting to minimize the expense of home heating and cooling systems, so this plan includes a retrofitting budget as well; between retrofitting and geothermal heat pumps, every household could have cheap, non-fossil fuel based heating and cooling.

Jobs

If we assume about 12 jobs per million, then we would have about 2,400,000 jobs per year in order to install ground source heat pumps and some retrofitting for all residential commercial units in the United States.

Automobiles use about 50% of oil. The only way to decrease the consumption of oil is to decrease the use of automobiles, and the only way to decrease the use of automobiles is to make denser cities and towns that can use electrified transit — subways, light rail, and buses. Transit is completely dependent on density in order to thrive. There are many parts of the country that could have more transit now, even with their levels of density. But to make transit practical for most of the population, most of the population will have to live in dense areas.

Transit is a good example of how the expansion of one industry can help expand an entire industrial “ecosystem” of suppliers, as Jonathan M. Feldman points out.

Cost and Jobs

To understand the employment generated by an expanded transit network, let’s look at the greater New York City metropolitan area. The Metropolitan Transit Authority serves about 15 million people, with 65,000 employees and a yearly operating budget of $13 billion. They have spent about $3 billion per year over the past 20 years on capital improvements, that is, manufactured goods like new subway cars and improved and new stations.

If about 5% of the country now lives in transit-friendly locations, and another 25% is added after twenty years, then for about 30% of U.S. population (about 100 million) to be able to use a system such as New York City’s, then the country would need about 7 such systems of 15 million people each, or about 1/2 million people employed to operate transit in the U.S, with a yearly cost of about 90 billion dollars, after these systems are constructed, plus another $45 billion for capital improvements (NYC’s $3 billion times 15 new systems). Thus, after the systems are constructed in 10 years, it would cost about $135 billion per year to operate, which could either be recouped from fares, or could be offered free with operating money coming from general revenue.

Using $150 million mile as an average for constructing, either subway or light rail, if we wanted to construct the equivalent of 15 NYC subway systems, which is almost 900 miles long, then we have a bit over 13,000 miles to construct, or $2 trillion over 10 years, that is, $200 billion per year.

The following table is based on the American Society of Civil Engineer’s Report Card on the Infrastructure. They present cost data for bridges, waterways, ports,roads, and aviation. These show how much more money needs to be spent than is currently being spent; the Green New Deal budget assumes that the Federal government will have to pick up the difference.

While most studies assume that aviation, roads, and shipping will grow at the same rates as in previous decades, the Green New Deal assumes that there may actually be a large contraction in these modes of transport. For instance, much car and truck traffic may instead be done via passenger and freight rail. We will assume that roads will be maintained for the next 20 years, but not expanded, so ASCE figures about $60 billion per year to fix roads and enhance them. Bridges should be fixed, whether the transportation system is centered on rail or on cars and trucks. The central economic program for the Green New Deal is to increase domestic manufacturing, which should mean that the level of cargo ship traffic into the U.S. could decline significantly. However, we assume that ports should be upgraded because, hopefully, any decrease in ships coming into the U.S. will be made up by a similar increase in ships carrying exports to other countries.

Air traffic will probably decline more than most studies assume, because much air traffic will be replaced by the Interstate High-Speed Rail System. However, we assume a conservative 4 billion per year to upgrade the airports, at least to implement the current air traffic control upgrades.

Transportation will have to move from being based on petroleum to being based on renewable electricity. However, it makes sense to at least maintain the current infrastructure while a new transportation system is being built. In the following table, we show those assumed cost levels.

Roads: 60 billion
Bridges: 13 billion
Ports: 5 billion
Aviation: 4 billion
Waterways: 1 billion

Total: 85 billion, rounded up

Since cars and trucks account for over 60% of oil consumed, it would be critical to make cars and trucks electric, so that they can use renewable sources of energy.

There are projected to be about 280 million cars at the end of 2019 in the United States.

If one third of these were not needed in 10 years, because of the walkable neighborhood construction and construction of transit, then the Federal government would need to encourage the purchase of 200 million electric cars. If it provided $10,000 per car, that would mean $2 trillion over 10 years, or $200 billion per year.

Jobs

About 1 million people now have jobs manufacturing automobiles. If most electric cars were made in the United States, that number could be doubled. In other words, we could require that electric cars be manufactured in the United States, not imported. That means foreign firms could sell cars here, but they would have to set up the factories in the United States.

This category reconstitutes one of the most successful programs of the original New Deal: the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The main task of the new CCC will be to plant trees and restore ecosystems, with the main goal of drawing down as much carbon dioxide as possible. It could be possible to draw down about 24 gigatons of CO₂ per year by restoring ecosystems, according to research. Another line of research indicates that planting a billion trees could draw down about 200 gigatons of CO₂ in total. According to a UN report, soil can be a good source of carbon drawdown. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released a report that concluded that, at the high end, afforestation, soil enrichment, and biochar could reach about 25 gigaton CO₂ equivalent per year. Humans now spew about 35 gigatons into the air per year from fossil fuel sources, but since fossil fuels account for about 60% of emissions, the total equivalent should be around 50 gigatons when all sources are included.

In addition, the CCC will address several of the issue areas in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Report Card on the Infrastructure. There is also the larger issue of reviving ecosystems that have been damaged, or even creating large park-like areas, such as a proposed Buffalo Commons that would cover a large part of the Great Plains, or long wildlife corridors. Also, fish sanctuaries should be established to allow oceans to repopulate.

Public parks and recreation

According to the ASCE’s report card on public parks, there is “only” about $10 billion in shortfall funding for federal parks, but close to $95 billion for state parks. So the monies for the CCC would include these needed funds for state and federal parks.

Hazardous Wastes

According to the ASCE, a 2004 study by the EPA estimated that $209 billion would be needed to clean up all hazardous sites in the next 30 to 35 years. Let’s assume $10 billion per year for 20 years, although it is quite possible this is an underestimate. That comes to 200,000 jobs. Let’s assume less than normal manufacturing, since these jobs are mainly service jobs, so let’s assume 20,000 of the jobs will be manufacturing jobs.

America’s most prominent climate scientist, James Hansen, estimated in December 2018 in “Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm” that with natural carbon sequestration (afforestation, habitat restoration, organic agriculture), it might still be possible to “return global temperature close to the Holocene range by the end of this century,” by which he meant atmospheric CO₂ below 350 ppm. In Hansen’s “Nutshell” paper, he cites a study presenting a pathway to 350 ppm by the end of the century that requires a zeroing out of carbon emissions by 2030 and drawing 150 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere, which is about the maximum estimated capacity of natural carbon sequestration through habitat restoration.

In an earlier paper in 2017, “Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO₂ Emissions,” Hansen and colleagues concluded that because we are near the limits of the capacity of natural carbon sequestration to draw down enough carbon by the end of this century (in combination with a rapid phaseout of greenhouse gas emissions), it may be necessary to find other ways to draw carbon out of the atmosphere.

Because the carbon storing capacity of natural carbon sequestration is uncertain and greenhouse gas emissions continue, it is prudent to research and develop other ways of drawing carbon out of the atmosphere in order to return to the climate safety zone below 350 ppm. A promising approach is to accelerate the natural geological carbon cycle where atmospheric carbon is mineralized in rock through weathering.

David Schwartzman and Peter Schwartzman, who are ecosocialist Green Party members and environmental scientists, argue that biospheric carbon sequestration will have to be augmented by geospheric carbon sequestration. They call for a solar-powered industrial acceleration of weathering that fixes carbon in the Earth’s crust in the natural geological carbon cycle. Water and CO₂ react chemically with rocks to create carbonates that fix carbon in the Earth’s crust for geological time scales. The technical feasibility of accelerating this process industrially was recently demonstrated in Iceland, where CO₂ dissolved into water was injected into a basaltic rock formation and 95% of the carbon was mineralized as carbonates in the porous basaltic rocks within the following two years.

The Schwartzmans note that solar-powered industrial geospheric sequestration would need to continue well beyond 2100 because about half of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities since the fossil fuel age began has gone into the ocean and life-forms. While oceans are being acidified by the absorption of atmospheric carbon, oceans also emit carbon dioxide like carbonated drinks do, especially as they warm. When life-forms die, their decomposition emits CO₂ and methane. The industrial carbon mineralization will be needed because natural carbon sinks in the biosphere will have been filled to capacity by afforestation, wetland and other habitat restoration, and organic agriculture.

The Schwartzmans estimate in The Earth Is Not for Sale: A Path Out of Fossil Capitalism to the Other World That Is Still Possible (pp.103–107) that it will take on the order of 25 trillion watts of global energy annually to power industrial carbon sequestration in Earth’s crust as well as to end global energy poverty and provide every person on Earth a decent standard of living, as climate justice demands. Current annual global energy production is 18 trillion watts, but the Schwartzmans argue that 25 trillion watts of renewable energy production is technologically feasible. They were the first to compute in 2011 how an initial investment of non-renewable energy can create a self-reproducing and exponentially-growing 100% wind/solar renewable energy system in about 25 years under the conservative assumptions of using existing renewable technology and modest rates of energy investment in renewables (1% of non-renewables and 10% of renewables during the transition). In a 2016 follow-up study, they find that this 100% global clean energy system can be built with an initial energy investment of just 20% of proven conventional oil reserves. The wells for that oil are already producing. No fracking, arctic, or deep ocean wells are necessary. Oil is chosen because it releases less greenhouse gas than coal and natural gas over their life cycles.

If we need to draw down 150 billion tons of carbon by the end of the century in order to return to the safe climate zone of below 350 ppm as Hansen’s scenario above indicates, and if that is near the capacity of natural carbon sequestration, it is worth starting a research and development program of carbon mineralization to have ready to scale up if it is needed.

The Iceland experiment in carbon mineralization cost $25 per ton of carbon. If 100 billion tons of carbon mineralization is needed, it would cost $2.5 trillion at $25 per ton. Spread over 50 years, it would cost $50 billion a year at the current state of technology to mineralize 100 billion tons of carbon.

For now, we have put $10 billion per year in the budget for carbon mineralization research and development because it may be needed. Carbon mineralization must not be seen as an excuse to go slow on decarbonizing the economy. Carbon mineralization should be seen as an emergency measure that may be needed to bring the atmospheric CO₂ back below the climate safety zone of below 350 ppm by the end of the century.

Further Reading:

James Hansen, “Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm,” December 18, 2018.

James Hansen et al, “Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO₂ Emissions,” Earth System Dynamics, 2017.

Peter D. Schwartzman and David W. Schwartzman, A Solar Transition Is Possible, London: Institute for Policy Research & Development, 2011.

Peter D. Schwartzman, David W. Schwartzman, and Xiaochun Zhang, “Climatic Implications of a Rapid Wind/Solar Transition.”

Peter Schwartzman and David Schwartzman, The Earth Is Not for Sale: A Path Out of Fossil Capitalism to the Other World That Is Still Possible, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2019.

David Schwartzman, “Should We Reject Negative Emissions Technologies, Except for Organic Agriculture?,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, February 5, 2106

Valeria Perasso, “Turning Carbon Dioxide into Rock—Forever,” BBC, May 18, 2018.

Jeremie Richard, “Iceland Turns Carbon Dioxide to Rock for Cleaner Air,” May 8, 2019.

Juerg M. Matter et al., “Rapid Carbon Mineralization for Permanent Disposal of Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions,” Science, June 10, 2016.

There are several aspects of a functioning water system: drinking systems, wastewater systems, levees, climate change mitigation, and dams. Currently, state and local governments are responsible for the cost of fixing these systems. With the general lack of revenues that local governments are experiencing, it is no wonder that water systems are deteriorating. The Green New Deal would provide Federal funds for fixing the water systems of the country, thus freeing funds for other local government needs.

Reliable drinking water must be available to all inhabitants. In their report card for drinking water, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that $1 trillion is needed to fix the nation’s water systems. That is $50 billion per year. As we have seen in Flint, this is a high priority part of the infrastructure.

In the wastewater report card of the ASCE, it is estimated that fixing waste water systems would cost about $300 billion over 20 years, which comes out to about $15 billion per year, but let’s double that to account for climate change mitigation, to $30 billion per year.

Levees account for another $80 billion, according to the ASCE. Let’s double that number to account for climate-change related construction work, for instance, for New York City. Then we have $8 billion per year Finally, the ASCE says that we need $45 billion to fix dams in danger of collapsing. Let’s assume $2 billion per year
So our totals for cost and jobs are the following:

Drinking Water: 50 billion
Wastewater: 30 billion
Levees: 8 billion
Dams: 2 billion
Total: 90 billion, rounded up

The current value of all factory machinery is about $1.5 trillion. Therefore, to replace most machinery, including research and development, could reasonably done for $2 trillion over 10 years, or $200 billion per year (assuming we would need more machinery than we have currently, because of the added manufacturing from the Green New Deal). The machinery would not emit greenhouse gas emissions, would not pollute, and would create products that could be recycled/reused. Part of this could include a robust R&D program to create the different kinds of machinery needed.

As the civil right movement turned “from civil rights to human rights” in the 1960s to address widespread poverty, it called for the elimination of poverty through a guaranteed minimum income above poverty in the demands of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the 1966 Freedom Budget, and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.

A guaranteed income could provide every American with an income above poverty.

Providing a guaranteed income at the federal poverty line would cost about $200 billion a year. This estimate is based on a Negative Income Tax (NIT) where people below the poverty line receive income to bring them up to the poverty line, with a 50 percent phaseout rate where the NIT payment is reduced 50% for every dollar earned until the taxpayer reaches 200% of the poverty line.

The NIT is an extension of the progressive tax system to those with low incomes who receive monthly payments from the IRS instead of paying taxes to it. Just as a higher income taxpayers pay increasingly higher rates as their income goes up, a higher tax rate, those below the poverty line would pay an increasingly negative tax rate—i.e., the IRS would pay them—as their income goes down.

The other common proposal for a minimum income is the Universal Basic Income (UBI) that pays every person, rich or poor, the same basic income grant. It is many times more expensive to the federal budget, even if the grant is included in taxable income. We prefer the NIT because it involves less transfer of money back and forth from the government to people and back than a Universal Basic Income.

That $200 billion cost of NIT is about the same as all current means-tested anti-poverty programs, which do not cover all people living below the poverty line. About 40 million people currently live below poverty line. A total of 100 million people, nearly a third of the population, have incomes below “near poverty,” defined as 125% of the official poverty line. A 2013 AP survey found that 4 out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty, or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives.

The US should adjust its poverty measure to reflect the real costs of living. The current poverty line is three times a 1955 estimate of a budget for a “thrifty food plan,” adjusted for inflation. The costs of housing, health care, college, and new necessities like internet connection have grown far faster than food costs since 1955.

A more realistic poverty line, reflecting today’s real costs of living, would be at least 133% of the current poverty line. Estimates of the costs of providing an Income Guarantee of 133% of the current poverty line come to about $400 billion a year.

Because the Green New Deal program outlined here would provide for full employment at living wages, many people now among the working poor would see their incomes rise well above poverty. But many people cannot work due to age or disability. They need an Income Guarantee.

In the context of the Green New Deal, we estimate that providing an Income Guarantee of 133% of the current poverty line would cost about $200 billion a year as part of a Green New Deal.

Further Reading:

Dylan Matthews, “The 2 Most Popular Critiques of Basic Income Are Both Wrong,” Vox, July 20, 2017

Hope Yen, “4 in 5 in USA face near-poverty, no work,” USA Today, July 28, 2013

Shawn Fremstad, “The Federal Poverty Line Is Too Damn Low,” The Nation, September 14, 2016

Emily Moon, “Experts Have Wanted To Update the Poverty Line for Years—But Not the Way Trump Is Planning To Do It,” Pacific Standard, May 28, 2019

A proposal to double Social Security payments was presented by Steven Hill in 2012. It would raise $650 billion per year, by lifting the ceiling on Social Security payments ($377 billion), ending the deduction for business pension expenses ($126 billion), eliminating the home mortgage deduction ($100 billion), and closing tax deductions for the rich ($50 billion). If the mortgage deduction is retained, and we don’t add the $50 billion which will be covered in other tax reform, we would have $500 billion of the $650 billion, and the extra taxes would cover the rest.

Homes for All

Using US Census data, the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that the US has a shortage of 7.8 million units of affordable housing for very low income (7.5 million) and homeless (400,000) households and individuals. The study used the federal standard of affordability of 30% of income.

Public Housing

It is much less costly for government to directly build public housing units than to try to incentivize private developers to build affordable units with tax breaks and subsidies. That latter approach has been the dominant housing policy since the 1970s and the housing affordability crisis has only increased under this policy. Relying on the private market to provide sufficient affordable housing has never worked because more profits are to be found in upscale housing development than in affordable housing development.

It is time to return to public housing to provide affordable housing, but this time do it the right way by building high-quality, humanly scaled developments that house affluent and middle-income people as well as low-income people. Public housing is available to all income groups in many European countries. In some European cities, as much as 60% of the housing is not-for-profit housing in the public and cooperative sectors.

We estimate the costs for Homes for All in the Walkable Community Construction Program under the Green Economy Reconstruction Program. The Walkable Community Construction Program will create 2.5 million units of public housing a year. By making 40% of these units affordable for very low income people, 8 million affordable units for very low income people will be created over the course of the 10-year program and will close the affordability gap for very low income people.

The public housing we envision will be mixed-income like public housing in many western European countries, where low-income, working-class, and middle-class people all live together in public housing developments. Mixed-income housing will cost the public treasury less because the rents will be scaled to income and the higher income residents’ higher rents will partially cross-subsidize the lower rents that low income people will pay.

Mixed-income public housing will also break down the race and class segregation in housing that has persisted and actually grown more extreme since the 1990s despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. The old public housing increased segregation by concentrating poor people of color in housing projects that are often isolated from jobs, public transportation, grocery stores, educational institutions, and other resources, services, and opportunities. By mixing households across income levels in the new public housing, it will desegregate housing by economic class and by race because race and income stratification correlate to a significant degree.

The new public housing will be built to sequester carbon in building materials and to be powered, heated, and cooled by clean renewable sources of electricity. The developments will be located to redevelop out cities and towns into walkable communities that are more energy and resource efficient.

In sum, this public housing program will be a jobs program, a desegregation program, a walkable communities program, and a clean energy program as well as an affordable housing program.

Universal Rent Control

With the shortages of affordable housing, high rents are driving many working-class people out of their homes, often into periods of homelessness. The gentrification of working-class neighborhoods unnecessarily displaces many families away from their neighbors and community institutions even if they can find affordable units elsewhere. Displacement tears at the fabric of neighborhoods undergoing gentrification. We need to find ways to uplift communities – and re-densify poor urban communities that have lost housing and businesses – without displacing current residents. One way is to ensure new development includes sufficient affordable housing, which our public housing program is designed to do.

In the meantime, as affordable public housing units are being built, we need to protect existing residents from being displaced from their communities by rising rents. Rents are rising much faster than incomes and the cost of living in cities and towns across the nation.

We therefore advocate a federal program of Universal Rent Control that will cap rent increases each year and end evictions without a just cause so that people can stay in their homes. The federal government had national rent control during World War 2 when resources were devoted to the war effort and away from housing development, creating a tight housing market. We should do the same now to protect tenants in today’s tight housing markets. Oregon passed a state law in 2019 that ends evictions without a just cause and caps annual rent increases. We should do the same federally to help people stay in their homes while sufficient affordable housing is being built.

A National Health Service would deliver services largely through publicly-owned clinics and hospitals employing salaried staff, and be governed by a federation of locally-elected boards. That will provide better accountability and cost control than a top-down Medicare-like national health insurance system paying mostly private providers to deliver health services.

Currently, Professor Gerald Friedman calculates that currently the national health bill is about $3.1 trillion, and that a Medicare for All would save about $600 billion in administrative costs and lower drug prices, so the national health bill in a single payer system would be about $2.5 trillion; but then he adds back about $350 billion to expand the system to handle services like long-term care and dental, so we have about $2.8 trillion for a single payer system

However, according to the OECD, health cost per person in the U.S. is $10,209 per person, while cost per person in the U.K. is only $4,264. With 330 million people, if we had a National Health Service with the same price per person as in the U.K, the cost would be about $1.4 trillion, or about $1.8 trillion adding in Friedman’s expansion of services. Since we now spend about $700 billion on Medicare and $400 billion on Medicaid, then we could assume that the same $1.1 trillion would go to the NHS, while we would need $1.8 trillion, assuming the same cost per person as the UK NHS. This implies adding about $700 billion to the budget to get full coverage. This could be covered by the revenues covered in “How to pay for the Green New Deal” (see below). However, they could also be covered by keeping the current employer contributions to health insurance, which would go to the government instead of private insurers, about $400 billion, plus keeping the payments employees make for their health care (another $300 billion).

In other words, a Medicare for All system would cost $2.8 trillion, but assuming a similar cost as in the U.K., a $1.8 trillion system for a National Health Service. Could we really spend $1 trillion less with a National Health Service?

First, the Green New Deal will make Americans much healthier because they will 1) be provided with inexpensive organic food, including many more fruits and vegetables and 2) eventually there will be virtually no pollution. In addition, depending on how quickly walkable neighborhoods are constructed, the national health bill from car crashes will decrease, and the amount of walking will increase health. So let’s say that would save $500 billion.

Second, let’s add back $200 billion in case Americans can’t be as efficient as Britons, and we have a national health bill of $2 trillion. If we assume that we keep the $700 billion from employer/employee contributions, then we only need to add $200 billion each year to get a full National Health Service for all Americans.