A new op-ed piece from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on MSNBC is sparking a firestorm of controversy.
Using the platform as their latest attempt to unveil the “Green New Deal for Public Housing,” they spew a screen’s worth of “facts” about how hot it has been and how hot they say it could get. For good measure, they even mention the potential for the sea level to rise significantly over the next 30 years. While that has the potential to be disastrous, it’s not impacting people or communities like they have been saying it would for the last 30 years.
Jumping ship to the heart of the matter, they suddenly downshift gears. Claiming the US as the top historical nation for carbon emissions, they claim this bill will fix everything. Electrifying all the public housing in the nation, they claim their bill covers over 900k units and would slash emissions by 5.7 million metric tons. They believe this retrofitting of public housing could result in a 70% savings and cut residential bills by $613 million per year.
The duo wrote, “We are also in the midst of a housing crisis. In America today, more than 650,000 Americans are homeless, and there is virtually no county or state where a working-class family can afford a decent, two-bedroom apartment. We have a housing shortage of approximately 7.3 million rental homes for low-income renters. As a result, over 12 million families spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent. Meanwhile, private investment firms are buying up homes in working-class neighborhoods as they make record-breaking profits.”
There’s just one problem with this: it’s all a shell game.
First and foremost, the biggest owners of these public housing-tagged buildings are private investment firms. Doing this will only shore up their profits. Making apartments more energy efficient, they can now claim them as recently renovated, and charge more, with the feds happily paying more because it’s “new.”
Secondly, we have a shortage of housing because we have a shortage of opportunities. The Democrats have sold the nation out at every turn. Small-town America is fading faster than the flavor of dollar store bubble gum as people are forced to relocate to bigger cities to have proper access to healthcare and other necessities. Quit subcontracting and selling out the nation, and we won’t have these problems.
This “Green New Deal for Public Housing” isn’t a Godsend, and it’s not the right answer either. It’s just another step towards destroying this nation from the inside out.
