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Social Housing as an Avenue for Environmental Justice

By Paige Hazen

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Background and Past Work

As the climate crisis and housing crisis continue to exacerbate one another, solutions that adequately and equitably address both issues are more important than ever. The Just Solutions policy team has analyzed solutions at the intersection of climate justice and housing in the past, and found that many of them are inadequate in addressing the needs of frontline communities. This report describes how “despite the historic levels of investments, programs within the IRA and IIJA (like the Weatherization Assistance Program and Green and Resilient Retrofit Program) do not center low-income tenants enough, putting the most vulnerable EJ populations at an increased risk of displacement”. Another recent report of ours explains how “few building decarbonization incentive programs will likely benefit renters, who depend on property owners to upgrade their units. Given the power imbalances in the relationships between landlords and renters, it is challenging to design programs with which renters can engage and benefit directly”. Climate solutions that do not center economic justice and a fundamental shift in control over capital threaten to make the housing crisis even worse than it currently is, and would also leave more people with increased vulnerability to the climate impacts and disasters that are becoming more extreme with each passing year. With the rising rates of climate migration both within and outside the U.S., we must act quickly and efficiently to create lasting, affordable, and healthy homes for all who seek them.

What is Social Housing?

Building on Just Solution’s previous research on the shortcomings of current housing policy, along with that of other environmental justice scholars1, the social housing movement has been identified as a set of solutions that could address many of the aforementioned challenges. The ideal tenets of social housing2 are as follows:

  1. Permanently decommodified.
    • Housing should be permanently protected from the speculative real estate market, and should not be resold for profit. It should no longer be treated as a commodity, but as a human right instead.
  2. Permanently affordable.
    • Housing should be accessible to a range of incomes, with the greatest number of units going to those with lower incomes. Social housing activists believe that no resident should pay over 30% of their income on housing costs.
  3. Publicly owned.
    • Housing should be owned by public entities (such as cities, housing authorities, counties, states, or the federal government), tenants, or mission-driven nonprofits, such as cooperatives & community land trusts.
  4. Environmentally sustainable.
    • Housing should be constructed in energy efficient and disaster resilient ways. The environmental health of its residents must be a priority, and the building efforts would create green jobs for community members as well.
  5. Accessible and inclusive.
    • Housing should be designed to promote accessibility for all bodies and inclusivity of different immigration statuses and criminal records. It must actively seek to undo centuries of displacement and racist policies enacted against diverse racial and ethnic communities, allowing them opportunities to build economic and social capital.
  6. Community Controlled.
    • Housing should be managed, developed, and operated in a way that is accountable to residents, the community, and the public. Residents should have a direct role in decision-making and should feel true control and agency over their homes. This is perhaps the biggest distinguisher between social housing and more traditional housing systems – as it seeks to build on existing models with a set of policies that protect tenants from displacement, such as rent regulation, just cause protections, right to counsel, right to organize, and more.

It is important to note that many researchers and organizers like to describe social housing as an “ecosystem”, instead of one specific model. This means there are many different variations of social housing that are currently being pushed forward in our country, many of which have been highlighted in this report. Public housing is probably the most well-known version of social housing in our country, and it also has the longest history. However, lawmakers have underfunded it since its inception, and have been further defunding it over the past four decades along with enacting racist and punitive policies3 – making it an increasingly inaccessible and unsafe option for those that need it most. We can essentially think of our current social housing vision as an expansion of existing public housing systems, with a significant increase in funding, community agency, and other characteristics that would help us align more closely with principles of truly equitable homes. Whether the control over buildings is achieved through policies like the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act4 or private market regulation like the expansion of rent control, and whether funds are raised through real estate taxes or existing government budgets, social housing provides guidelines we can follow to strengthen our existing housing systems and place the control back into the hands of the people.

Implications for EJ communities

Historically, many frontline communities have often been forced to choose between their health and economic stability. While social housing is by no means a perfect solution and would no doubt require significant trial and error, it offers a lot of new benefits and would not force those who are already most vulnerable to climate issues to make a disproportionate amount of sacrifices. It would also give frontline communities more of a say in the development and management of their homes, an empowering option given how often disastrous new projects are introduced to their communities without their approval or knowledge.

Following the Just Solutions tradition of amplifying initiatives that are not only sustainable for our climate, but also minimize the burdens of frontline communities that have long been forced into sacrifice zones, this is a really important campaign to advance and advocate for. Additionally, successful social housing projects can help to repair centuries of predatory, colonial, and exploitative wealth extraction from low-income communities of color5.

Additional Recommendations and Action Items

To ensure that the social housing movement continues to grow, and that its components are both economically just and environmentally sustainable, below is a brief overview of suggested actions that can be taken to push this “ecosystem” forward.

  1. Introduce new utility models that promote energy democracy and community
    agency.
    • Community Solar Projects: A model that allows groups of local residents, particularly renters that do not have the option to install solar panels on their own roofs, to share the output of a large solar farm in their area. Participants subscribe to a project to receive credits for a portion of the electricity generated by the solar farm, and then those credits can be used to reduce electricity bills. This results in reduced energy burdens for low-income renters along with the incentivization of clean energy production. See another one of our articles for an informative exploration of community solar’s economic benefits for frontline communities.
    • Community Choice Programs: A model that provides community members control over where their electricity comes from and how their electricity dollars are spent. This also tends to incentivize increased investment in clean energy, and results in lower bills from local utility companies as opposed to large corporate monopolies. Check out one of our previous podcast episodes for an in-depth explanation on how this model works and how it benefits lower income residents. Additionally, this article provides a great overview of further resources that go into depth about utility justice.
  2. Cross-subsidize rent with mixed-income residents’ payments.
    • Taking after Washington D.C.’s proposed model, this financing approach can help keep social housing permanently affordable. It offers an alternate funding stream that doesn’t rely on government subsidies which often take large amounts of time and labor to access and continuously defend. This is especially in regions where there are lower levels of support from the local governing bodies. Essentially, households who can afford market-rate rents and households who can afford affordable housing rates live together, and the market-rate rents are used to cross-subsidize the affordable rents – meaning that instead of going into corporate landlords’ pockets, “profits” go right back into making the units affordable. An NPR episode details one such success of this model in Montgomery County, Maryland, right outside of the D.C. metro area. Cross-subsidization would provide a terrific wealth redistribution opportunity, allow social housing projects to be more self-sustaining, and build cross-class solidarity and connection – something that is increasingly important as we aim to continue organizing for more progressive and equitable policies.
  3. Organize at every level.
    • Local: We must shift the narrative about housing away from it being an investment commodity and towards it being a basic human right. Starting with conversations with neighbors or local tenant unions, much can be done in terms of destigmatizing public and social housing and building widespread support for it. Truly accessible housing has historically been underfunded and will likely continue to be if the interest in and demand for it doesn’t visibly increase. Bringing forth the successes and pillars of social housing to local community members can help build momentum for new systems of housing in a meaningful grassroots way. In addition, strengthening the organizing and bargaining power of tenant unions is a key component of winning social housing campaigns.
    • City: We must push forward ballot measures that would create funding sources an housing units for social housing. Particularly in cities that rely more heavily on decentralized direct democracy, these efforts are often not only successful in securing necessary resources, but simultaneously signify to local policy and decision makers that mass community support exists. Some examples of such ballot initiatives include San Francisco’s Propositions I6 and K7 passed in 2020, respectively enacting a transfer tax to fund social housing and authorizing 10,000 units of social housing. Oakland’s Measure Q8 and Los Angeles’ Measure ULA9 achieved similar successes.
    • State: We must build coalitions and scale them in order to create and win more campaigns. This report highlights the experiences and reflections of over a dozen regions’ social housing organizers, and maps out key groups that are currently leading the movement. It is by no means an exhaustive list, but is a good place to start looking for ways to plug into existing local campaigns. If there is already strong momentum locally, then it would be worthwhile to build larger city- or state-wide coalitions if those have yet to form, as there is a need for greater cohesion nationwide so that successes (and failures) may be exchanged and people power is amplified.
    • National: We must endorse or advocate for federal legislation that would support the creation of social housing, and encourage more congressional representatives to cosign and champion those bills. For example, representatives Tina Smith and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently introduced the Homes Act, which would help build and preserve affordable units, create a large federal source of funds for housing projects, strictly regulate rent and affordability, strengthen labor and tenant protections, and much more. Having stronger federal support would be monumental in establishing critical baseline funding, regulations, and resources, while specific components of individual housing models would still be dictated by community members, based on residents’ priorities and their local political landscape.

Whether one is already an established environmental justice leader or just starting out in the movement, there is something that can be done by each and every one of us to transform housing from something that exacerbates cycles of inequality, into a bright solution for the biggest challenges facing us today.

  1. PolicyLink. (2024, September 30). “Resources Prepared for ‘From Tenant Organizing to the Halls of Congress: Advancing Social Housing Nationally’ Townhall”. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UwzzJSzArbtMdN1bXFECaMjYEh_fgvuBCaZf82q9Dfk/edit?tab=t.0 ↩︎
  2. 2Alliance for Housing Justice. (2024). “Social Housing Principles”. https://19c39f1c-52d4-4565-8576383373b6e1c0.usrfiles.com/ugd/19c39f_851c0e0460a0426bb8f403259d04cca0.pdf ↩︎
  3. Gandour, J. (2023, March 28). “We Deserve To Have A Place To Live.” Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/09/27/we-deserve-have-place-live/how-us-underfunding-public-housing-harms-rights-new ↩︎
  4. PolicyLink. “Tenant / Community Opportunity To Purchase”. https://www.policylink.org/resources-tools/tools/all-in-cities/housing-anti-displacement/topa-copa#:~:text=TOPA%20was%20first%20enacted%20in,offer%20the%20landlord%20is%20considering. ↩︎
  5. Gross, T. (2017, May 3). “A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America”. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america ↩︎
  6. Ballotpedia. (2020, November). “San Francisco, California, Proposition I, Real Estate Transfer Tax”.https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,California,_Proposition_I,_Real_Estate_Transfer_Ta x_(November_2020) ↩︎
  7. Ballotpedia. (2020, November). “San Francisco, California, Proposition K, Affordable Housing Authority”.https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,California,_Proposition_K,_Affordable_Housing_Authorization_(November_2020) ↩︎
  8. SPUR San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association. (2022). “Oakland Measure Q – Affordable Housing Authorization”.
    https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/2022-11/oak-measure-q-affordable-housing-authorization ↩︎
  9. Los Angeles Office of Finance. “Real Property Transfer Tax and Measure ULA FAQ”. https://finance.lacity.gov/faq/measure-ula ↩︎