Transforming the Housing Sector with Green Industrial Policy
Read our series featuring labor, public sector, and green innovation experts on the need for a green industrial policy for housing and keep an eye out for more coming soon:
We Need a Green Industrial Policy for Housing lays out the need for a new transformative approach to rapidly decarbonize while reducing housing costs and creating high-road jobs
New findings: Transforming the Housing Sector through Green Industrial Policy unpacks the sectoral misalignments preventing green industrial policies
At a time when affordable housing is a national, top-tier political issue, the market is failing to transform the housing sector and policymakers lack a supply-side housing agenda that actually meets the scale and urgency of the housing and climate crises. To reach carbon reduction goals and housing supply needs, the US housing sector will need to double the current housing construction pace and multiply the pace of retrofits 30-fold.
In Transforming the Housing Sector with Green Industrial Policy, we examine the overarching challenges in the housing sector that prevent the delivery of sustainably built, energy-efficient, structurally resilient, and affordable homes.
We argue for a new approach that coordinates labor, manufacturing, capital providers, utilities, and residents to deliver affordable and sustainable new construction and retrofits at scale: a green industrial policy for the housing sector.
With green housing industrial policy, we can:
- lower the costs of green housing materials; build coalitions across government, industry, labor, and residents;
- coordinate interventions to get things done; and
- stack policies to help those in greatest need reap the benefits of upgraded homes.
A green housing industrial policy would enable the United States to assemble new coalitions by mobilizing capital to finance construction and building upgrades, increasing manufacturing of appliances and construction materials, bringing labor unions into a more active role in housing construction, and prioritizing innovation across the supply chain.
We recommend policy measures that coordinate market actors through climate transition and deliver on social benefits including long-term housing affordability and high-road jobs. In the absence of federal leadership, we highlight opportunities to leverage industrial policy, coordinate markets, and drive green, climate-resilient housing.
This approach puts public institutions front and center, enabling them to work better for the public good at the speed and scale required to bring down the cost of housing and address the health and safety issues associated with the climate crisis.
