A Green New Deal for Housing: affordable sustainable homes and communities for all

Abstract

This chapter sets out why the connection between housing and the environment urgently needs to be moved centre stage in both the housing and climate debates. It links climate change and housing together conceptually through the centrality of home to the human existence. It sets out a new housing plan: a Green New Deal for Housing in Ireland which details the key solutions for transforming our housing systems to provide affordable, sustainable homes for all. This includes a new housing plan, A Green New Deal for Housing in Ireland: Affordable Sustainable Homes and Communities for All, including mixed income public housing for all, a dedicated Affordable Sustainable Homes Building Agency, reimagining public housing, transforming social housing from being treated as a stigmatized form of accommodation restricted to very low-income households to becoming a model of desirable housing available and attractive to a much broader range of low- and middle-income households, using public land for public and not-for-profit affordable sustainable homes, how the new housing model can be financed, and why a new housing model should be underpinned by the right to housing as foundation of housing policy and law. It develops indicators for assessing housing models: and compares the market (dualist) model and public, affordable, sustainable, human rights (unitary) model.