Flanked by her fellow progressive legislators, House New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled a sweeping set of proposed reforms yesterday under the banner of a “Green New Deal” for public housing, reviving a favourite if outworn slogan of the Left.

On the heels of President Joe Biden’s announcement of housing affordability as a policy priority in his State of the Union address, AOC is looking to advance a pet cause of many progressive housing activists, namely the repeal of the “Faircloth Amendment”, which prohibited the Department of Housing and Urban Development from funding public housing. Though as a policy analysis at the centre-left Brookings Institution has shown, repeal of the amendment would likely have little effect on America’s capacity to construct new homes at scale, public or otherwise — other than perhaps as a symbolic gesture — because the real obstacles come in the form of restrictive local zoning laws coupled with a perennial lack of investment.