For years, when the climate movement called for “connecting the dots,” they meant linking extreme weather to the broader story of human-caused climate breakdown. In the age of the Green New Deal, our job is to connect the dots in a different way: between the climate crisis and the crises of economic and racial inequality that afflict us every day. And we have an opportunity to get concrete – literally – by showing precisely how targeted green investment in racialized and working-class communities can slash carbon emissions.

One truly radical and intersectional approach? Tackle the United States’ housing and climate crises at the same time – with a Green New Deal for housing.

Of course, the centrist climate wonks hate how expansive the Green New Deal idea is. They think every piece of its social policy is an expensive distraction. But they forgot to follow the carbon beyond their tidy little graphs. In the real world, you can’t separate the carbon causing the climate emergency from our physical and economic systems, any more than you can separate windows, furnaces, and air conditioners from your monthly rent bill. And you can’t separate voters’ – and political organizers’ – desires for a safe and affordable home from their commitment to a stable climate.

In aggregate, the United States’ 138m housing units cause over 15% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, more than all commercial buildings combined. Housing inequality is also the biggest driver of the country’s horrifying wealth gap, with the median black family owning just $11,000, compared to the median white family owning over $135,000. And housing costs are destroying Americans’ budgets. Nearly 20m households spend over half their income on rent or mortgage payments. Another 20m pay over a third.

In the real world, you can’t separate the carbon causing the climate emergency from our physical and economic systems

While the climate movement flexes its muscles by holding climate strikes and blocking pipelines, housing movements all around the country are racking up wins, with campaigns like the Homes Guarantee putting national rent control on the mainstream political agenda.

Anyone hoping to become the Democratic nominee should be able to answer the question: what will your climate plan do for the housing crisis? Or, to flip it around: What can your housing policies do for the climate emergency? Either way, a good answer should be the same: a lot.

After all, the stories of inequality and energy converge. Homes’ carbon emissions are a reflection of something more visceral: brutal energy costs. Over a third of US households can’t readily afford their monthly utility bill, with people of color disproportionately burdened. One study found that the single main reason that people take out payday loans is to cover utility bills. The third most common reason? To make rent.

So far, Bernie Sanders’ mammoth Green New Deal and Housing for All platforms go furthest in tackling these two crises together. Sanders’ plans call for building nearly 10m units of no-carbon, publicly funded housing. And his plans call for massive investments in green upgrades for existing public housing, and doing a massive energy efficiency retrofit program for other homes and buildings, with a focus on low-income residents who cannot afford their own upgrades. And Sanders’ plan calls for universal rent control and zoning changes to facilitate apartment building in affluent neighborhoods; together, these measures would greatly increase affordable density, the cornerstone of no-carbon urbanism.

If you were wondering how a jobs guarantee would find work for everyone, now you know: making every home in the country safer, more comfortable, more affordable, and more climate-friendly.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also spoken about how beautiful, sustainable, and resident-friendly affordable housing complexes, with social services like childcare facilities on the ground floor, exemplify the conjoined social and ecological promise of a Green New Deal.

We can push all this ambition forward, and make it even more specific. Here’s where the progressive group People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign comes in. (Full disclosure: I was on the campaign’s policy team.) The Homes Guarantee plan’s headline demand is, to echo Bernie, yuge: 12m new units of social housing, built to emit net zero carbon emissions, include a mix of incomes (with the priority going to very low-income households), and built in a way that pioneers low-carbon and sustainable construction methods.

Indeed, Sanders’ more recent housing plan explicitly echoes People’s Action’s proposal, from specifics like its Green New Deal tie-ins to its all-encompassing ambition. Sanders’ plan states outright that “we need a homes guarantee”.

Yes, it’s counterintuitive to call for a big homebuilding program when we need to emit less. But here’s the thing. In the decades ahead, upwards of 13 million people living in the US could be displaced by sea level rise. Tens of millions of immigrants could – and should – come live in the US. Tens of millions of people will need new homes in the years ahead.

Our choice is private inefficiency, waste, and injustice, or equality and sustainability through public action

It’s precisely through public regulation and public building that we ensure that new homes are net zero carbon. This will vastly reduce overall energy demand, making it much easier to reach zero carbon in our energy system fast. Projects of new and retrofitted affordable housing in the US and around the world are already pioneering green housing techniques. And it’s through those policies that we will develop the skills to slash the ecological footprint of new construction, through more efficient techniques of homebuilding, and by driving sustainable innovations in building materials, like no-carbon concrete.

In this way, a Green New Deal for housing would have benefits that go beyond directly affected residents, by driving down the costs of going green for everyone. At the neighborhood level, Sanders and the Homes Guarantee call for making every social housing complex a resiliency center to keep people safe during disasters and heat waves.

Our choice is private inefficiency, waste, and injustice, or equality and sustainability through public action, finally providing everyone with a decent home.

The Homes Guarantee platform also calls for national rent control and pro-apartment zoning changes. And it calls for green upgrades to existing public housing, getting rid of natural gas and toxic mold. And the platform calls for massive investment into racialized communities to lift up households of color and tackle environmental injustice, through a vast array of careful policies, from energy retrofits to facilitating community land trusts to increasing access to clean transit to universal rent control to protecting families from displacement.

A Green New Deal for Housing would be an effective and efficient lever for decarbonizing the economy, creating good jobs, and increasing social, economic, and racial justice. And its core components are already popular.

Over the last year, polling by the think tank Data for Progress, where I’m a senior fellow, found majority support for many of this plan’s most crucial elements long before it was put together. In one poll, majorities of both Democrats and Independents – and an overall majority of 57% of total respondents – said that green investments should be prioritized in frontline communities, namely the working class and racialized neighborhoods that have suffered most from pollution and disinvestment. Majority support holds up even when respondents are told this green investment would require tax raises.

This past April, Data for Progress also found majority support for the idea that the government should fund enough non-profit and public housing units to ensure that every American without a home should get one (60% support, 23% opposition, 17% no opinion). They found majority support for a policy creating a $50bn fund to weatherize all low-income homes (58% support, 23% opposition, 19% no opinion). And they found strong support for the idea that there that smaller, low-cost housing should be built in middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods (49% support, 25% opposed, 26% no opinion).

Is it really so impractical to link climate policy and housing policy – the climate movement and the housing movement – around solutions that would tackle both crises at once?

With the climate emergency, everything is connected. We know why that’s dangerous. It’s time to talk about the benefits of all that intersectionality: we can – indeed must – solve our most pressing crises at the same time.