When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran in her primary against incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley, she had the Green New Deal on her website. But her big talking points were her district’s cost of living crisis, anchored in rising housing costs, gentrification, and Crowley’s links to luxury real estate developers. “It’s time we stand up to the luxury developer lobby,” she wrote on Twitter. “Every official is too scared to do it — except me.”

With her bold Green New Deal resolution, she has now linked the climate and housing crises. The resolution states clearly that all Americans must be entitled to “affordable, safe, and adequate housing.” But neither she nor her allies have elaborated on the housing piece since then, focusing instead on creating millions of new jobs.

Talking about jobs is understandable. But as her campaign emphasized, the crushing cost of housing is just as central to workers’ economic pain as stagnating wages, if not more so. Luxury developments, she said, make the four main crises in her district — affordability, inequality, immigrant security, and homelessness — even worse. Across the country, median incomes have stagnated since 2000. In that same period, a foreclosure boom has shredded millions of families’ savings, and average urban rental costs have increased by 50 percent. Overall, just one in five Americans eligible for housing subsidies actually receives them. A Green New Deal can’t deliver economic justice or solidify mass support without tackling housing head-on.