Advocating for Biden’s Infrastructure Plan to Reach Higher on Health Equity

On March 31, President Biden introduced the American Jobs Plan, a sweeping $2.25 trillion package that aims to create 19 million new jobs, rebuild infrastructure nation-wide and revitalize the U.S. economy. The plan’s proposed investments represent an ambitious step forward, with much-needed investment in the country’s aging and sometimes failing infrastructure. It even goes beyond traditional concepts like roads, highways and bridges to include broadband access, carbon-free electricity and public school upgrades. The bill also proposes targeted investments to specifically advance the health and resilience of underserved communities across the country. Over the next several weeks as the plan is translated to legislative language, we continue to support ways the plan could do more to set the U.S. on a path toward a healthier, equitable and more sustainable future. Below, we’ve outlined several highlights of the plan and a few places where we think the plan could be bolder.

Plan highlights

Leading the way in federal buildings
The plan invests $10 billion in the “modernization, sustainability, and resilience of federal buildings” so that federal offices, courthouses and other federal facilities in every state can offer safer, healthier and more sustainable spaces for public employees and visitors. The pandemic has highlighted the critical role our buildings can play in supporting preparedness, resilience and recovery in the face of acute health risks. As we continue to fight COVID-19 and anticipate future global health challenges, this funding could help enable federal buildings to lead by example through upgrades that promote and support human health and safety.

Investing in safe schools
The package offers $100 billion to upgrade and build new public schools, divided into $50 billion of direct grants and $50 billion through bonds. The investments would be prioritized for strategies that support health, safety and sustainability, including improvements to indoor air quality, ventilation and energy efficiency. These upgrades could help improve physical and mental well-being, productivity and engagement for students and school staff around the country. The plan could also start to fill the opportunity gap by targeting upgrades to schools in the poorest conditions, which disproportionately serve low-income and minority students. It’s a start, but it could go further to promote student well-being in schools. (Find our thinking on this in the “What’s missing?” section below.)

Advancing high-quality affordable housing
The plan proposes one of the largest affordable housing investments in U.S. history: $213 billion to “produce, preserve, and retrofit more than two million affordable and sustainable places to live.” The proposed investment would be transformative for improving the availability and quality of healthy, sustainable, safe affordable homes for underserved communities across the country. The Enterprise 2020 Green Communities Criteria – which Enterprise Community Partners developed in collaboration with IWBI and which includes both green and healthy building strategies – could serve as a roadmap for implementation of the plan’s funds. Read more about the plan’s potential impact on affordable housing in this Fast Company article featuring Enterprise’s CEO Priscila Almodovar.

What’s missing?

Comprehensive schools funding
Although the plan’s $100 billion investment will help schools progress toward a safer and healthier recovery, it is not nearly enough to address the long-standing poor conditions and deferred maintenance issues that schools confronted before the pandemic. The 2016 State of our Schools Report found that K-12 facilities face a $46 billion annual shortfall in facilities maintenance and upgrades. To help address the entrenched disparities in our school systems and truly build public schools back better, the plan can look toward the Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act (RRASA) for guidance on further investments. Read more in this statement from the [Re]Build America’s School Infrastructure (BASIC) Coalition, of which IWBI is a member.(1)

“Even with the $100 billion in direct grants, this will still be an incredible financial challenge for the poorest states and districts. Building back better and fairly, justifies at least $100 billion in direct [school] grant funding.”

Mary Filardo, BASIC’s Founder

Library upgrades
While the package invests in schools, it does not address other critical community learning environments: libraries. Libraries play a significant role in promoting health, safety and equity by enabling affordable, easy access to educational spaces, resources and programming. Additionally, libraries currently serve on the front lines of pandemic response and recovery, acting as emergency COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites, supporting literacy development for students learning remotely, and extending free Wi-Fi and computer access to help jobseekers reskill and apply for jobs. Investing in these anchor institutions is a necessary component of helping put the country on the path toward a healthier, more equitable future - which is why we recently endorsed the Build America’s Libraries Act, which would invest $5 billion in health-promoting library upgrades, especially in underserved communities. Read more in the American Libraries Association’s statement.

“President Biden is pitching his plan in Pittsburgh, not far from the first U.S. library opened by Andrew Carnegie more than a century ago. Carnegie knew that libraries were as central to the infrastructure of a nation as the steel he produced. It’s time to build a new generation of libraries with the tools to help all Americans, from rural and urban communities alike, to compete in the 21st century global economy.”

Julius C. Jefferson, Jr., ALA President

Tax incentives to help businesses safely reopen
The plan proposes several tax credits to achieve its goals, such as the proposed Neighborhood Homes Investment Act (NHIA) and “extending and expanding home and commercial efficiency tax credits.” These could perhaps pave the way for previously-introduced bills such as Sen. Hassan’s Home Energy Savings Act or Rep. Schneider’s E-QUIP Act. However, the plan does not as strongly emphasize tax credits that incentivize commercial building health and safety upgrades, which could enable businesses to safely reopen while protecting the well-being of their employees and customers. The bipartisan Healthy Workplaces Act offers a roadmap for how the American Jobs Plan could deploy tax credits to support a safe and healthy recovery for businesses nationwide.

The Biden infrastructure plan goes a long way to address what’s become a compounding problem for the country: our chronic underinvestment in the pillars that support our economy. Now, as we’re poised to make this critical and much-needed federal investment, it is critical that the funding be optimized across key priorities like health, equity and climate. Over the next few months, IWBI will continue its outreach to help support investments that can help accelerate a healthier and more equitable path to recovery.

1 Goldsmith, F. Healthier Communities – Libraries Improve Health Literacy, Access. ALA Policy Perspectives. 2019.