The recent resurgence of socialist organization in the United States has swept socialist politicians into elected offices across the country. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most prominent, but there are dozens more, including Lee Carter in Virginia, Sara Innamorato in Pennsylvania, Julia Salazar in New York, and Vaughn Stewart and Gabriel Acevero in Maryland. What these electoral victories will mean for policy is still a bit unclear, but there are promising developments in Maryland that suggest public ownership could become a big part of the new socialist agenda.

Earlier this week, shortly after arriving in the Maryland House of Delegates, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Vaughn Stewart introduced a social housing bill based on a People’s Policy Project proposal written by Peter Gowan and Ryan Cooper last year. Social housing is the most promising socialist policy idea able to be implemented on the state and local level because it increases public ownership of the housing stock while also addressing the inadequate amount of housing available in many metropolitan areas.

Under Vaughn’s proposal, Maryland would create a Social Housing Trust Fund that is initially capitalized through a millionaire’s tax and the issuance of state bonds. Municipalities would then be able to tap the money in the Social Housing Trust Fund through grants or loans to build social housing in their area. Any housing construction funded in this way would have to remain permanently in public ownership. When it came to renting out the social housing units, high-income tenants would pay market rents or slightly below market rents; middle-income tenants would pay cost rents, meaning the rents would be equal to the cost of operating the building; and low-income tenants would pay cross-subsidized rents that would be below cost.