Each day the benefits of green homes for low-income people grow more evident as increasing numbers of affordable housing developers commit to going green – or greener yet. And every month, more Green Communities developments open their doors to offer residents the opportunity to live in a healthy, energy-efficient home. At the U.S. Green Building Council’s 2007 annual meeting in Chicago, more than 25,000 attendees – from President Bill Clinton to local South Side community activists – embraced equity and affordability as essential elements of the green building movement. USGBC President and CEO Rick Fedrizzi saluted Enterprise during the event’s opening session for bringing affordable housing into the green building equation. Borrowing from Einstein, Fedrizzi said: “Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing.”
GREEN AND AFFORDABLE: ONE AND THE SAME
In 2007, the Clinton Climate Initiative formed a partnership with Enterprise to expand green affordable housing in New York City and nationwide, including in Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Los Angeles. Enterprise will serve as the initiative’s primary advisor on affordable housing.
Across the country, Enterprise offers innovative tools for building stronger, more sustainable communities. With help from Enterprise’s $15.5 million New Markets Tax Credit investment, the Central Area Development Association is turning a former brownfield into a mix of green homes affordable to working families earning median levels of income, along with offices and retail properties. The 17th and Jackson development in Seattle will integrate environmentally sustainable design features and materials, including energy and water-use efficient appliances and improved indoor air quality. The project promises to spur crucial building and economic activity in Seattle’s Central Area community.
INNOVATING NEW RESOURCES
Green Communities has achieved notable growth and success by providing financing, grants and technical assistance to green affordable developments nationwide. Reaching the next frontier for Green Communities requires taking the green affordable housing movement to scale. And getting there means finding new resources. In 2007, Enterprise introduced the Green Communities Offset FundTM with just that purpose in mind.
Central Park Apartments at Stapleton, developed by Northeast Denver Housing Center, meet the Green Communities Criteria.
emissions.
IN BALTIMORE, BETTER, GREENER SENIOR HOUSING
Novel ideas rarely spring from asphalt. But the New Shiloh Village in West Baltimore – the state of Maryland’s first Green Communities development – exudes creative thinking and execution, all on the site of a former church parking lot.
Enterprise provided roughly 80 percent of the financing for the $10 million New Shiloh development, which offers 80 affordable rental homes to very low- to moderate-income seniors. Unity Properties, Inc./Bon Secours Baltimore Health System co-developed New Shiloh with Enterprise Homes and New Shiloh Baptist Church. In late 2007, Enterprise Homes announced that 100 percent of its developments will be built and rehabilitated to the Green Communities Criteria.
New Shiloh is part of a larger redevelopment that includes a sanctuary and a 150-child Head Start center. It features amenities often found in affordable senior housing: a resident association, coordinated referrals to services and activities, multipurpose gathering rooms and a laundry room.
But it was a $50,000 Green Communities planning grant that helped the development team integrate green methods and materials into the complex. First, holistic planning ensured that the site would be near public transportation, shopping and other services. Then the team enhanced New Shiloh with such features as energy-efficient lighting, water-conserving plumbing fixtures, Energy Star appliances and certified Green Label carpeting. The green features decrease heating and air conditioning costs and improve indoor air quality, while keeping rents affordable.
- Actor, Producer, Director and Enterprise Trustee Edward Norton
New Shiloh Village features green affordable living for seniors in West Baltimore.
In 2007, Enterprise made strides in advancing stronger policy standards for green affordable housing, ensuring appropriate flexibility and raising additional resources.
Washington State adapted the Green Communities Criteria to release a new affordable housing green standard for all projects that receive support through the state’s Housing Trust Fund. Also in 2007, Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson announced a sweeping policy requiring new single-family homes to meet the Green Communities Criteria.
And following some intense policy-advancement work, in early 2008 Enterprise lauded the U.S. House’s passage of the landmark HOPE VI Improvement and Reauthorization Act. The bill provides $800 million annually through 2013 for mixed-income communities that incorporate the Green Communities Criteria. Never before has the House passed legislation authorizing holistic environmental principles in a major housing program.
THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE:
MEASURING WHY GOING GREEN MATTERS
A study by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that modest, cost-effective improvements in housing design, construction and materials can dramatically reduce asthma symptoms in low-income children.
With more than 11,000 Green Communities homes completed or under way comes the opportunity to analyze the costs and benefits of green affordable housing.
Emerging Green Communities data supports findings that green homes alleviate asthma. The data also show that affordable housing can be green for little if any higher costs and that green developments generate substantial energy and water savings, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Results of Enterprise’s ongoing evaluation effort, generously supported by an anonymous funder, will be available at www.greencommunitiesonline.org starting in late 2008.
Enterprise Community Partners President and CEO Doris Koo testifies before a House subcommittee on the benefits of the Green Communities Criteria.