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The House Financial Services Committee may mark up the Green Resources for Energy Efficient Neighborhoods Act (the GREEN Act, H.R. 6078) as soon as next week. Contact your Representatives’ offices to urge them to cosponsor this groundbreaking legislation, the most comprehensive green affordable housing bill ever introduced in Congress. Read the legislation.
(PDF, 184K)
• Strengthen HUD’s commitment to energy efficiency while providing needed flexibility
• Incentivize major financial institutions, the FHA and the GSEs to finance energy efficient homes affordable to low-income families
• Promote energy- and location-efficient mortgages
• Ensure nonprofit affordable housing developers have the capacity to build green
• Authorize an energy efficiency and conservation demonstration program for project-based Section 8 multifamily housing developments
• Establish a revolving loan fund for states and tribes to help homeowners and apartment building owners improve energy efficiency, including through renewable energy
Green development – healthy, energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable – offers proven, cost-effective ways to address housing challenges, rising energy and transportation costs and the effects of global warming, all of which disproportionately affect low-income people. Experience and research show that green affordable housing can cost-effectively deliver significant health, economic and environmental benefits while creating good “green collar” jobs.
HUD currently pays more than $4 billion annually in utility costs. Home energy costs have risen much faster than incomes for very low-income households in recent years, increasing 33 percent since 1998. And low-income families are increasingly making desperate choices. A survey of households receiving federal home energy assistance during a five-year period found that 47 percent without medical care, 25 percent failed to fully pay their rent or mortgage and 20 percent went without food for at least one day as a result of home energy costs |
