The impacts of our changing climate worsen the affordable housing crisis, putting millions of households at risk of displacement.
We have heard from owners and operators that they want to make their properties more resilient to these environmental risks but are unsure what strategies could be both effective and affordable.
Enter Our Newest Initiative: Enterprise Climate Resilience Academies
These regional, cohort-based learning opportunities are for multifamily affordable housing owners, operators and developers to engage with one another, content experts and local stakeholders to address the unique hazards of their region.
Together, participants will identify critical vulnerabilities, offer solutions and technical assistance to improve portfolio resilience to future threats and incorporate community resilience strategies.
Focus areas will all be tailored to regional needs, and will include:
- Assessing portfolio risk.
- Building and retrofitting new and existing housing.
- Understanding federal assistance programs and how to access them.
- Incorporating community engagement and cultural resilience strategies.
Pilot Academy Sessions
The pilot academy will begin this fall, taking place virtually in the Southeast, and traveling from there to other regions around the country.
While applications to join the learning cohort have since closed, there are still plenty of opportunities to join some of the public-facing content.
Read on for more session details.
Session 1: Assessing your climate risk
Thursday, September 30, 2021
The first session kicked-off with a regional scan of the Southeast laying out current and future climate hazards and environmental justice vulnerabilities. Attendees will communicate what types of hazards they see as their biggest risks, and learn how to assess them in order to take action.
Resources shared in this session:
- Portfolio Protect
- Strategies for Multifamily Building Resilience
- State-specific hazard sheets
- Southeast region hazard sheet
Session 2: Built Environment: Existing Portfolio
Thursday, October 14, 2021
This cohort-only session included a live demonstration of a portfolio and building-level risk assessments.
Resources shared during this session include:
- Building assessment checklist
- Keep Safe Miami
- Strategies for multifamily building resilience guide
- Health Action Plan
Session 3: Community Resilience
In a rapidly changing climate, people are a top priority, and are inextricably connected to community infrastructure. The third Resilience Academy session focused on Community Resilience – what it is, why it is important, and some tools that can be used to strengthen the resilience and agency of community members.
Marion McFadden and Jamie Albrecht from Enterprise were joined by Marissa Ramirez from Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to discuss their real-world examples of the varied, but essential, ways that community members have been involved in resiliency planning.
Erika Gee of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD) joined the cohort-only session and shared examples of creative placemaking from her experience as a grantee with Chinatown CDC in San Francisco of Enterprise’s Climate and Cultural Resilience grant program.
Watch the recording of the public session.
Resources shared in both the public and cohort-only sessions include:
- Community Powered Resilience program from Enterprise
- Building to Heal: A Framework for Holistic Community Development paper from Enterprise, which also includes the Healing-Centered Project Screen on page 16-17
- Made to Last, a publication of Enterprise’s Cultural and Climate Resilience grantees
- Video of creative placemaking examples from Chinatown CDC in San Francisco
Session 4: Landscape of Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Planning
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
In this cohort-only session, participants learned about the importance of maintaining and improving their business operations to become more resilient to future crises, climate related or otherwise.
Resources shared in this session include:
- Business Continuity Toolkit for Affordable Housing Organizations
- The Sky Is Blue: Is Your House in Order?
- FHC NPCB Self-Evaluation
- Ready to Respond: Disaster Staffing Toolkit
- Sample NFP Financial Analysis
- Ready to Respond: Business Continuity Toolkit
Session 5: Disaster Recovery & Funding Opportunities
Thursday, December 2, 2021
Central to any conversation about resilience planning is, “how will we pay for it?” While we wait to see if there will be new federal monies dedicated to advance resilience and adaptation projects for housing, this session will provide overview of how to navigate current federal, state, local and private funding channels for pre and post disaster.
Additionally, how can affordable housing stakeholders prepare projects for potential Federal funding coming down the pipeline?
Join this public session beginning at 1 p.m. ET to explore available funding opportunities.
Session 6: Your New-Construction Portfolio
Thursday, December 16, 2021
What mitigation and adaptation opportunities are there for new developments to protect and prepare buildings and residents for extreme weather events? How can we transform building practices to lead to healthy, efficient, and environmentally responsible homes?
We will examine what makes a cost-effective framework for all affordable housing development, selecting prime candidates for retrofit, aligning funding sources, selecting an audit protocol, ensuring proper implementation, and evaluating results using Enterprise Green Communities Criteria.
Join this public session beginning at 1pm.
Please reach out with any questions about the Resilience Academy program to our team at resilienceacademy@enterprisecommunity.org.