Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future's (SAHF)'s case study explores learnings from Preservation of Affordable Housing's (POAH's) Salem Heights development, which electrified the HVAC system and improved the building envelope. The report shares details about the funding used and other strategies employed to make the project come together.

Electrifying heating systems with air-to-air heat pumps is crucial for achieving global greenhouse gas targets. This report uses simulations of 550,000 U.S. households to evaluate the costs and benefits of various heat pump performance levels and insulation upgrades. The analysis highlights the potential for significant emissions reductions and identifies the importance of efficiency and insulation in optimizing cost-effectiveness. It also suggests that supportive incentives and policies may be necessary to address affordability challenges and promote widespread adoption.

ACEEE is working with a group of interested market actors, including manufacturers, software providers, contractors, and program administrators to explore the feasibility of a market development initiative to support multistage retrofit offerings and build consumer awareness and demand for these offerings. This report summarizes findings from interviews and discussions with stakeholders. 

With a shifting funding landscape and unique equity considerations, affordable housing providers are seeking resources and guidance on how to best incorporate decarbonization strategies across their portfolios. This brief summary reviews the findings of Enterprise's efforts to understand how affordable housing providers are engaging with decarbonization and what is needed to advance the field. The brief makes recommendations for the development of new resources and tools.

Low- and moderate-income (LMI) families spend larger-than-average shares of their incomes on energy bills, but efficiency improvements that would cut bills are often unaffordable. This topic brief argues that coordinating and expanding existing energy efficiency programs can help expand their reach and make them accessible to more families.

Retrofit navigator programs streamline the retrofit process, reach buildings and households that are often left out, and center the most critical community priorities. This document is a step-by-step guide for designing and implementing programs based on best practices. This slide-based report outlines the scope of need, problems with traditional retrofit programs, best practices for designing retrofit navigator programs, steps for designing and launching a retrofit navigator program, and case studies of successful existing programs from Philadelphia, Madison, and New York City.

Communities across the nation are regularly experiencing natural disasters or recovering from them. While all communities are at risk, low-income communities are disproportionately affected by climate events and often have limited resources to recover. This guide provides owners and operators of multifamily housing with practical guidance on re-designing and retrofitting their buildings to adapt to and provide protection from climate risks and other potential hazards.

This case study provides an overview of the adaptive reuse of the historic Ohringer Building in Braddock, PA. Guided by the Enterprise Green Communities 2015 criteria, developers were able to transform this local landmark into affordable, climate-ready housing while preserving the history and integrity of the building.

Salem Heights Apartments, an affordable multifamily property in Massachusetts, recently underwent a deep energy retrofit to achieve passive house performance. This case study highlights the retrofit design strategies that enable 60% energy use reduction and show the integrated benefit of efficiency improvements, electrification, and solar. Specific strategies are described for the building envelope, exterior insulation, HVAC, and solar energy.

Over half of California’s 3.2 million multifamily units were constructed before energy efficiency standards, resulting in poor performance and high greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve California’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, affordable multifamily housing must improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and lower tenant utility bills while enhancing quality of life. Yet building owners face many challenges to improving the performance of their buildings. This report covers the role certain types of energy service agreements, combined with federal incentives, can play in scaling affordable multifamily retrofits.