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.

Decarbonizing residential building stock is crucial to mitigating climate change. However, local and national decarbonization policies can potentially create unintended harms for tenants, including unsustainable rent raises and unnecessary or illegal evictions. These policies must be designed and implemented carefully to protect renters, who are more likely than homeowners to be from Black, Brown, and low-income communities that already disproportionately bear the negative effects of climate change. Not doing so will exacerbate the housing crisis while driving more Americans into homelessness. This paper offers recommendations for tenant protection in building decarbonization policies.

This blog post details the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) finalization of Part 1 of a national zero emissions building definition, emphasizing operational carbon emissions. This definition outlines three key criteria for buildings: energy efficiency, no on-site emissions, and the use of all-clean power sources. It aims to enhance public health, lower energy costs, and protect the climate. The post highlights the positive industry and advocate reactions, notes the importance of addressing embodied carbon in future updates, and explains how new and retrofitted homes can meet the definition. It emphasizes the economic feasibility and investment potential in zero-emission buildings and outlines steps for builders to achieve compliance.

New York State and New York City have enacted climate legislation with ambitious energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction targets. New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and New York City’s Local Law 97 (LL97) impact various housing sector stakeholders, including owners, developers, renters, and financiers. Compliance will require significant investments over the next two decades, especially for high-emission buildings. While market-rate properties can finance upgrades through operating income or debt, affordable housing faces financial challenges.

Recommendations in this paper focus on strategies to make compliance more feasible and accelerate decarbonization for all housing sectors.

This report showcases how cities in the US can implement building decarbonization policies and programs in an equitable manner while also incorporating a broader set of community priorities and needs in the development, delivery, and outcomes of the program. The paper also presents case study examples from cities in the United States that have implemented community-driven buildings retrofit programs and highlights learnings from their programs for other cities.

Through a series of workshops in key cities, including Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Atlanta, Sacramento, and D.C., RMI and Wells Fargo partnered to address decarbonizing affordable housing in high-energy burdened markets nationwide. These workshops fostered collaboration among stakeholders, resulting in the development of this comprehensive toolkit. The toolkit equips stakeholders with the necessary resources to optimize the deployment of policies and financing tools, address major capital improvement needs, spur green job growth, and prioritize tenant protections. The resource spotlights current challenges stakeholders face across various markets, and more importantly underscores the collective determination to forge a more prosperous and sustainable future across the nationwide affordable housing stock.

To better understand the barriers limiting the decarbonization of affordable housing beyond what energy and cost analyses could provide, NRDC commissioned an Arup-authored study of energy retrofits of affordable multi-family housing buildings within the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The study examined five real-world examples to expose obstacles, inefficiencies, and opportunities encountered during retrofit processes. Six key challenge areas emerged that must be addressed to enable decarbonization of affordable housing at scale: carbon reduction strategies, financing, implementation, policy, technical expertise, and tenant impact.

This report looks at the existing research on climate and housing in the U.S, in two key areas: how housing decarbonization and production strategies can reduce pollution to mitigate climate change, and how climate change impacts renters, homeowners, and the broader housing industry. The paper also identifies key research gaps where more evidence would help policymakers to navigate the tensions between different policy approaches.

The IRA presents an immense opportunity, but delivering those resources where they are most needed is no easy task given systemic barriers that often prevent low-income and communities of color from applying for and adopting green energy opportunities. In this blog post, Decarbonization Fellow Kiera Quigley explores why new funds and programs "must center the needs and voices of environmental justice communities, or threaten to leave them behind."

Multifamily housing accounts for 20% of greenhouse gases. That makes taking advantage of unprecedented incentives and funding via the Inflation Reduction Act critical. This blog post previews new tools from Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) and Cadence OneFive to help the affordable housing sector unlock the potential of this landmark investment in affordable housing and energy efficiency.