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.

This post examines the work involved to incorporate decarbonization and resilience upgrades into multifamily retrofits. Industry leaders share their perspective on the considerations the affordable housing industry must keep in mind to meet this moment.

Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) created a series of fact sheets tailored toward residents that explains different building upgrades and their benefits. Each fact sheet includes the types of measures to expect and energy efficiency upgrades that should result from the retrofit. The categories of upgrades are building shell; domestic hot water (DHW); heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC); lighting, and renewable energy.

This guide provides design and installation details for a standardized retrofit package serving California’s most common multifamily buildings. Technologies in this retrofit package were selected based on learnings from pilot demonstrations funded by California Energy Commission awards. The guide also includes financing recommendations driven by incentive opportunities for affordable multifamily housing through the federal Inflation Reduction Act and third-party lenders offering energy efficiency financing options for multifamily building owners.

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.

The Massachusetts Decarbonization Hub helps owners of affordable multifamily housing interested in reducing carbon emissions from their Massachusetts properties navigate the complicated landscape of decarbonization. Created in partnership with LISC Boston and RMI, this site provides quick access to guides, resources, and funding opportunities currently available to support these projects. The Hub outlines some key steps to decarbonization, connects owners with technical providers, directs owners to the available incentive and grant funding programs, and showcases case studies of recent deep energy retrofit projects for inspiration.

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.

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.

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.