Poverty, Planning & Politics

Going green and affordable housing have been two practically contradicting terms for way too long. This group, called Enterprise Community Partners, have developed a list of criteria necessary to build affordable, green housing, and they finance developers willing to build according to these standards.

To strengthen these criteria, Enterprise conducted a study and found that developments built according to their standards cost 2.1% more in upfront development costs. But these developments pay for that and more in the long-run because of the way they are built, due to long-term operating cost savings.

When affordable housing developments are built green, they also provide health, economic, and obvious environmental benefits as well. To bring these benefits to low-income residents, Enterprise breaks their criteria into eight categories: (1) integrated design, (2) location and neighborhood fabric, (3) site improvements, (4) water conservation, (5) energy efficiency, (6) building materials beneficial to the environment, (7) healthy living environment, and (8) operations and maintenance.

If you’d like to learn more about specific findings, you can check out the abridged version of their detailed report.

Every donation helps to finance more low-income housing units built in a sustainable, energy-efficient and healthy way, and if there’s one thing we know it’s that there aren’t enough low-income housing units in America for families going through hard times right now. To donate, please go to my donation page!

And if you need any other reason to donate besides helping needy families move into much-needed housing or my eternal thanks and appreciation, for every donation of exactly $9.00 you get entered into a chance to win an Apple Macbook Pro.

Cool, huh?

Thanks everyone.

- David