Gray to Green Communities: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises by Dana Bourland

Author:Dana Bourland [Bourland, Dana L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Architecture, Buildings, Residential, ARC018000 Architecture / Sustainability & Green Design, Urban & Land Use Planning, Sustainability & Green Design
ISBN: 9781642831283
Google: _W8NEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 2021-01-15T23:36:23.618520+00:00

People Are Healthier

Many additional benefits gained from integrating the Criteria into housing do not have direct measurable financial impacts to developers or owners, but these also typically pay for the improvements. These include better occupant health and well-being through reduced exposure to environmental pollutants, improved connectivity to services and walkable neighborhoods, and good daylighting. The benefits extend beyond the occupants to the neighboring community by supporting local community services and providing activation of the neighborhood streets, improving water quality, and reducing the impact of rainwater runoff on neighboring sewer systems and water courses.

In general, developers found ways to integrate green measures into their affordable housing designs and were able to implement them in cost-effective ways. Developers were able to meet a number of Criteria for no additional cost, and even where a cost premium did arise, the overall impact on the budget was small. The median cost to meet all mandatory site selection location and site improvements Criteria was $0. This is not surprising because most of the projects were built in areas where local and state building codes already mandate that projects meet many of the measures included in the Criteria. The median cost to meet the water conservation Criteria was $83 per unit, and the median interval before payback was less than two years. Costs to meet the mandatory energy conservation Criteria ($1,056) accounted for the majority of the premium associated with meeting the Criteria. There was a small cost premium related to materials selection, a median of only $165 per unit. The cost to meet the Healthy Living Environment section of the Criteria accounted for the second-highest cost premium, with a median cost of $680 per unit. However, 14 of the 52 projects reported no cost premium to meet these Criteria, suggesting that some projects were able to incorporate these particular green measures within their existing budgets.

Many affordable projects know the importance of healthy living environments. Sanctuary Place in Chicago, mentioned in chapter 2 as a property that embodied the Green Communities Criteria before they had been created, was completed in 2004 to provide housing and counseling services for women on a campus that provides the opportunity for women to reunite with their families after having been separated as a result of being unhoused, incarcerated, or addicted to drugs. Gladys Jordan, the president of the Interfaith Housing Development Corporation, was well attuned to the problem of indoor chemical exposure because the women who would be living in Sanctuary Place often had compromised immune systems.

What is so remarkable about Gladys is that she understood the importance of providing healthy housing because she understood the needs of the women she was serving. She wasn’t developing housing for them, she was developing their housing with them. The women had extremely low incomes, many had been unhoused, many had HIV/AIDS, and many had been incarcerated. The codesigned vision of Gladys and the women for meeting their housing needs was not simply to shelter them but also to provide them a home

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