How can we make affordable housing more affordable?
It’s a question we ask ourselves every day at MassHousing as we go about our business of providing financing for low and moderate-income first-time homebuyers and developers who build or preserve affordable rental housing.
The answer to the question goes far beyond the money we lend. When you think about financing affordable housing, it sometimes becomes easy to get caught up in the many numbers involved in creating or preserving quality housing communities.
Many of those numbers involve dollars – the millions of dollars needed to ensure a project’s success. While those dollars are certainly important to a housing finance agency such as MassHousing, the most important number to us is the number of people who will ultimately benefit from a quality home or apartment where they can afford to live comfortably and raise a family.
Green technology has rapidly become a major component of making housing not only environmentally friendly, but also more affordable through decreased energy and water consumption costs. And healthier homes make for healthier residents.
It was not that long ago that incorporating green technology into new and renovated housing was something new, almost trendy. But when something works – and just makes plain sense – it is easy to embrace. Green technology and affordable housing went through a whirlwind romance, and ended up in a healthy marriage that looks to be strong long into the future.
MassHousing, commonly known as the state’s affordable housing bank, has been a leader in promoting green housing and has helped finance many affordable housing communities throughout Massachusetts that have incorporated green technology.
Through our partnership with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a quasi-public entity that administers a utility-funded renewable energy grant program, MassHousing has awarded $8.5 million in grants to help fund solar energy installations at nearly 20 affordable housing communities.
Those developments range from renovated public housing communities such as Franklin Hill in Dorchester to the privately developed Trolley Square Apartments in Cambridge, which has been lauded for its design and use of solar energy, and is expected to cut the building’s energy needs in half.
I had the pleasure recently of participating in an event for the opening of the new Thomas I. Atkins Apartments, which were built on the site of the long vacant Kasanof Bakery property in Roxbury. That project was one that received $560,000 in renewable energy grants from MassHousing, and the state of the art green technology incorporated into that new, affordable rental community of 48 apartments will help sustain the affordability there for many years to come.
MassHousing requires all new construction we finance to fully comply with Energy Star standards, and we recommend the use of green technology wherever possible. We also urge developers who build or renovate affordable housing – whether we finance it or not – to use green technology.
An exciting example of why green technology has become so important is the upcoming rehabilitation of the 500-unit Castle Square Apartments in Boston’s South End.
As part of Castle Square’s $91 million redevelopment plan, of which MassHousing is providing $35 million in first mortgage financing, a deep energy retrofit is planned. It is expected that, once completed, there will be up to a 71 percent decrease in natural gas needed for heating and up to a 78 percent decrease in natural gas needed for hot water. Additionally, it is expected that Castle Square will see a decrease in electric usage of up to 60 percent.
Those savings will be achieved through a new, super-insulated building shell, high efficiency windows, lighting, appliances and mechanical systems, an insulated reflector roof and aggressive air sealing.
Similar improvements are planned for the ongoing multi-phased redevelopment of the Boston Housing Authority’s 60-year-old Old Colony Public Housing in South Boston, where current energy consumption in each of the development’s 860 apartments is estimated at more than $4,000 a year. MassHousing has committed more than $26 million in financing for the first phase of the Old Colony redevelopment.
Our commitment to green technology is more than just good business that can be measured in dollars and cents. It is also measured by the thousands of Massachusetts residents we have helped find an affordable home from which they can prosper and provide for their families.
Thomas R. Gleason is the executive director of MassHousing, the state’s affordale housing bank.
