Home  Sustainable Land Development Today May 2007
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Finding the Right Combination |
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Written by Ron Reid
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Wednesday, 10 October 2007 |
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Typically complex financing provides atypical opportunity to turn affordable housing project “green.”
Public housing. The phrase conjures up scenes of deteriorated buildings, crime-ridden streets, and gang activity. For decades, the legacy of local housing authorities and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was just that: low cost, poorly maintained enclaves for the urban poor.
Beginning in 1992, the HUD Hope VI program began to change that. Opening a palette of new approaches that included non-profit and for-profit developers, commercial lenders, and federally funded tools like Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), public housing began to take on a new face and in the process came to be known as “low income” or “affordable housing”. By the late 1990s, architects and developers began to “think globally and act locally” with the advent of “green” or sustainable design. It was only a matter of time before sustainable design practices merged with affordable housing.
Columbia Square in Lawton, Oklahoma is one of the first examples of the transformation of affordable housing into sustainable housing. As is common with affordable housing projects, funding is complex and derives from a variety of sources. Columbia Square’s financing package came from now-traditional components, HUD guaranteed first mortgage, the CDBG funds from the City of Lawton, Affordable Housing Program grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Topeka, and a 9% Low Income Housing Tax Credit allocation from the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency. Fortunately for Columbia Square, a newer form of funding became available—the Mark-to-Market program of HUD, which not only extends the existing Section 8 contract for an additional 20 years, but also gives HUD the flexibility of increasing rents so that $500,000 in green design elements could be included in the rehab.
This new emphasis by HUD on green design proved to be critical. A green design approach requires that the lifetime environmental “footprint” of each part of a building be considered—how many nonrenewable resources are used to produce a building component, what are the energy consumption patterns of the building and its constituent parts, how can the building construction process create the least waste—and that decreased environmental footprint may have greater initial costs. The construction cost model that architects and contractors are used to working with (use the lowest cost materials) can’t be applied in the same way. A new, more sustainable model, means that the design and construction team must look at lifetime cost of a building, including the operating cost. For the building owner that can mean greater initial costs and in the case of Columbia Square, the additional HUD funding filled the gap.
Our team, Ron Reid Associates, Architects and The Buland Group Contractors, are taking full advantage of HUD’s new commitment to green design. Some of the design choices we made are common sense options that have been available for some time but rarely utilized in affordable housing: use of energy-saving fluorescent lighting or incandescent fluorescent bulbs; high efficiency furnaces and air conditioning units; EPA Energy Star rated appliances. The additional funding from HUD allowed us to specify the same equipment many homeowners had been using for years. The result will be significantly lower energy costs for residents of Columbia Square.
Other building products employed in the design are equally environmentally conscious if not as visible. The reflective asphalt shingles won’t get much notice but will dramatically reduce solar heat gain during the hot Oklahoma summers, resulting in dramatic cost savings in air conditioning. When coupled with the use of low “E” glass windows (which provide much greater insulating value than conventional glass windows), heating and cooling costs are lowered even further. Low E glass does cost more upfront, but the difference in lower energy cost and in comfort to the residents is tremendous. The additional cost of well constructed windows pays for itself in a few short years. The final component in the “energy envelope” was the use of foam building insulation (with a higher insulating value) instead of the more common batt insulation.
Faced with unknown and largely unpredictable energy costs, Catholic Charities of Oklahoma City, the owner, asked our engineering consultants to investigate energy monitoring and management systems. The result was state of the art energy management equipment that allows 24/7 monitoring and adjustment of the building’s mechanical systems for optimal operation.
Some of the materials specified are completely invisible to the residents, but lower the overall environmental impact of the project. Plywood, a ubiquitous material in all wood frame construction, seems an unlikely place to make an environmental difference. The design team determined that formaldehyde-free plywood was available, an environmentally cleaner version of the common material. Similarly, many adhesives and paints used in residential construction contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are often linked to atmospheric pollution. Again, we examined many low VOC alternatives for paints and adhesives. Specifying low VOC is a relatively simple way to reduce a project’s environmental footprint and having the additional HUD funds made it possible to do so.
Water conservation and management is also a critical component of green design. We employed xeriscape landscaping which utilizes planting materials that require minimal water, a serious consideration in the hot Oklahoma summer. Permeable paving was used where possible which allows rainwater to percolate into the soil beneath, reducing runoff into the municipal storm sewer system.
Green design strategies require the commitment of not only the architect and engineering team, but the understanding of the owner as well. Fortunately, our client, Catholic Charities of Oklahoma City and their housing consultant, Mercy Housing Inc., of Denver, Colorado, and equity investor, Enterprise Community Investment, took the long term view. Realizing that initial construction costs are only part of the picture, they gave the design team freedom to explore sustainable design alternatives. The final project, 64 units comprised of two and three bedroom apartments, will experience lower operating costs over its useful life of 40 years or more.
Will green design continue to influence affordable housing policy and funding? Green design has already moved past the trend phase and will increasingly be a part of mainstream. The past decade has seen a growing acceptance and, in some cases, mandated utilization of green design tactics. As one of the early attempts by HUD to embody green design, Columbia Square’s scheduled construction start in March 2007 is an excellent step in that direction. Developers, particularly nonprofit developers, can translate HUD’s financial commitment to green design into functioning projects that deliver environmental benefits and cost savings for years to come. That’s a combination that everyone can agree on. SLDT
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