BCC and Partners Announce $7 Million in Grants, Loans to Support Green Affordable Housing Development

Funds will enable community groups to conserve natural resources, eliminate dangerous materials

BOSTON (March 3, 2005) – Community groups building affordable housing will have an incentive to use energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly practices and techniques, thanks to $7 million in grants and loans provided by five financing, technical assistance and advocacy organizations.

Financing and technical assistance for the Green Building Production Network is being offered by Boston Community Capital, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, New Ecology, Inc., and the Tellus Institute.

“This is the first major private sector green building initiative to be announced since the Green Building Task Force released its report and recommendations in November,” said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who participated in the announcement of the new funding today at the Boston Nature Center, the City’s first green building. “Boston’s community development corporations have been leaders in the effort to create more affordable housing in our neighborhoods and now they will be leaders in building green, healthy housing for Boston’s residents."

The GBPN expects to finance five large scale/high visibility community development projects that will integrate state-of-the art design practices into what many regard as the country’s most advanced and sophisticated community-based non-profit development industry. Projects that will receive the funding and technical assistance will be selected through a competitive process, open to CDCs working in the Greater Boston area. The projects will be selected based on the level of “greening” they are likely to achieve, their cost effectiveness, ability to use the program resources well and likelihood of being in construction in two years. The program partners, with the help of several outside experts, expect to announce the selected projects by the end of May.

Green building and design encompasses a wide array of issues including the conservation of natural resources, the elimination of unhealthy and dangerous materials from buildings and building sites, the long term reduction of building operating costs and the positioning and design of buildings that contribute to improved regional land use patterns (or “smart growth”).

"For more than 30 years, CDCs have been dedicated to creating high quality, healthy, attractive, and durable housing that is affordable to lower income families and enhances the surrounding neighborhood," said Joe Kriesberg, president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations. "With this initiative we can take these efforts to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness and ensure that all of our communities benefit from recent technological advances. We deeply appreciate the leadership shown by Mayor Menino and some visionary local funders to make this happen."

In addition to supporting the use of environmentally friendly materials and equipment in CDC-developed buildings, the program expects to introduce and explore real estate practices that could transform the ways CDCs typically work.

“With the tremendous uncertainty about the general funding environment for affordable housing, which is the central work of so many CDCs, one might ask why we’re taking on an issue that is believed to add costs to development,” said Mat Thall, Greater Boston LISC’s senior program director. “Well, we think there’s pretty strong evidence that over the life of a building, green design is significantly less costly. By focusing on the design and construction period costs we can at least level the playing field, if not help CDCs realize real savings.”

The program expects to fully engage CDCs and public agencies in the goal of achieving a high level of greening by insuring that CDCs don’t lose money on green projects and that public agencies that fund community development won’t be asked to put additional money into them.

“Through many years of lending to CDCs and following their development work we have come to believe that the industry is ready to embrace some fundamental changes in how community development projects are completed,” said Dick Jones, president of Boston Community Capital’s loan fund. “There are opportunities for CDCs to collaborate more often and more effectively. The way design teams are assembled and managed, how environmental risks are managed, how work is divided between outside consultants and staff of CDCs and how financing is assembled are all issues that can be investigated and launched from the platform of green community development. We also believe that the public and private community development financing institutions must be full partners in this transformation exercise.”

Ed Connelly, president of New Ecology, noted that the program builds on an established collaboration between CDCs and the green building movement. “Over the past few years, most of the partners in this new program have supported CDCs that have worked to green their projects through the Green CDC Initiative,” he said. “The Green Production Network will bring this work to a greater scale and impact.”

"We have had some green elements and energy saving products in our projects for several years,” said Jeanne DuBois, Executive Director of Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation. “It has been a gradual process. At this point, our real estate development staff are sold on the value of green development and we want to take green design to a higher level and make it a central theme of the most ambitious projects we are ow undertaking . In the end, we see green design is not just good for the environment; it is good for business."

Tellus Institute’s James Goldstein, who has overseen the Green CDC Initiative's research on costs and benefits of green affordable housing, added, “This program promises to be a national model. We have the right partners, the right mix of technical assistance and capital and a group of community organizations committed to improving the homes and communities of the people they serve.”

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