Clean living: Energy prices fuel sustainable, affordable housing push

Jan 20 - The Brownsville Herald, Texas

If you want to see what the future of affordable housing looks like in Brownsville, take a gander at the little blue house at 3132 Westwind Drive in the Inwood II subdivision.

Built by the YouthBuild program of the Community Development Corporation of Brownsville, it's the first LEED-certified house in the Rio Grande Valley, according to CDCB officials.

LEED stands for "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design," an internationally recognized "green" building certification. A public open house on Westwind Drive is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 25, from 5 to 7:30 p.m.

To receive LEED designation, a structure must meet a very high level of energy efficiency. Students in CDCB's YouthBuild program did the construction on the Westwind Drive house, and are at work on a second LEED-certified home, this one in the California Crossing subdivision in Los Fresnos.

Nick Mitchell-Bennett, CDCB executive director, said the LEED houses signal a new emphasis on sustainability for his organization.

CDCB is the largest nonprofit developer of single-family homes in Texas. Traditionally that has meant building hundreds of houses a year in subdivisions on land the CDCB has acquired on the outskirts of town, or, as with California Crossing, outside of town.

But with the rising cost of energy, the CDCB is rethinking not just how but also where it builds its homes.

"We're now seeing that a family is spending more for their utilities and the fuel that it takes for them to drive to work than they are for the principal and interest payment on their house per month," Mitchell-Bennett said. "When you make $200,000 a year that doesn't matter, but when you make $20,000, that's a huge deal."

The answer, then, is to build energy efficient homes that may cost slightly more to build than a traditional home but save the homeowner tons of money in the long run, and to locate these new homes close to where people actually work, he said.

"What we're leaning toward is how do we get back in downtown? How do we get back into the older neighborhoods, which are decaying? Lots of people work downtown, so how do we get people closer to where they work?"

Mitchell-Bennett said he never pushed an environmental agenda as CDCB director. However, with the spiraling cost of energy, things have changed: Building green suddenly makes economic sense along with the other reasons for doing it.

Just as the CDCB has always promoted sustainability in the sense that it carefully screens mortgage applicants and puts a premium on homeowner education, now it's time to extend sustainability to the actual structures themselves, Mitchell-Bennett said.

"Until it made economic sense there was no way to do it," he said. "There was a time when people thought this was a fad. It's not a fad anymore. The cost of energy is not a fad."

Nick Longfellow, an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer for the CDCB, pointed out that homes built under LEED guidelines are also healthier places to live.

"Something people don't talk about is the preventative health aspect," he said. "That's a huge cost, especially as it impacts low-income individuals like we're working with. They can't afford to be worried about high health costs. Respiratory issues are a huge health problem, especially, again, in low-income communities."

LEED regulations also dictate the kinds of paints and adhesives that can be used in building, prohibiting those that give off dangerous fumes. Heating and air systems in LEED-certified homes and buildings feature high-efficiency filters and air cyclers to bring in fresh air.

"When people hear 'sustainability' they think solar panels and wind turbines," Longfellow said. "No, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about insulating your house and no noxious fumes."

The Ford Foundation was impressed enough with CDCB's initiative that it sent Mitchell-Bennett to Denmark to study sustainable housing. That country is attempting to wean itself from fossil fuel, and green housing plays a key role. Mitchell-Bennett said it has nothing to do with Denmark's liberal politics, as some might be inclined to think, but everything to do with economics.

"It was amazing to see how they had started with one thing and just kept going along," he said. "It's created really a whole new economy. It was neat to see that. The technology's the same. What I was going there to look at was how did they do it."

In other words, how did Denmark get its builders, local officials, inspectors and others on board? In fact, the CDCB is bringing in a new staff member whose job it will be to figure out how to move sustainable housing forward on the local level, Mitchell-Bennett said.

"I've got lots of stuff to do, so I can't wake up every day thinking about it," he said. "I need to have somebody waking up every day thinking about this."

The Valley's affordable housing groups -- the CDCB, the Community Resource Group in Starr County, Affordable Homes of South Texas in McAllen and Weslaco, and Proyecto Azteca in San Juan -- have already taken the step toward sustainable housing, Mitchell-Bennett said. Each organization participates in a monthly Green Learning Group that identifies various obstacles and ways to surmount them.

"At the end of this we can turn around and say here are the issues. Here's how we changed it in the Valley -- regionally. Not just Brownsville, not just McAllen, but regionally," Mitchell-Bennett said. "How do we get everybody behind us?"

Community Development Corporation of Brownsville Open House

--Wednesday, Jan. 25, 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

--3132 Westwind Drive, Inwood II subdivision (off Dana Avenue north of F.M. 802)

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