Bright Power and Building Energy Exchange joined forces to launch The Future Housing Initiative—an endeavor to help drive the transition to low-carbon, multifamily housing with real world data and analysis of building performance.
The Future Housing Initiative is aimed at creating a national, equity-centered database of real-world performance data on low-carbon multifamily buildings. It will include important metrics such as the resident quality of life, health, and affordability in addition to data on energy use and carbon emissions. What does this actually mean? That the Future Housing database will clearly center resident experiences of living in the buildings and their priorities as key metrics alongside more typical data points such as building systems and performance.
Here are progress updates and information regarding the next phases of the two active projects under the Future Housing Initiative.
Equity & Carbon Database for Multifamily Housing
Sponsored by Bank of America, the Future Housing: Equity & Carbon Database for Multifamily Housing project is developing a research strategy for data collection and a detailed business plan, which will guide the creation of an intersectional, anti-racist, database of low-carbon multifamily housing that incorporates information and perspectives from affordable housing residents, especially people of color and low-income communities.
To date, the project team has completed field research and resident engagement in five affordable multifamily buildings. This research identified key quality of life factors named by residents, which will be included and tracked in the database.
Resident health is key, because a person’s housing has an outsized impact on their health, and addressing health disparities is critical to achieving our equity goals. However, there is very little data available reflecting whether housing is healthy – or not. The project team secured additional funding from Bank of America to research and develop potential health metrics to include in the database to ensure it is comprehensive. The project team is thankful for the expert guidance and support of these nationally recognized advisors.
Underwriting Standards for Low-Carbon Housing
The Future Housing Initiative’s second ongoing project, Underwriting Standards for Low-Carbon Housing, is sponsored by NYSERDA. This project is both developing a database of measured energy performance from low-carbon multifamily properties, and creating utility cost benchmarks based on that data that can be used for underwriting future low-carbon multifamily buildings.
To date, the project team has built a database of 41 low-carbon properties—and counting! The project team analyzed this utility and consumption data to establish utility cost benchmarks and have back-tested those benchmarks. The project team reviewed the loan underwriting of buildings that secured loans to understand how their use would have changed the underwriting results. The next step is to work with NY State Lenders and Housing Agencies to make use of this real-world data to improve underwriting for low-carbon multifamily.The project team is thankful for the expert guidance and support of these nationally recognized advisors.
Get Involved with FHI
The Future Housing Initiative is always looking for collaborations that expand the dataset to other regions or addresses challenges in scaling low-carbon multifamily building construction. This includes exploring Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and other opportunities. The project team is interested in new Future collaborations which might include:
- Building owners or developers interested in adding the data from their low-carbon multifamily projects to the database.
- Researchers interested in applying this data to accelerate equitable decarbonization.
- Foundations or government agencies with funding sources open to supporting the next phase of the initiative.
Learn more about the Future Housing Initiative and if you are interested in working with us on an applied project, please contact Jon Braman at jbraman@brightpower.com.