Leveraging Resiliency to Promote Equity

by David Luberoff
Deputy Director

Faced with the increased threat of natural disasters, some community-based organizations are trying to link their efforts to better plan for catastrophic events with their existing efforts to address issues like affordable housing and economic development, according to "Bounce Forward, Not Back: Leveraging Resiliency to Promote Equity," a new working paper jointly published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies and NeighborWorks® America. Written by Caroline Lauer, a master in urban planning student at Harvard's Graduate School of Design who was a 2017 Edward M. Gramlich Fellow in Community and Economic Development, the paper draws lessons from the growing literature on resiliency and from two case studies of notable initiatives carried out by organizations in NeighborWorks' national network of independent, nonprofit organizations focused on affordable housing and community development.

A sample RAPIDO home.

The first case study describes work done by the Community Development Corporation Brownsville, which has worked with several other community groups to develop RAPIDO, a holistic approach to disaster recovery that, "aims to quickly and affordably rehouse individuals and families, building social capital within the community, and stimulating the local economy." The key to this effort, Lauer explains, is providing families with, "a simple 480-square-foot [structure] that contains essential facilities," and training a group of "Navigators" who can lead residents through the disaster recovery process. The units, which cost about as much as the temporary manufactured units typically provided to people who have lost their home to natural disaster, "can be built easily at local lumberyards, transported by basic trailers, and assembled on-site in three days by four people." Moreover, unlike the temporary housing, the units are permanent and can later be expanded.

The second case study focuses on NeighborWorks® Umpqua's Southwestern Oregon Food System Collaborative (SWOFSC) Seafood Project, a multi-faceted effort to address the struggles of the region's small-scale fisheries. This effort does so by investing in and fostering local processing facilities and other infrastructure to support local fishermen. At the same time, it also uses marketing and other strategies to increase the local and regional demand for less traditional types of seafood that, because of warming oceans, comprise increasingly large shares of what local fishermen are bringing into port. Moreover, the project leveraged these economic development initiatives to help the region prepare for both slow-moving disasters, such as the effect of climate change on the fish population, and for acute disasters, such as a storms, tsunami, or earthquakes that might reduce or even cut off the region's access to the mainland for an extended period of time.

Although the initiatives are quite different, and while it is too soon to fully gauge their effectiveness, Lauer contends that together they offer three important and timely lessons given the hurricanes that hit Texas and Puerto Rico and the wildfires that devastated parts of California and other western states last year (after she had carried out her research). First, their differing trajectories show that while efforts to link community and economic development initiatives with projects that are focused on resiliency and disaster response can have different starting points and program structures, they can still achieve similar goals. Second, both show that regardless of how they start and are structured, such efforts should focus on creating social and physical connections and structures that can be used to address a variety of pre- and post-disaster conditions, including structural inequality. Finally, she notes, such efforts strengthen a community's ability to respond not only to anticipated problems but to unforeseen challenges and potential disasters.

Significant Improvements in Energy Efficiency Characteristics of the US Housing Stock

by Elizabeth
La Jeunesse
Research Analyst

Compared to 2009, single-family homes built before 1980 are now better insulated, have relatively newer heating equipment, and are more likely to have undergone an energy audit. These and other energy-related characteristics of the owner-occupied stock, shown in Table 1, are consistent with the expanding size of the home improvement industry over the past few years, with particular growth in energy-sensitive projects. Homeowners' annual spending for related projects—including roofing, siding, windows/doors, insulation and HVAC—expanded from $50 billion to nearly $70 billion over 2009-2015.



The transformation of the existing US housing stock toward greater energy efficiency also reflects a wave of energy-related incentives for HVAC and building envelope upgrades put in place following the rise of energy prices in the mid-2000s. At the federal level, one of the biggest initiatives was the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which extended and strengthened tax credits for energy improvements to existing homes, including insulation, windows, roofs, water heaters, furnaces, boilers, heat pumps, and central air conditioners.

Despite recent progress, there is room for growth. As of 2015, 17 percent of single-family homes built prior to 1980 were still reported to have ‘poor insulation’, and only 11 percent had received an energy audit. By comparison, a recent profile of newly constructed homes (built after 2009) showed only 1 percent of residents reporting ‘poor insulation’—an impressively low share. Moreover, nearly 90 percent of new homes come with double- or triple-pane windows. Bringing older homes up to this higher standard will require significant investments to the existing stock.

At the same time, only 5 percent of new homes have smart thermostats—a relatively inexpensive but potentially high-payoff upgrade—and a similar share have energy-saving tankless water heaters. These lower shares suggest room for growth in energy-efficient technologies in new and old homes alike.

Renewable technologies, particularly solar energy, are also showing signs of growth. As of 2015, nearly 6 percent of recently built homes reported on-site solar generation, a relatively small share, but nearly triple the incidence in older homes. Thanks to the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016, US taxpayers can still claim a credit of up to 30 percent of expenditures for photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies placed in service in their homes. Several US states also now provide consumers with credits for net excess energy generation, further increasing the payoff for installing renewable energy systems.

With recent declines in energy prices, however, there is some question of whether homeowners still have strong incentives to pursue energy-efficiency improvements. Since 2015, the consumer price index for energy has hovered around 10 percent below its average for the prior ten years (2005-2014). If this trend continues, further progress in energy-related improvements will probably depend even more on consumer preferences and finances, in addition to changing building and product codes, and evolving industry standards. 

Data used in this analysis comes from a newly released 2015 Energy Information Administration survey that tracks the energy-related characteristics of all US residential units. Further results detailing energy consumption intensity (or usage per square foot) will be released in 2018, enabling deeper analysis into the evolution of energy efficiency in US homes.

Beyond Energy Efficiency: The Future of Sustainability in the Housing Market

by Kermit Baker
Director, Remodeling
Futures Program

For the past 40 years, since the OPEC oil embargo in the early 1970s dramatically pushed up international crude oil prices, energy conservation and energy efficiency have been national economic and policy priorities. Households have directly borne the brunt of these higher prices. Since 1973, while overall consumer prices have increased fourfold, housing costs as measured by the consumer price index have moved up at the same pace, but home energy prices have jumped by half again as much; six times as high as they were in 1973.

In response to higher prices, households have reduced their home energy consumption. The initial reaction was to cut back on heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, but as energy costs remained high, households have made investments to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. (A recent blog post by Mariel Wolfson describes how early efforts to address energy efficiency gave rise to concerns about indoor air quality.)  More recently, state and federal tax incentives have encouraged even greater levels of home energy efficiency spending. Joint Center analysis indicates that almost a third of homeowner improvement spending at present is for projects where there is likely to be an improvement in energy efficiency, such as window replacements, adding insulation, or upgrading the HVAC system. This share is up from a quarter of spending a decade ago.

The results of these investments have been impressive: between 1980 (when households started thinking more seriously about investing in energy efficiency retrofits) and 2009 (the most recent national survey on energy consumption) per household energy consumption has declined almost 22%. Since home sizes have actually increased over this three decade period, the per square foot decline in home energy use has been an even more impressive 30%.

However, given changes in the domestic energy situation, the days of strong incentives from rising energy costs to improve home energy efficiency are likely behind us. While the controversy surrounding the environmental and health concerns of hydraulic fracturing have generated a lot of discussion, its impact on energy production generally has attracted less attention. For example, a 2012 report from the International Energy Agency predicts that the U.S. will become the largest global oil producer by around 2020, becoming self-sufficient in net energy terms later that decade and a net oil exporter by 2030. We’ve already seen the impact of this increased production on home energy costs: since 2008, overall home energy prices have remained stable, while natural gas prices for home energy use have declined by a third.

If rising and uncertain home energy prices drove the interest in energy efficiency investments, then the expected stable prices moving forward should remove many of these incentives. Where does that leave sustainability as a priority for homeowners? In fact, growing sensitivity to environmental concerns has created a lot of momentum behind energy efficiency as well as other sustainability concerns such as the use of renewable building materials and the use of recycled products in the homebuilding and home improvement process, water conservation and reuse, indoor air quality and healthy homes, home automation, and even renewable energy sources. Beyond the third of expenditures on energy efficiency measures noted above, Joint Center surveys of home improvement contractors have determined that somewhere between 20% and 25% of home improvement projects on a dollar basis have environmental sustainability other than energy efficiency as a stated goal of the project.

If consumer demand exists for increasing sustainability in housing, the likelihood is that the market will respond, and there is evidence that it is doing so. Entrepreneurs are developing new products in these areas. A recent Joint Center survey of home improvement contractors asked if they were seeing new products or technologies related to sustainability emerge in recent years, and if so, in which areas. Despite declining energy costs, energy efficiency and insulation techniques still topped the list, with about half of respondents indicating that they were installing or seriously considering installing new products or technologies in these market niches. However, also high on the list were products and technologies related to other sustainability objectives. As manufacturers figure out ways to produce them in a cost-effective manner, and contractors receive training and market their skills at installing these new products, interest in these areas is unlikely to diminish regardless of what happens to home energy prices.