Building sustainable developments for long-term savings and better community healthArchitecture and energy conservation ; Housing - Boston

DeWitt Jones

English

Research Papers in Economics

&Banking Communities 25
Green Development: Green Development:
by DeWitt Jones
Boston Community Capital
David Shipler, author of The Working Poor:
Invisible in America, recounts a New England
story. The mother of an eight-year-old asthmat-
ic boy took him to Boston Medical Center,
where doctors gave him inhalers and steroids
and urged that environmental changes be made
to his home. But the mother ended up bringing
the boy back often, missing work and risking
her job. The situation didn’t turn around until a
hospital attorney reinforced the mother’s
demands that the landlord fix her apartment’s
mold-producing leaky pipe and discard the 
carpet full of dust mites.
It doesn’t need to be that way. The “green”
movement—designing buildings for indoor air
quality, energy efficiency, water conservation,
and the like—is starting to take hold. The Erie-
Ellington homes that Codman Square
Neighborhood Development Corporation
helped build in 2000, for example, provided 50
green rental units that reduced asthma and
other common problems. Cambridge, Mass.-
based GreenVillage, a participant in the U.S.
Department of Energy Building America
Program, designed the development. When
GreenVillage’s research affiliate, Hickory
Consortium, conducted subsequent interviews,
it found that 100 percent of the residents 
who had asthma prior to moving in, had 
seen improvement. 
Community-development financial inter-
mediary Boston Community Capital, which
finances projects similar to Erie-Ellington, is
one group taking a green approach to funding.
BCC’s mission is to invest in projects that pro-
vide affordable housing, good jobs, needed
goods and services, and new opportunities for
people who have been locked out of the eco-
nomic mainstream. Green approaches can boost
all four goals. 
Erie-Ellington Playground on Erie Street in Dorchester.
Improving the Health of
Residents and Neighborhoods
Energy efficient homes on Ellington Street in the Erie-Ellington area of Dorchester
built in 2000. Photographs in this article are from the Heart of the City database,
www.heartofcity.info.Fall 2005 26
But what about cost? Considering
the cost to society and property owners of
cheaply constructed or run-down hous-
ing, some added expense on the front end
would seem reasonable. But the remark-
able fact is that green design doesn’t have
to be much more expensive. Once green
standards are refined, comparisons of
green building and conventional building
will be more precise, but credible research
that included Erie-Ellington showed that
total development costs for the projects
in the study were on average only 2 per-
cent higher than conventional develop-
ment costs.1
Why Green? 
Organizations serving low-income
communities do not have to be experts in
environmental, engineering, technology,
regulatory, or energy issues to be aware 
of the consequences of not using green
principles. Poor environmental, public-
health, and design policies have clearly
placed an extra burden on low-income
individuals. Fortunately, good design can
address not just the poor ventilation,
mold, and moisture that cause respirato-
ry disease, but other concerns as well. 
For example, design that places safe,
well-maintained playgrounds and parks
in convenient walking distance of homes
and schools can improve a community’s
quality of life while diminishing the obe-
sity epidemic among young people. 
Similarly, business construction that
limits the exposure of workers and neigh-
borhoods to toxic materials can reduce
future societal costs. Jobs in nail salons,
floor refinishing, and car painting are
often entry points into the economy 
for immigrants, and design can make
them safer. 
BCC and its partners in the Green
Building Production Network (New
Ecology, Tellus Institute, Massachusetts
Association of Community Development
Corporations, and Local Initiatives
Support Corporation) want to help com-
munity-development corporations bene-
fit from green trends. Increasingly accept-
ed as standard in the market, green prac-
tices can reduce chronic poor health and
the absenteeism that undermine advance-
ment in school and work. They can also
save energy and heating costs for low-
income people. 
Many sustainable technologies have
proved effective and economical, and
policymakers are catching on. For exam-
ple, Massachusetts now uses sustainable-
development principles to evaluate proj-
ects it funds. Even developers not funded
by the state must meet higher standards
for energy efficiency and “healthy”
homes. And Boston is asking all major
projects to meet the U.S. Green Building
Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design) standards.
Boston Community Capital also sees
potential economic benefits in green
development, construction, and renova-
tion. More workers will be needed to 
fill specialized jobs, and if low-income 
people get to work on green projects 
in their communities (where there will 
be entry-level positions with oppor- 
tunities for training and promotion),
their knowledge is likely to be in 
demand elsewhere. 
One Way to Go Green
Any funding group that chooses to
go green should develop its own defini-
tions. For BCC, there are six aspects to a
green focus: 
First, to be green, BCC-financed
development must benefit both the peo-
ple who live in the new spaces and the
borrowers who build the developments. 
Second, BCC should focus on areas
where it knows it can make a differ-
ence—indoor air quality, energy costs,
and siting of projects, as opposed to, say,
global warming.
Third, the green elements sought for
a given project must be appropriate. For
example, the renovation of a leased child-
care facility could improve indoor air
quality and upgrade lighting fixtures,
whereas heating systems, windows, and
building-orientation issues, which would
be beyond the facility’s control, would
not be required. 
Fourth, BCC will encourage green
elements but not insist on specific stan-
dards or benchmarks until it gains more
experience. It will align its funding, infor-
mation, and technical assistance to help
borrowers get the expertise to make the
projects as green as possible.
Fifth, BCC will take into account
tight budget constraints of community-
development borrowers and not require
projects to absorb the costs of experimen-
tal technologies. However, in looking at
cost effectiveness, BCC will consider life-
cycle costs, not just initial costs for
design, appliances, and building systems.
For example, some insulation may cost
more but be tighter and more healthful. 
Finally, because green technology,
regulations, standards, costs, and pric-
ing are evolving quickly, BCC’s frame-
work, policies, and requirements will 
be dynamic.
Other funding organizations inter-
ested in taking a green approach to com-
munity development should check the
LEED standards and also the Enterprise
Foundation and the National Resources
Defense Council’s Green Communities
criteria. Their standards define green ele-
ments including siting, solar orientation,
natural lighting, use of materials, indoor
air quality, energy, water-efficient appli-
ances, use of renewable energy or distrib-
uted generation capacity, and recycling of
building materials. 
What Has Been Learned
Boston Community Capital’s experi-
ences with early-stage financing and 
technical assistance to borrowers, com-
bined with its observations of others’
Energy efficient homes on Ellington Street.&Banking Communities 27
community-based green initiatives, have
informed its commitment to green 
standards. Five major lessons have been
learned so far:
• The most effective and least costly
way to incorporate green features into a
project is to consider greening opportu-
nities at the earliest stages of the develop-
ment process—especially through an
integrated design approach.
• Borrowers are interested in
embracing the principals of sustainable
development, but many do not believe
they have the knowledge to make appro-
priate choices about including green ele-
ments in projects. 
• Although green development prac-
tices have advantages such as enhancing
the asset value of buildings, and lowering
operating and maintenance costs, those
benefits generally are not recognized or
captured in the market or in the financ-
ing system—particularly when it comes
to housing. Gaining recognition is com-
plicated because the life-cycle benefits of
lower operating costs often accrue to new
owners or lessees rather than project
developers. Also, regulations often 
inhibit the use of innovative technologies
and materials and may have require-
ments that would be redundant in 
green construction.
• The strategies that lower the costs,
speed up innovation, and limit the risks
of adopting new technologies require a
level of collaboration and aggregation
that is unfamiliar in the disaggregated
field of community development. 
• Few financing tools are available to
nonprofit organizations at the critical
early stages of development. Moreover,
those resources that are available are not
easily accessed and provide no incentives
for funding the early-stage costs of 
green development.
Initial Steps 
The Green Building Production
Network is focusing on three areas: 
developing financing products to support
green development; aligning borrowers
and projects with resources, public
approval procedures, incentives, and
innovation from other fields; and captur-
ing and sharing
information, data,
and best practices on
green development. 
Because start-
up funding is the
hardest financing for
community-devel-
opment groups to
acquire, Boston
Community Capital
is expanding its
financing products
to cover the early-
stage costs for inte-
grated and green
development. It will
also consider financ-
ing specific first-cost
investments that generate savings in util-
ities or operating costs. Where applicable,
it will work with borrowers to arrange
alternative financing, such as leasing or
contracts with energy-service companies,
and it will explore financing-aggregation
strategies that can capture underutilized
financial and tax benefits. 
Despite widespread interest in green
development, the financing, permitting,
and policy systems are rarely aligned 
to support it. For example, agencies that
encourage green development as public
policy may shy away from approving
higher-density projects, may have 
funding requirements that limit capital
or first-cost expenses, or may have 
permitting policies that do not accept
new technologies. 
Additionally, the finance system for
community development is fragmented
and loosely coordinated, requiring many
sources of funding, separate approval
procedures and timetables, and multiple
or even competing views of green devel-
opment and technology. 
The Green Building Production
Network is working on models for align-
ing community-development systems
and green policy goals. Future discussions
among the network’s development teams
and public agencies should lead to a more
efficient and streamlined process for pub-
lic review and approval. The process
needs to include early involvement of
regulatory staff, common staff across all
green projects, and concurrent—not
sequential—review. 
The network also will explore cus-
tomized relationships with green product
manufacturers, distributors, and utility
companies, offering them an urban test
market or R&D laboratory for new prod-
ucts and the chance to develop long-term
customer relationships. 
Boston Community Capital plans to
create financing incentives that encour-
age borrowers to share specialized green
expertise. It also envisions a web-based
green checklist linking to best practices,
development of common measures for
tracking a building’s long-term perform-
ance, and research on the best ways to
market green properties.
DeWitt Jones is Loan Fund President and
COO of Boston Community Capital,
which provides debt and equity financing
throughout the Northeast.
Endnote
1“The Costs and Benefits of Green Affordable
Housing” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: New
Ecology, 2005), http://www.newecology.org.
Home in the process of renovation on Hewins Street in Erie-Ellington
area of Dorchester.

Green development: improving the health of residents and neighborhoods

http://www.bostonfed.org/commdev/c&b/2005/fall/greendev.pdf

Green development: improving the health of residents and neighborhoods

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