Letter from Julia Hustwit: 2017 BBC Summit Debrief and the Road Ahead
Key Announcements: A Solar RFP Toolkit for Affordable Housing, Healthy Housing News
Celebrating BBC Partner Achievements at the 2017 Summit!
Reach Your Year of Data (YoDa) Goals by June 30th!
Roadmap to 20% and Beyond: Sustainability Planning for Multifamily Partners
Letter from Julia Hustwit
Dear Multifamily Sector Partners,
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We on HUD’s Better Buildings Challenge team were delighted to see many of you at this year’s Better Buildings Summit in Washington, DC. The conference was our most well-attended ever and most of our multifamily sessions were standing room only, evidence of the deep commitment our partners have to making a better world through better building design, construction, and operations. As you’ve no doubt heard many times, local leadership is ever more critical, and I’m heartened knowing that our community is up to the challenge. |
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Over the past year, we’ve focused heavily on working with all partners to institute regular utility benchmarking practices. This work is essential to understanding efficiency and controlling budgets. If you received significant benchmarking assistance from our team in the past year, we’ll ask that you make a good faith effort to continue that work on your own this year while we shift to assisting our incoming novices. As always, though, we’ll be just a phone call away to help you strategize and troubleshoot, as needed.
We have many goals for the coming year based on conversations that we’ve had with you at the Summit and beyond. Those of our BBC Partners who are also part of HUD’s affordable housing programs are supported by complex and tightening funding streams. We’ll work this year to identify ways that you, as well as your market-rate counterparts, can benefit from the utility cost savings that you’re generating as part of this program. In addition, we’ll focus on ways to generate economic development opportunities and improve public health outcomes in your neighborhoods.
To keep making great strides with limited resources, we’ll have to lean on each other and leverage our collective strength. So, this year, we’ll focus on ensuring that each of our partners has a strong relationship with their Account Manager, that partners are able to collaborate to overcome similar challenges, and that our multifamily sector has a deeper sense of community overall.
Over the next few months, our Account Managers will be reaching out to you to ask you to define your individual goals this year for moving towards your 20 percent energy/water reduction pledge. Whether it’s establishing a roadmap to 20 percent savings, developing a utility benchmarking plan, launching a showcase project, investigating power purchase agreements, correcting regular billing errors, hiring a sustainability intern, or otherwise, we’ll use your individual goals to create peer groups, develop training content, deliver direct assistance, and so on.
As we’re laying this groundwork, Crystal Bergemann will be stepping in to take over the role of HUD’s BBC Multifamily Sector Lead while I take a leave of absence for the Summer. You can reach Crystal at crystal.a.bergemann@hud.gov with any questions or concerns, and I will look forward to hitting the ground running with you all in the early Fall.
As always, thank you for your partnership.
Julia
Key Announcements
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HUD’s new RFP Toolkit for solar development is now available on the HUD Exchange. Resources for affordable multifamily housing providers includes practical guidance on the solar PV procurement RFP process, an RFP template, a sample completed RFP, section-by-section instructions, and several attachments. |
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Healthy homes make better buildings. Agree? Let us know that you’re interested in being part of new initiatives currently under development that will focus on furthering health outcomes through energy- and water-efficiency work. Space will be limited, so email us today.
Scholarships available for three regional conferences on Lead and Healthy Housing in California, the Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic.
Fannie Mae introduced a new program to boost the development of healthy living options for residents of affordable, multifamily rental properties. The Healthy Housing Rewards program targets developers and offers them an incentive to include healthy design features for newly constructed or rehabilitated affordable, multifamily rental properties.
Celebrating BBC Partner Achievements at the 2017 Summit!
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Congratulations to all BBC Multifamily partners for achievements recognized at the 2017 Summit! You’ve demonstrated leadership in the field of multifamily energy and water efficiency by reducing energy and water consumption, publishing utility data and sharing your successes through case studies. |
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Across all building sectors, 345 public and private sector organizations have saved a combined 240 trillion Btus and an estimated $1.9 billion in cumulative energy and cost savings, freeing up limited capital for critical projects and resident services.
The Multifamily team recognized partners for several categories of achievement at the Summit, including more than 65 partners who began utility benchmarking for the first time and 63 partners who shared owner-paid utility consumption data this year. The following partners reached significant milestones this year:
Multifamily Partner Better Buildings Challenge Goal Achievers
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Congratulations to these partners for reaching their BBC goal of 20 percent reduction in energy use since joining the BBC.
- Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly
- The Tower Companies
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Multifamily Partners who shared a Full Data Display in the past year
- Angola Housing Authority
- Atlanta Housing Authority
- Cambridge, MA Housing Authority
- Capitol Hill Housing
- Cascap, Inc.
- Gateway Management Services, LLC
- Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly
- Keene Housing
- King County Housing Authority
- New Bedford Housing Authority
- New York City Housing Authority
- Schochet Companies
- Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation
- TH Real Estate
- The Economic Development Authority of the City of Mankato, MN
- The Housing Authority of the City and County of Denver
- The Renaissance Collaborative
- The Tower Companies
- Trinity Housing Corporation of Greeley, Colorado
- Village of Hempstead Housing Authority
Multifamily Partners who shared a Partial Data Display in the past year
- Balfour Beatty Communities
- Fort Wayne Housing Authority
- FS Energy
- Jersey City Housing Authority
- Mercy Housing
- Preservation of Affordable Housing
- Retirement Housing Foundation
- The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society
- Wishrock Investment Group
Partners with Published Showcase Project AND Implementation Model
(* = goal achieved in past year)
- Aeon
- Balfour Beatty Communities
- Corcoran Management*
- Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority*
- Forest City Realty Trust
- Jersey City Housing Authority
- LINC Housing Corporation
- Mercy Housing
- NHT/Enterprise Preservation Corporation
- Preservation of Affordable Housing*
- Rockford Housing Authority
- Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation
- TH Real Estate
- The Economic Development Authority of the City of Mankato, MN*
- The Housing Authority of the City and County of Denver
- The Tower Companies
New Multifamily partners in the past year
- Cleveland Housing Authority
- CommonBond Communities
- Elderly Housing Development and Operations Corporation (EHDOC)
- Foundation for Affordable Housing
- Housing Trust of Rutland County
- King County Housing Authority
- Michigan City Housing Authority
- Wesley Housing Corporation
Reach Your Year of Data (YoDa) Goals by June 30th!
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It’s not too late to be recognized for your utility benchmarking achievements!
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Many of you have already met or are close to meeting your YoDa goals: entering property characteristics, collecting and inputting utility data, and publishing a data display on the BBC Solution Center. Publishing your data is a critical component of your leadership role in the fields of water and energy efficiency. Achieve your YoDa goal by June 30th and receive a certificate from HUD recognizing your achievement.
Since the start of YoDa, the Multifamily sector has helped more than 65 partners begin benchmarking for the first time. With this big first step behind them, these partners are now able to monitor their building portfolio’s energy and water performance on an ongoing basis and make critical decisions about improving that performance. 
Roadmap to 20% and Beyond: Sustainability Planning for Multifamily Partners
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Let’s face it – reaching 20 percent energy savings for your entire property portfolio can be daunting at the outset. There are so many factors to consider, each with a dizzying array of pros and cons. A new planning tool developed by Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) and introduced at the 2017 Summit helps you sort through different improvement options and how to pay for them, and helps you make informed choices that demonstrate a clear path to success for executive leadership. Find the tool here. |
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At the Summit session called "Roadmap to 20% and Beyond: A Sustainability Planning Mini Workshop for Multifamily Partners", Rebecca Schaaf from SAHF, Caitlin Rood of Mercy Housing and Krista Egger from Enterprise Community Partners walked participants through this Excel-based Sustainability Planning tool that immediately assists partners with setting energy and water savings targets.
The tool enumerates what resources the organization needs to reach its goals. Organizations design a work plan that suits the characteristics of their building portfolios, based on the age of its buildings, financial considerations, what energy efficiency improvements have already been made, and the organization’s capacity for implementing energy efficiency efforts.
As the presenters discussed, sustainability planning is key for two reasons. One, a sustainability plan documents and demonstrates the benefits of planned energy efficiency measures to organizational leadership. Second, sustainability plans are required for Better Buildings Challenge partners to demonstrate how they intend to achieve their commitment of at least a 20 percent reduction in energy intensity over 10 years. Such plans are often also required by local utility benchmarking ordinances.
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