Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing, Revised Edition
240 pages, 7 x 10
25 photos, 25 illustrations
Paperback
Release Date:09 Jul 2020
ISBN:9781642830385
Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing, Revised Edition
Island Press
The lack of affordable housing and the climate crisis are two of the most pressing challenges facing cities today. Green affordable housing addresses both by providing housing stability, safety, and financial predictability while constructing and operating the buildings to reduce environmental and climate impacts.
Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is the most comprehensive resource on how green building principles can be incorporated into affordable housing design, construction, and operation. In this fully revised edition, Walker Wells and Kimberly Vermeer capture the rapid evolution of green building practices and make a compelling case for integrating green building in affordable housing. The Blueprint offers guidance on innovative practices, green building certifications for affordable housing, and the latest financing strategies. The completely new case studies share detailed insights on how the many elements of a green building are incorporated into different housing types and locations. Case studies include a geographical range, from high-desert homeownership, to southeast supportive housing, and net-zero family apartments on the coasts. The new edition includes basic planning tools such as checklists to guide the planning process, and questions to encourage reflection about how the content applies in practice.
While Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is especially useful to housing development project managers, the information and insights will be valuable to all participants in the affordable housing industry: developers, designers and engineers, funders, public agency staff, property and asset managers, housing advocates, and resident advocates.
Every affordable housing project can achieve the fundamentals of good green building design and practice. By sharing the authors’ years of expertise in guiding hundreds of organizations, Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing, Revised Edition gives project teams what they need to push for excellence.
Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is the most comprehensive resource on how green building principles can be incorporated into affordable housing design, construction, and operation. In this fully revised edition, Walker Wells and Kimberly Vermeer capture the rapid evolution of green building practices and make a compelling case for integrating green building in affordable housing. The Blueprint offers guidance on innovative practices, green building certifications for affordable housing, and the latest financing strategies. The completely new case studies share detailed insights on how the many elements of a green building are incorporated into different housing types and locations. Case studies include a geographical range, from high-desert homeownership, to southeast supportive housing, and net-zero family apartments on the coasts. The new edition includes basic planning tools such as checklists to guide the planning process, and questions to encourage reflection about how the content applies in practice.
While Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is especially useful to housing development project managers, the information and insights will be valuable to all participants in the affordable housing industry: developers, designers and engineers, funders, public agency staff, property and asset managers, housing advocates, and resident advocates.
Every affordable housing project can achieve the fundamentals of good green building design and practice. By sharing the authors’ years of expertise in guiding hundreds of organizations, Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing, Revised Edition gives project teams what they need to push for excellence.
The authors keep their eyes on the ball in this update of the 2007 edition… For those who have read enough starry-eyed cheerleading accounts of high-tech futuristic design, this book will be a tonic.
While the target audience of the Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is clearly the affordable housing ‘industry,’ it would still make a great addition to the syllabus for undergraduate or graduate level urban planning courses which focus on housing. It is easy to read and understand, and provides insight about how today’s professionals need to be prepared to respond to an environment in a constant state of change and flux.
Wells and Vermeer have written the must-read for all those engaged in affordable housing.Their persuasive narrative highlights the myriad benefits an integrative approach brings to building new,and maintaining existing,affordable housing.Professionals will find vital insight into and inspiration for how to tackle the challenges of climate, health, social cohesion,and community resilience. The clear take-away: affordable housing that isn’t green and healthy isn’t affordable.
Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is a terrific primer, providing great wisdom from the authors' experience as well as from other pioneers in the field. If we truly care about developing affordable housing to help build healthy, vibrant communities, then we'll follow its pragmatic advice.
Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is an accessible, practical guide to the core elements of green building practice, including the all-important element of greening ongoing operations! Rich with case studies and supporting resources, it is a robust resource for affordable-housing practitioners to make healthy, high-performance homes the standard for all.
This practical and inspiring book is a must-read for anybody who shares the belief that green building's benefits should be affordable and accessible to everyone.
Walker Wells is a principal at Raimi+Associates, a consulting service that supports healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities. He is former Executive Director of Global Green USA and a lecturer in the UCLA planning program.
Kimberly Vermeer is President of Urban Habitat Initiatives Inc., a Boston-based consulting practice working to advance sustainability and climate resilience, especially in multifamily and affordable housing.
Kimberly Vermeer is President of Urban Habitat Initiatives Inc., a Boston-based consulting practice working to advance sustainability and climate resilience, especially in multifamily and affordable housing.
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