[OKC] HUD asks for feedback on Sustainable Housing and Communities

[Dan Yates]

Overview (from hud.gov)

 

The mission of the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities is to
create strong, sustainable communities by connecting housing to jobs,
fostering local innovation, and helping to build a clean energy economy.



In order to better connect housing to jobs, the office will work to
coordinate federal housing and transportation investments with local
land use decisions in order to reduce transportation costs for families,
improve housing affordability, save energy, and increase access to
housing and employment opportunities.  By ensuring that housing is
located near job centers and affordable, accessible transportation, we
will nurture healthier, more inclusive communities - which provide
opportunities for people of all ages, incomes, races, and ethnicities to
live, work, and learn together.  


In order to foster and encourage local innovation, we will create an
unprecedented partnership across federal agencies and provide resources
and tools to help communities realize their own visions for building
more livable, walkable, environmentally sustainable regions.

 

In addition, the office will help contribute to building a new clean
energy economy by working with other federal agencies, states and local
communities, and industry partners to catalyze innovation and develop
strategies to reduce energy consumption in the residential sector.
These innovations will help create new green jobs, spur economic growth,
and assist regions to become more competitive on a national and global
scale. 

 

There are two main areas of operation that work together to comprise the
Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities: the Sustainable
Communities Initiative and the Energy Innovation Fund.


The objective of the Sustainable Communities Initiative is to stimulate
more integrated and sophisticated regional planning to guide state,
metropolitan, and local investments in land use, transportation and
housing, as well as to challenge localities to undertake zoning and land
use reforms.  This Initiative has four main tasks. 


First, the office partners with our counterparts in the Department of
Transportation (DOT) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to
offer Sustainable Communities Planning Grants. 
Through this partnership we seek to catalyze a new generation of
integrated metropolitan transportation, housing, land use and energy
planning, using state of the art data, analytic tools and Geographic
Information Systems. Second, the Initiative funds Sustainable
Communities Challenge Grants to provide a local complement to the
regional planning initiative, enabling multi-jurisdictional partnerships
to establish policies, codes, tools and critical capital investments
needed to achieve sustainable and inclusive development.  Third, the
Initiative supports capacity-building and a clearinghouse designed to
support both grant recipients, as well as other communities interested
in implementing sustainable community strategies.  Finally, the
Initiative provides funding for a joint HUD-DOT-EPA research effort
designed to advance transportation and housing linkages on a number of
levels.


The objective of the Energy Innovation Fund is to catalyze innovations
in the residential energy efficiency sector that have promise of
replicability and help create a standardized home energy efficient
retrofit market.  The office partners with the Federal Housing
Administration (FHA) to test, and where feasible bring to scale, new and
innovative products such as energy efficient and location efficient
mortgages.  A Multifamily Energy Pilot will increase energy efficiency
in the multifamily housing market.  An Energy Efficient Mortgage
Innovation pilot program is intended to make it easier and less
expensive for homebuyers and existing homeowners to finance energy
improvements, as well as to utilize improved home energy rating tools
that will provide better information on home energy costs for consumers
when buying or renting a home, or refinancing an existing mortgage.  


In addition, the office collaborates with HUD program offices, DOE and
EPA to develop strategies to reduce energy consumption in public and
assisted housing - some 5 million units of affordable housing
nation-wide whose energy costs approach $6 billion annually. Significant
opportunities exist for lowering these costs; the Office will play a key
role in working with HUD partners and programs to develop strategies,
identify incentives, increase capacity, and lower barriers to
implementing energy efficiency programs and installing clean energy
systems in these properties.  

Read more...
http://portal.hud.gov/portal/page/portal/HUD/program_offices/sustainable
_housing_communities 

 

 

 

Dan Yates

SOKC President

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