Habitat for Humanity Launches Pilot Program for Housing and Climate Equity

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Contact:
Patti Wang Cross
Habitat for Humanity East Bay/Silicon Valley
510-803-3348
PWCross@HabitatEBSV.org

Habitat for Humanity Launches Pilot Program for Housing and Climate Equity

$1M grant is funding a collaborative public-private initiative

OAKLAND, CALIF. (April 20, 2023) — Habitat for Humanity East Bay/Silicon Valley is one of three recipients nationwide of a $1M grant from the ICLEI USA Action Fund, made possible through funding from Google.org.  With this grant, the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate is piloting the Home Electrification Equity Project (HEEP), an innovative public-private collaboration aimed at both the housing affordability and climate crises in four East Bay cities. The program promises to bring data science to bear on the interlinked issues and form a model that can be replicated and scaled in communities across the country.

The ICLEI USA Action Fund grant empowers Habitat to apply climate-smart building to its Home Preservation work, which serves homeowners with limited incomes by making repairs and improvements that keep them in their homes and communities. With the launch of HEEP, Habitat East Bay/Silicon Valley will help develop data-driven targeting to serve low-income homeowners with holistic electrification upgrades and solar power, while supporting energy resilience in the partner cities of Berkeley, Fremont, Hayward, and Oakland. 

“This award brings collaboration and data into the vital intersection of affordability and sustainability,” said Janice Jensen, Habitat East Bay/Silicon Valley’s President and CEO. “It means Habitat can do more to foster both housing and environmental justice, strengthening our communities and our planet.”

HEEP integrates data sets from Habitat and its partners, GRID Alternatives and Rebuilding Together, and cross references them with resources like Google’s Environmental Insight Explorer, whose rooftop solar potential analysis helps identify ideal candidates for electrification. Cal State East Bay will use its data science capacity to tabulate a comprehensive set of inputs from smart meters, low-cost air quality monitors, remote sensing, and conventional surveys. The project partners have begun initial working meetings to set a course for the 19-month pilot.

By bringing cities, low-income residential service providers, and data scientists to the same table, HEEP breaks through a historic barrier to building a practical framework that efficiently achieves several critical goals. The result will be a new paradigm for preemptive analysis and opportunity targeting that can advance equity, climate aims, public health benefits, and housing and energy security. Rather than reacting to public demand for electrification and solar, cities can adopt HEEP’s model to proactively identify opportunities – opportunities for low-income people to access typically out-of-reach sustainable technology and the health and financial benefits that come with it, as well as opportunities to bolster regional energy infrastructure and housing stability.

Habitat East Bay/Silicon Valley has been pioneering the effort to approach the housing crisis with a focus on sustainability for over two decades, installing its first solar panels on four rooftops in Oakland in 2003 – bringing both homeownership and sustainable building methods within reach of households earning low incomes, at a time when “green building” was a concept reserved for a select few among the wealthy. The nonprofit developer continues to build climate-smart homes today, as it is currently mid-construction on 42 affordable homes in Walnut Creek, designed for Zero Net Energy.

With the launch of HEEP, Habitat hopes to preserve and strengthen housing affordability in the area, support regional energy goals, and offer its documentation and tools through ICLEI so that more communities nationwide can benefit from public-private partnerships, data science collaboration, and innovative climate action.