Preservation & Resident Engagement

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This month’s issue explores a very timely topic – the preservation of aging affordable housing.

I’d like to draw your attention to a topic that many people don’t think   about when it comes to preservation: how many affordable multifamily owners around the country are engaging with and educating residents to act, and indeed live, sustainably. It’s easy to forget that residents are not just clients but key partners in preservation and energy efficiency efforts. Their buy-in and engagement are a critical step towards achieving economic returns at a property level.

Indeed, this is a key component of NH&RA’s Preservation Through Energy Efficiency (PTEE) Initiative, which presents its first Road Show Event on April 3 in Philadelphia.

Effective resident engagement is a key preservation strategy and opportunity for owners and property managers alike to add value and increase cash flow at any stage of a property’s life cycle. Similarly, staff engagement and education represent an equally important opportunity that is often an afterthought.

Engineers like Matt Holden of Sparhawk Group (one of NH&RA recently elected directors and a member of our inaugural PTEE faculty) have built thriving businesses around helping owners with retro-commissioning, a systematic and documented process for identifying no- and low-cost improvements that can boost the efficiency and performance of an existing building. This is achieved through education, investigation, analysis, and optimization of building performance through operations-and-maintenance improvement measures.

Identifying opportunities may be the first step but is just the beginning. In a recent conversation with Bill Carson (another member of the PTEE faculty), president of Sunwheel Energy + Sustainability, an affiliate of McCormack Baron Salazar, I learned that operational savings really don’t happen unless employees buy in to sustainability and there is a change in the company culture. To create buy-in at his firm from the top down, Bill signed up McCormack Baron Salazar for the St. Louis Green Business Challenge as a means of getting the company’s senior leadership and home office to embrace a culture of triple-bottom line results. For MBS, this changed the behavior of employees at work and in their personal lives and resulted in a trajectory shift of quantifiable results down the line to the company’s properties.

NH&RA’s PTEE Initiative is only the beginning of new opportunities for affordable housing owners to leverage energy efficiency as a preservation tool. I recently participated in a thought provoking forum hosted by the Energy Foundation, which convened leaders in the affordable housing community, representatives from the energy and utility sectors, and environmentalists. The result was a surprising coalition committed to advocating and coordinating around efforts to develop new financial resources for affordable housing owners and residents to finance energy efficiency improvements. This network is already beginning to achieve tangible results in a number of states.

Preservation should be more than just extending a property’s affordability requirements. And it need not begin and end at a recapitalization event. Today, more and more savvy owners are making smart investments in technology and education to make their properties financially and environmentally sustainable. Even better, there are new tools and resources available to facilitate these activities. Best of all, NH&RA and TCA are here to help with cutting edge case studies, transactional insight, and a network of top flight professionals to help you on your way!

Thom Amdur is Associate Publisher of Tax Credit Advisor and Executive Director of National Housing & Rehabilitation Association