Resources

Technical Assistance Providers

Technical Assistance Providers

Experts ready to address your affordable housing technical needs

The Technical Assistance Providers Database is a national listing of qualified experts in topics related to the design, development and construction of energy efficient, environmentally friendly and safe affordable housing.

Enterprise Green Communities has vetted consultants in the TA Provider Database to ensure that each organization has the appropriate credentials and a history of delivering high-quality technical expertise. Those listed have demonstrated their continued commitment to bringing sustainable solutions to the affordable housing sector.

Download the Technical Assistance Providers Database

Green Charrette Tools

Green Charrette Tools

Customizable resources to aid your integrative design plans

Charrette Resources

Pre-Development Design Toolkit: This toolkit will help you organize your integrative design process, establish an achievable pre-development timeline, and highlight how to engage stakeholders.

The Success of Charrettes - This report highlights the emerging practice of integrative design within the affordable housing sector.

Healthy Native Homes Roadmap - This online tool leads participants through a series of prompts to build a customized, downloadable roadmap for your next project.  

Sample Annotated Agenda (aging-in-place goals)

These tools are designed to help affordable housing property owners better assess and respond to the needs of their aging residents through the built environment.

Aging-in-Place Prioritization Charrette Tool: The Prioritization Matrix is intended to help organize aging-in-place strategies in a way that will assist the team in recognizing the relative priority level between strategies

Aging-in-Place Design Guidelines:  These Aging In Place Design Guidelines supplement existing Enterprise resources for sustainable, affordable housing.

2015 Criteria Aging-in-Place Recommendations: explore select measures of the 2015 Criteria most relevant to aging in place. 

Aging-in-Place Existing Conditions Checklist this checklist may be used to evaluate an existing site and/or building for design strategies that would enable residents to age with dignity in their homes. 

Green Charrette Toolkit

These resources help project teams and facilitators design and implement successful Enterprise Green Communities charrettes. The templates can be used as-is or modified to fit the team and facilitator’s resources and experience. Refer to the Toolkit Map for more information.

Facilitator’s Guide

Facilitator's Preparation Checklist

Sample Annotated Agenda

Green Development Plan

Integrative Design Charrette presentation

Facilitating Touchstones Exercise and Results Example

Facilitating Breakout Exercises and Worksheets

Construction Specifications

Construction Specifications

Editable specs in MasterSpec format that correspond to the 2015 Criteria

To help project teams meet the requirements of the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria, we have developed a series customizable specifications templates and companion planning spreadsheets. When construction specifications include the correct green building requirements, contractors have the information they need to successfully build green affordable housing.
Multifamily Single-Family

Multifamily Retrofit Process

The Step-by-Step Multifamily Retrofit Process

Upgrade existing multifamily buildings with energy-efficient features and systems

Downloads:

Housing preservation, reliable and lower operating costs, improved indoor environmental quality, and reduced carbon emissions: all these benefit multifamily housing properties through retrofit.

Selecting prime candidates for retrofit, aligning funding sources, selecting an audit protocol, ensuring proper implementation, and evaluating results, however, can feel daunting for many portfolio managers. This toolkit distills Enterprise’s experience retrofitting multifamily affordable housing into the critical steps necessary for success. What follows is a roadmap outlining a comprehensive, cost-effiective approach to retrofit for multifamily housing owners, investors, and developers.

How to Use this on-line Toolkit

This step-by-step process can be used in three ways:

  • Portfolio Approach - Assists you in developing an action plan to increase the efficiency of your portfolio through selective application of retrofits and related tools
  • Project Approach - Assists you in taking one project through a streamlined, cost effective, efficient retrofit process
  • Midway through process and/or near completion - Use as a toolkit at any point during the retrofit process in order to make smart and cost-effective decisions

Referenced within the documents are these supporting attachments:

Resident Engagement: Operations & Maintenance

Resident Engagement: Operations & Maintenance

Green efforts continue after construction ends!

Educate and engage the people who live in your buildings. Their actions can help create a community that supports healthy living, lowers utility and maintenance costs, and maximizes the environmental benefits of green affordable housing.

These materials will help you teach various audiences how to integrate green and healthy practices into current operations and maintenance practices.

Manual & Maintenance Schedules

Manuals provide the backbone of a property’s maintenance program, reducing re-work, streamlining operations, and providing valuable assistance with staff on-boarding and training. These workbooks are aligned with the key principles of the 2015 Criteria and are designed to ensure that design and construction intentions are codified into operations and maintenance guidelines.

Resident Engagement Manual

Manuals provide the backbone of a property’s resident engagement program. This suite of materials align with the key principles of the 2015 Criteria and allows owners to translate information about the design and construction of their building into a format that engages residents on how to best maintain their dwelling unit and the building at large.

Research & Reports

Research & Reports

Discover new research and practical insights in green building and affordable housing

Enterprise’s comprehensive research and evaluation efforts seek to demonstrate the health, economic and environmental benefits of affordable housing developed and preserved to the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria. Through this effort, we aim to prove that green homes are more affordable and healthier as a result of lower energy and water consumption and healthier living environments, thus enhancing the quality of life of residents.

Green Policies Build Green Homes, Green Communities

This report assesses the impact of green requirements on LIHTC allocations with the goal of quantifying the penetration of green building across the affordable housing industry.

2015 Criteria Incremental Cost Survey, Green Communities, Bridgewire Consulting

The purpose of this guide is to provide users of the 2015 Criteria—owners, developers, design professionals, contractors, and others—with industry estimates for the costs of meeting the 2015 Enterprise Green Communities Criteria. For the purposes of this guide, the project team defined incremental cost as the added cost to exceed standard construction practice for the affordable housing industry. It should be noted that this resource is not a cost-benefit guide. All users should consider the positive impacts of meeting the 2015 Criteria and weigh these against the costs estimated in this guide and by professionals working on your project.

Enterprise Green Communities Criteria: Incremental Costs, Measurable Savings Update, Peter Morris, Yianice Hernandez

This update to Incremental Cost, Measurable Savings report illustrates the cost effectiveness of the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria in delivering health, economic and environmental benefits to developers and residents of green affordable housing. For this latest report, Enterprise partnered with Davis Langdon to complete the analysis on an expanded dataset of 52 green affordable housing developments, up from 27 included in the 2009 report.

Greener Housing = Improved Health: A Winning Combination: Design and Specifications by Noreen Beatley

This paper provides background on the relationship between housing and health and, using case studies developed by the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH), illustrates how building affordable green housing provides health benefits to its low-income residents.

Utility Allowance Options for Investments in Energy Efficiency: Resource Guide by Yianice Hernandez, Julieann Summerford

This resource increases awareness about adopting, establishing, and offering utility allowance options supportive of energy-efficiency investments in new construction and rehabilitation

Case Studies

Case Studies

Enterprise Green Communities Case Studies

 
  • Aspen Street Cooperative: Thirty co-op households in Washington D.C. enjoy the benefits of sustainable, healthy and affordable homeownership.
  • Twin Oaks:  A transition to all-electric within a moderate rehab scope - coupled with resilient building and operational strategies - positions this development in rural Georgia to thrive for the long run in our changing climate.. 
  • Cadence: This first new construction development to acheive Enterprise Green Communities Plus certification introduced 55 pristine affordable, healthy and comfortable homes for older Americans to Fort Collins, Colorado.
  • The Ohringer Building: History and cutting edge efficiency mingle in this beautiful adaptive reuse in Braddock, Pennsylvania 
  • Liberty 52: Stephen F. Gold Community Residences: 28 new affordable, sustainable accessible homes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 
  • St. Joseph Village: Upgrades completed during the rehabilitation of St. Joseph Village, a senior affordable housing community, in Dyersburg, Tennessee.
  • River View Tower: Modernization of high-rise affordable housing for seniors in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
  • 26th and Clarksville Phase III: New and affordable low-rise senior apartments in Nashville, Tennesse.
  • Thessalonica Court: The Bronx just got a little bit greener. 
  •  Gardenside at the Villages of East Lake: This community in Atlanta, Georgia utilized Enterprise’s Health Action Plan tool to prioritize residents’ wellbeing.

Comparisons

Comparisons

Compare the 2020 Green Criteria with similar resources

2015 and 2020 Criteria Comparison:

Compare the 2020 Criteria to the 2015 Criteria. View the spreadsheet and narrative for a side-by-side criteria comparison.

Other comparisons:

Webinars

Webinars

Archives of recent webinars and other video learning opportunities

2020 Criteria Highlights 1-hour Workshops:

Green Communities Certification Plus Zero Emissions

Enterprise Green Communities introduces Certification Plus Zero Emissions along with other advanced performance updates to the 2020 Criteria.

2020 Criteria in Massachusetts
This webinar discusses the 2020 Criteria as applied to Massachusetts.

NYC Overlay of the 2020 Green Communities Criteria
This webinar discusses the changes to the 2020 NYC Overlay.

 

 

2020 Criteria 3-hour Workshops:

Applying the 2020 Green Criteria in Michigan 
By the end of the workshop, attendees will have examined the highlights of the 2020 Criteria from the perspective of a Michigan project and will be able to identify resources to assist with certification.

2020 Criteria Ohio Workshop
An online workshop discussing how to move through design and construction to operations with the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria for projects in Ohio.

Applying the 2020 Green Criteria in the Gulf Coast
By the end of the workshop, attendees will have examined the highlights of the 2020 Criteria from the perspective of a Gulf Coast project and will be able to identify resources to assist with certification.