Session

To meet today’s affordable housing crisis head-on – we must challenge the assumptions that sustainable, high-performance products drive up building costs and that affordable, multifamily housing detracts from residential communities. Neither of these need to be true.

In this session, we will highlight the importance of wholistic community planning (including bringing renewable energy to the buildings) and a whole-building design approach in achieving sustainable, affordable housing. Probably the most important role the specifier can play is to be informed about the potential contributions of all major building components and then to make sure all the key players are at the table from the very beginning. We will discuss the contributions of different building components to this integrated performance picture (e.g., using passive home standards and products that cost less and last longer.) From building residents to rental property managers to developers, investment in durable, high- performance products provide the best long-term experience (e.g., pride in ownership/rentership, greater comfort, fewer costly interior finish retrofits, energy cost reductions).