US social enterprise unveils $4 billion green home plan

A US-based affordable housing developer plans to raise $4bn over the next five years to build and retrofit 750,000 residential, community and commercial buildings nationwide in a bid to make them more energy-efficient.

The not-for-profit Enterprise Community Partners was founded by pioneering urban developer James Rouse, and has seen its profile boosted in recent years after Rouse's grandson, the actor Edward Norton, took a place on the organisation's board.

The social enterprise already invests around $1 billion a year in both housing for low income families and community development projects. It has helped finance the building of about 250,000 affordable housing units since 1982.

The new funding commitment, which was announced at the Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism in Washington DC, will form part of Enterprise's ongoing Green Communities Initiative. The scheme was developed in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Doris Koo, Enterprise's chief executive, said that investment in green affordable housing would yield huge financial benefits for low income families and community projects. She predicted that the projects undertaken by the company would deliver energy bill savings of between 20 and 30 per cent at relatively low up front cost.

Koo's predictions were backed up by a new 120-page report from the organisation titled Incremental Costs, Measurable Savings, which studied the effectiveness of the company's efforts to deliver 16,000 new and existing homes over the past fiev years.

The research found that, while it cost an average of $4,524 per unit to comply with its Green Communities Criteria, the cost savings averaged about $4,851 over the projected lifetime of each unit. Most of these savings related to reduced energy and water consumption.

Enterprise's sister company, Enterprise Community Investment, indicated that it intended to make loans to owners of buildings that house multiple families in order to enable them to undertake green retrofitting activity. It also called on the government and businesses to ensure that all new and existing affordable housing meet demanding environmental criteria by 2020.

Companies that have pledged to help in the group's fund-raising effort include Bank of America, Home Depot and JP Morgan Chase.