PORTLAND, Ore. — On 5 acres in Northeast Portland, school is in session. No classrooms. No desks. No textbooks. Just a building team that’s figuring out how to create an affordable green housing project in an on-the-job learning lab.
As infrastructure construction wraps at Host Development’s Helensview project and home construction begins, the team’s learned a lot about what does and doesn’t work in creating environmentally sensitive and still-affordable homes.
And those lessons are ones developers of price-sensitive spaces across Portland have studied up on as well.
“One of the key ways affordable housing can go green is to do things that make common sense,” said Laurel Lyon, spokeswoman for Reach Community Development.
South-facing windows. Buildings oriented to maximize heating and cooling efficiency. More insulation. Specifying small-cost, big energy-saving swaps for lighting and plumbing. Easy to do as long as the whole team is thinking about building better homes from the beginning.
The biggest thing Host has learned on the Helensview site, said assistant project manager Devin Culbertson, is that effective design does make a difference. Specifying materials in lengths of two, for example, means saving lumber and carpenter time needed to make an extra cut. Swapping water hogging plants for low-maintenance natives costs nothing. Venting range hoods to the exterior raises energy efficiency.
“You can find cost-effective ways that dramatically improve the value to the buyer,” he said, “and make a more sustainable project as well.”
The Helensview project has become a bit of a case study, both for Host itself and for people who look toward the development for tips on greening affordable housing.
It’s a mix of 40 single-family homes, 12 condos and a home that was already on the Northeast Portland site.
The project will seek both Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification for New Development and LEED for Homes ratings, a gold rating through the New Development program.
The toughest part to explain to potential buyers is the effort that comes with earning Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification. Some elements, such as energy reduction and better indoor air quality, have a value that stands the cost-more test. Others are more elusive, said.
“When you tell them they’re paying an extra $500 to $600 because someone has to tally the waste stream receipts, it’s hard for them to understand the value of that.”
For its Station Place Tower, 14-story senior apartments in the Pearl District, Reach Community Development used the money that would have paid for a LEED certification to actually install more green features.
“That’s the kind of thing you face,” Lyon said, “in terms of where you want to spend limited money.”
So far, Culbertson said, Host Development is finding that going green can be done without a whole lot of cost premium but there is a learning curve for developers, designers and contractors.
“The third or fourth time we do a project, it probably is 3 percent,” he said. “But the first time, there is a lot of staff time there.”
Going green does cost more, Lyon said, but it’s not much more. On the Station Place project, for example, the net cost of greening was $920,000 for the $27.9 million project.
And “virtually everyone,” she said, is using green building practices.
“The whole idea of green building is so hot,” Lyon said. “It’s sort of like, if you’re not in, you’re out.”
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