A Resource Guide for Accessing Funds for Green Projects
By Ravi Malhotra
2 min read
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) are providing the best business case ever, for “greening” multifamily affordable housing. Between the massive amounts of new funding and the growing pressure to decarbonize your multifamily properties, “business as usual” designs or retrofit solutions are rapidly becoming impractical. The good news for multifamily affordable housing owners and managers is that there are plenty of resources on how to navigate this new landscape to “green” your affordable properties and achieve meaningful benefits at little to no cost.
In collaboration with National Housing & Rehabilitation Association, the International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology (ICAST) has produced a Resource Guide to help multifamily stakeholders access these federal funds before they are spent (and they are being spent at a rapid rate). The guide consolidates extensive research, analysis and insights from key stakeholders, all in one place, to empower multifamily owners with the knowledge needed to make the best decisions for their properties and tenants. The guide contains:
- Summaries of the various financial resources available to multifamily affordable housing;
- Examples of how to leverage and comingle these funds for “green” projects; and
- Answers to frequently asked questions on green technologies.
The guide also presents each funding source separately to give readers a sense of its scope and function. For example, some funds can only be used for specific solutions (e.g., heat pumps), while others may be used for multiple solutions to achieve a specific goal (e.g., energy savings), green certifications or decarbonization. It’s crucial to tap every opportunity to move federal funding toward the chronically underserved multifamily market. ICAST will regularly update this document as more information about IRA and BIL becomes available. To access the guide, visit: https://www.icastusa.org/education/irabilresourceguide/.
About ICAST. ICAST is a national 501c3 nonprofit with a 22-year history of designing and scaling clean energy solutions for low- to moderate-income (LMI) households in multifamily housing, primarily subsidized and unsubsidized multifamily affordable housing properties. It serves over 35,000 LMI households annually and its current programs include weatherization, solar PV, beneficial electrification, healthy homes, utility energy efficiency, workforce training, etc. Additional details are at www.icastusa.org.
