Providing Expertise

Education, training, and technical assistance are essential in order for the thousands of building professionals in the National Capitol Region to choose green practices and succeed in implementing DC's and Montgomery County's Green Building Acts. GreenHOME is building capacity throughout the development community and within government to transform the marketplace and accelerate the adoption of green building practices.

        Training
        Technical Assistance
        Online Guides
        Grants
        GreenSPACE: A Green Building Resource Center

Training

GreenHOME's trainings aim to create a cadre of DC area developers, designers, builders, public officials, lenders, and investors who can build green affordable housing. Trainings tailored to each audience show them how to successfully adopt green practices. The focus of these trainings is on how to think green: how an integrated design process catalyzes the shift to efficient components and systems, low-impact materials, and advanced design and construction methods.

Participants in GreenHOME's trainings walk out the door with much more than a Green Building Act to-do list. They leave knowing how green design makes for a fundamentally better building. Training sessions take a problem solving approach as they dive into key building components (building sciences, water, air quality, site design, landscaping, green neighborhoods, etc.), showing how the benefits of green outweigh the costs.

Early trainings helped to show building professionals what green affordable construction is all about, and how it can take place oneven an affordable housing budget. Now, as legislative requirements roll out, GreenHOME's trainings are building capacity amongst government staff and in the development community to make green affordable housing common practice.

Affordable Green 101 and Building Science 101 (2005)
This training showed how a better understanding of how buildings work can result in better buildings that maintain indoor air quality while using far less energy. Specifically, integrated design makes it all happen and keeps costs down. This training was the first of many successful efforts that have stemmed from GreenHOME's partnership with the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development.

Home Again - Ivy City training (2005)
A how-to session for developers who were interested in working on Home Again projects in Ivy City and other Washington D.C. neighborhoods, this training was the product of a collaboration with Enterprise Community Partners and Southface.

Integrated design charrette and workshop (2006)
GreenHOME collaborated with the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development (CNHED) and Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. to produce a competition for an integrated design charrette. The winning project and team, AHC Development, Inc., starred in a "fishbowl" workshop that literally engaged an audience of 70 affordable housing professionals in a live early-stage integrated design process, showing them how such a process works and why it is critical to successful green projects.

Introduction to Affordable Green workshops and train the trainers
GreenHOME trained a group of building professionals to give its "Introduction to Affordable Green" workshops, which lay out the elements of green development and the integrated design process. The "train the trainer" session featured a project manager from each of the five case studies used in GreenHOME's Intro Workshop. The project managers shared "lessons learned" from their experience and answered questions from the trainee presenters. As a result, each trainer could now incorporate the details of these affordable green case study projects and use the stories from the project managers to respond to questions from diverse audiences.

With a dozen effective workshops under our belt, GreenHOME plans 10 to 20 more over the next year.

What is a green neighborhood?
Developed in 2007 with leading Seattle design and planning firm and partner, Mithun, this presentation shows how green can go beyond individual buildings to make an entire neighborhood a better place for its residents and the environment.

Lessons Learned training
This training, again in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners and CNHED, was designed to help others learn from those who had successfully built or were currently building affordable housing projects to Enterprise's Green Communities standards (the standards required by D.C.'s Green Building Law). After an overview of Green Communities criteria, key practitioners - including a project manager, architect, engineer, and general contractor -- shared their experiences. Audience members connected with these stories and took home helpful hints and lessons learned that they can now apply to help their own projects go green. The featured projects included:

• Galen Terrace, 84-unit rehab tenant purchase in SE, Washington, DC

• New Shiloh Senior Living, 40-unit rental new construction, Baltimore, MD

• Renaissance Square, 44-unit rental new construction in Hyattsville, MD

• HIP's Artists' Housing, 12-unit rehab rental in Mt. Rainier, MD
  
  

Training series for practitioners and government officials
GreenHOME is working with outside experts to arrange a series of workshops that will begin this fall and extend into 2008. Parallel training sessions will be tailored for the government and building professional audiences and will specifically address the challenges of implementing the standards in the DC Green Building Act. Discussions with DC agencies are underway to identify training needs.

Technical Assistance

GreenHOME has facilitated green consultation for several renovation and new construction projects in Washington, DC and the region. The DC Green Communities partnership with Enterprise will offer technical assistance grants to offset incremental costs of green for several projects. By helping development teams and government agencies integrate green building into their RFP, design, financing, inspections, and permitting processes, we are jointly taking the first big steps toward implementing the Green Building Act.

• In conjunction with Global Green, a national green housing leader, GreenHOME hosted a best practices workshop for its technical assistance partners in June 2005 to train green building design experts and expand their ability to work effectively with the affordable housing community.

• GreenHOME consulted with the Bank of America CDC, Marshall Heights CDO, and Lano International on the Parkside project, a mixed-use, mixed-income, 14-acre site in the Kenilworth neighborhood of Washington, DC. 20 percent of the 1,500-2,000 residential units will be affordable.

• GreenHOME also helped bring in green building experts to advise renovation and new construction projects for the District of Columbia Housing Authority's Modernization Division, DC and Baltimore community development organizations Mi Casa and Brooklyn and Curtis Bay Coalition, Inc., and Arlington's AHC, Inc.

• By participating in three of DC's New Communities design charrettes, GreenHOME succeeded in having green standards incorporated into the goals and requirements for the Lincoln Heights and Barry Farms developments.

• By offering grants to help nonprofit developers pay for an integrated design charrette, GreenHOME and Enterprise Community Partners have made it that much easier for the District's Department of Housing and Community Development to incorporate this crucial piece of the green affordable housing puzzle as part of the RFP process.

Online Guides

Green2Green
GreenHOME worked with GreenBlue in their creation of Green2Green:http://green2green.org an online resource to support the affordable housing professional in choosing green products and approaches.

D.C. Green Building Directory
Please contribute to our GreenHOME's growing directory of D.C. metro area green building tools, services, and products for affordable housing developers so that we can make this website even more valuable for you and the community.

Project-based Grants

GreenHOME, in collaboration with Enterprise Community Partners, has formed the DC Green Communities Initiative. One of the programs of the Initiative provides financial support for green development in the form of grants. These grants will help cover real project costs, assisting development teams understand and work through an integrative design process and offsetting capital expenses.

• Technical assistance grants of up to $30,000 will be made available to help development teams meet Green Building Act requirements, including standards review, requirements, and energy modeling. Special allowance may be made for unique large-scale developments, if funding becomes available.

• Capital budget assistance will be made available through grants. A standard grant of $1,500 per unit serving 60% AMI or less can cover up to 67 units per development. Special allowance may be made for unique large-scale developments, if funding becomes available.

A Green Building Resource Center

GreenHOME is working to bring GreenSPACE, a green building resource center, to DC. This staffed facility would host trainings, charrettes, and construction demonstrations. It would also have a range of green building products, materials, and information on hand.