Structured financial solutions for green affordable housing projects

Environmentally responsible buildings are increasing gaining recognition in the building industry because they address objectives such as conserving natural resources, improving energy efficiency and indoor air quality and they make more economic sense. Affordable housing and Green buildings in particular combine well together as the goals of both overlap. A joint team comprising of New Ecology Initiatives, the Tellus Institute, LISC Boston and the Green CDC's Initiative is currently investigating the Costs and Benefits of Green Affordable Housing. This thesis builds on the research in progress, by focusing on the financial challenges and opportunities faced by green affordable housing. In an attempt to incentivize green affordable housing, this thesis investigates the capital sources that are available at key stages of the development process and how they can best be allocated to meet the costs and needs that arise at each developmental stage. Specifically, the fiscal sources utilized on two representative projects- one rental project and one homeownership project, were analyzed and solutions were found to restructure these resources to pay for green premiums. Several viable solutions emerged to offset the incremental costs of greening in the early phases of the two projects.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Subramanian, Shwetha

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Peter Roth.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33176

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33176