Bringing Green Homes within Reach: Healthier Housing for More People

Abstract

Gaze upon the Helliers’ half-built house in Bristol, Vermont, and you might think you’re looking at an ordinary home construction project. Table saws, building materials, and piles of earth lie around the newly framed dwelling, while a crew of carpenters mills around the site, dressed for warmth in the chilly fall air. But look closer, and some unique features emerge. The exterior frame is wrapped in an outer layer of heat-trapping insulation. Sunshine streams in through large, south-facing windows, flooding the interior living spaces with light. Once the house is completed, solar panels will supply the family’s hot water and much of its electrical power. And indoor finishes, paints, rugs, and fabrics will be nontoxic. In short, the Helliers’ house is being built to be green. And that puts it in good company; new green homes jumped in number by 30% between 2005 and 2006 and could include up to 5% of the entire U.S. housing market within five years, predicts McGraw-Hill Construction, an industry information provider, in its June 2006 Residential Green Building SmartMarket Report. That makes green homes bright spots in an otherwise dismal housing market facing its worst slump in decades. To everyone’s benefit, green homes link sustainable materials and practices with better human and environmental health. “You’re really looking at a tripod of components,” says David Johnston, president of green building consultancy What’s Working and author of Green from the Ground Up, a forthcoming book on sustainable residential design. “First, energy efficiency has to be above minimal code requirements for your climate. The second component has to do with improved water and resource efficiency, and the third concerns indoor air quality. If your design doesn’t address all three of these issues, then you don’t have a green home.” According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Air and Radiation, indoor air is typically 2–5 times more polluted than outdoor air, owing to the presence of asthma-inducing agents such as mold and toxic chemicals in carpets, paints, and other synthetic materials. In fact, the EPA ranks indoor air as one of the top five human health risks, says agency spokesperson Dave Ryan. By requiring nontoxic materials, green designs limit indoor exposure to carcinogens such as formaldehyde in manufactured wood products including sheathing and particleboard, and to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in finishes. Home energy uses also contribute to global warming. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) in Washington, DC, estimates that domestic power demands account for 21% of all the greenhouse gases emitted in the United States. The construction industry as a whole accounts for 48% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to advocacy group Architecture 2030. And by optimizing insulation, green designs save on oil and gas bills, which are (quite literally in poorly insulated homes) going through the roof. But even as green homes gain in popularity, they’re also dogged by a sticky association with the rich, seen by many as too pricey for ordinary buyers. Indeed, McGraw-Hill Construction identified cost perceptions as a top obstacle to green building among homeowners and builders alike. Fueling that preoccupation with cost is a media obsession with “eco-mansions,” laments Charles Lockwood, a green building consultant in Los Angeles and New York. “Most of what you see in the press would leave you thinking you’d have to live in Malibu or Aspen to afford one of these places,” he says. To wit: the Maine Sunday Telegram in Portland ran a feature on 4 November 2007 titled “Unaffordably Green?” about a $1 million ultra-green home in nearby Freeport that was unsold after a year on the market. Christopher Briley, an architect with Green Design Studio in Yarmouth, Maine, concedes that most people who build their own houses have above-average incomes (McGraw-Hill Construction’s SmartMarket Report shows that nearly two-thirds of those who buy green homes make more than $50,000 a year). And buyers with more money to spend, Briley says, are apt to mix green design elements in with a host of other more expensive features—radiant floors and granite countertops, for instance—that skew costs higher. “A lot of these houses are going to be expensive anyway,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have an affordable green house. It’s all about where you decide to spend your money.”