Housing policies and energy efficiency spillovers in low and moderate income communities

Abstract

Housing policies address the human dimensions of increasing urban density, but their energy and sustainability implications are hard to measure due to challenges with siloed civic data. This is especially critical when evaluating policies targeting low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. For example, a major challenge to achieving national energy efficiency goals has been participation by LMI households. Standalone energy efficiency policies, such as information-based programmes and weatherization assistance, tend to attract affluent, informed households or suffer from low participation rates. In this Article, we provide evidence that federal housing policies, specifically community development block grants, accelerate energy efficiency participation from LMI households, including renters and multifamily residents. We conduct record linkage on 5.9M observations of housing programme participation and utility consumption to quantify the hidden benefits of locally administered housing block grants in a typical entitlement community in the US Southeast. We provide long-run evidence across 16,680 properties that housing policies generate 5–11% energy savings as spillover benefits to economically burdened households not conventionally targeted for energy efficiency participation.