Home, Green Home

I was talking to a friend from home last night and she showed me this really interesting article about the possibility of greening homes in Connecticut. The article is about how a family who wanted to build an environmentally friendly house had trouble a few years ago, but now are finding that green building is starting to go mainstream and, get this, low income housing projects in Hartford and Bridgeport are currently being built with the environment in mind.

Green residential buildings remain a sliver of the residential construction pie, to be sure, but when low-income housing goes green, as is happening in Hartford and Bridgeport, that is a signal. Because if there was a criticism of green residential construction, it was the cost.

But the premium for green construction can be comparatively small, and often offset by lower operating costs. Some elements of green construction, in fact, are so competitive that in both Hartford and Bridgeport, low-income green housing projects - where every dollar is critical - are under way. Some green building features don't even carry an extra cost, such as positioning windows to take advantage of natural light.

I too was under the impression that greening one's house would be an expensive process (and I still think that parts of it are, but then again, so it building/remodeling a house), but hearing that low-income "environmentally sensitive" housing is being made is a great step towards dispelling this belief. It's also important that this is low-income housing because traditionally the environmental protection movement is directed towards members of the upper-middle class and many people simply aren't aware that there are other options out there. I just have to say, I am pretty proud of my home state for this.