Building Green Houses for the Poor

When most people hear the term "green building," they probably imagine something like Bank of America's (BoA) soon-to-be-completed Midtown Manhattan headquarters. The skyscraper will have floor-to-ceiling insulating glass walls, automatic light dimming, water recycling, air filtration and on-site power generation. Those green features have helped make the BoA Tower the first skyscraper to win a Platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating, the highest possible such award. They also helped ensure that the tower won't be cheap — the project is estimated to cost about $1 billion.

The high-tech green features of the BoA Tower certainly look impressive from the outside, but the real guts of green design can be seen farther uptown, in the economically depressed South Bronx. There, the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDCo) — a veteran New York nonprofit — has just opened the Intervale Green housing development, a 128-unit apartment building for low-income families.

Intervale Green doesn't have the glass walls, waterless urinals or ice batteries that the BoA Tower boasts. No one would describe Intervale as cutting edge, but it is green where it counts — with more energy efficient appliances, better window insulation and energy efficient fluorescent lights, all of which will enable its low-income residents to save real money on their utility bills. "Residents will be paying 30% less for their utilities than in an ordinary building," says Nancy Biberman founder and president of WHEDCo, during a recent tour of Intervale. "For them, going green is a survivability issue. It's important for the environment, but it's really important for their pocketbooks."

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