Greening Initiative

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is the largest municipal housing agency in the nation with over 2,800 employees and an annual operating budget of approximately $480 million. Recently, HPD undertook a Greening Initiative as an agency-wide effort to determine how the agency can promote more energy-efficient and sustainable (green) construction in a manner which benefits tenants, developers, and building owners. HPD asked the Capstone team to create two series of recommendations, the first on cost effective green building techniques suitable to affordable housing in New York City, and the second on financing and policy strategies that help advance the incorporation of such techniques by affordable housing developers. In support of these recommendations, the Capstone team also produced case studies on existing affordable housing projects and building guidelines, analyzed the perceptions of the city’s affordable multifamily financing community on green development, and re-modeled an existing HPD supportive housing project to include environmentally-friendly building techniques.