Blog with SFHDC

Benefits of Green Housing

Green Affordable Housing Coalition:

What is Green Building?
Green Building design and construction practices significantly reduce the negative impact of buildings on the environment and occupants in five broad areas:

Sustainable site planning
Energy efficiency and renewable energy
Safeguarding water quality and water efficiency
Conservation of materials and resources
Indoor environmental quality
What Are the Economic Benefits of Green Buildings?
A green building is a higher quality building, and as such, may cost more up front, but it saves through lower operating costs over the life of the building. The green building approach applies a project life cycle cost analysis for determining the appropriate up-front expenditure. This analytical method calculates costs over the useful life of the asset.

These and other cost-savings can only be fully realized when they are incorporated at the project’s conceptual design phase with the assistance of an integrated team of professionals. The integrated systems approach ensures that the building is designed as one system rather than a collection of stand-alone systems.

Some benefits, such as improving occupant health, comfort, productivity, reducing pollution and landfill waste are not easily quantified. Consequently, they are not adequately considered in typical cost analysis. For this reason, consider trying to start setting costs for these things or setting aside a small portion of the building budget to cover differential costs associated with less tangible green building benefits or to cover the cost of researching and analyzing green building options.

Even with a tight budget, many green building measures can be incorporated with minimal or zero increased up-front costs and they can yield enormous savings (See “Building Green on a Budget”, Environmental Building News, 1999, http://www.buildinggreen.com/features/lc/low_cost.html).

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