Healthy Affordable Building Materials
Initiative Goals
EEFA’s overarching goal through our Healthy Affordable Building Materials (HABM) work is to improve indoor air quality and resident health through the use of non-toxic building materials.
Market Transformation: Ensure the safest insulation and air sealant materials are readily available and cost-effective.
Green Building Standards: Incorporate public health protections from toxic building materials into existing building rating systems, building codes as well as all current green building certifications and standards. Integrate HABM specifications and guidance into energy efficiency contractors/trades trainings and certifications.
Financing: Integrate healthier building materials provisions in performance-based standards in state housing financing agencies’ (HFA) Qualified Allocation Plans (QAP) for the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program.
Policy: Incorporate public health protections from toxic building materials into existing efficiency programs, affordable housing policies, toxic substance control policies and air quality regulatory frameworks at the state and national levels.
Movement-Building: Align the energy, housing, and health and environmental justice movements, through a comprehensive, collaborative approach, toward making multifamily homes healthy, resilient, and affordable.
Initiative Activities
- Community of Practice: Healthy Affordable Building Material community of practice members exchange ideas and opportunities related to implementation of our Healthy Affordable Building Materials campaign, such as: strategies for the campaign, actionable next steps, strategic thinking, and identification of key stakeholders and constituents leading to the adoption of healthier material use across the energy efficiency program sector.
- Capacity Building: Our project partners foster enhanced understanding of the health impacts of building materials in energy efficiency retrofits. We do so through direct engagement using workshops, self-guided online education, and peer-exchange. A key outcome is a shared understanding of the problem— that toxics in materials have negative impacts on human health— and identification of current barriers to the adoption of healthier material in energy efficiency programs.
- On-line tools: Members of our team have developed extensive research and guides that provide practitioners and policy makers tangible opportunities to insert improved material specification in retrofit procurement. The online site serves as a repository for information on how to ensure only the healthiest available materials are used in energy efficiency retrofits.
