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New Book: ‘Gray to Green Communities: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crisis’ by Dana L. Bourland

March 22, 2021 Books, Featured No Comments

Quality affordable housing is an issue coast to coast, in booming & stagnant markets alike. A new book looks at the subject:

US cities are faced with the joint challenge of our climate crisis and the lack of housing that is affordable and healthy. Our housing stock contributes significantly to the changing climate, with residential buildings accounting for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. US housing is not only unhealthy for the planet, it is putting the physical and financial health of residents at risk. Our housing system means that a renter working 40 hours a week and earning minimum wage cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment in any US county. 

In Gray to Green Communities, green affordable housing expert Dana Bourland argues that we need to move away from a gray housing model to a green model, which considers the health and well-being of residents, their communities, and the planet. She demonstrates that we do not have to choose between protecting our planet and providing housing affordable to all.

Bourland draws from her experience leading the Green Communities Program at Enterprise Community Partners, a national community development intermediary. Her work resulted in the first standard for green affordable housing which was designed to deliver measurable health, economic, and environmental benefits.

The book opens with the potential of green affordable housing, followed by the problems that it is helping to solve, challenges in the approach that need to be overcome, and recommendations for the future of green affordable housing. Gray to Green Communities brings together the stories of those who benefit from living in green affordable housing and examples of Green Communities’ developments from across the country. Bourland posits that over the next decade we can deliver on the human right to housing while reaching a level of carbon emissions reductions agreed upon by scientists and demanded by youth.

Gray to Green Communities will empower and inspire anyone interested in the future of housing and our planet. (Island Press)

Here’s how the book is organized:

Chapter 1: The Problem with Gray
Chapter 2: The Promise of Green
Chapter 3: Learning from the Green Communities Criteria
Chapter 4: The Challenges to Greening Affordable Housing for All
Chapter 5: A Just Future

I have the physical book, but I checked out the ebook from the St. Louis Library too.  You can view a preview on Google Books.

Anyone interested in the subject of housing should read this book.

— Steve Patterson

 

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