Minneapolis affordable housing developer Aeon did some math to see how much cost savings its LEED Platinum buildings can offer its low-income tenants. What did they find? Not enough.
Green Building Advisor reports that the developer calculated that a total of $130 million for utilities will be spent by all of its residents in the company’s portfolio of LEED Platinum-certified buildings.
“That’s a huge number,” Aeon’s vice president of housing development Gina Ciganik told Green Building Advisor. “If we’re trying to keep these units affordable, both in terms of their rents and maintaining the property, and we want our residents to have lower energy bills and water bills, we better figure this out.”
So the company adopted a more aggressive sustainable building peogram, the Living Building Challenge, to guide construction of its 90-unit apartment building in south Minneapolis.
