New sustainable affordable housing alliance launched

There are a good number of organizations dedicated to the very important cause/issue of promoting and building more sustainable buildings. There are a good number of organizations dedicated to the very important/cause of promoting and creating affordable housing.

While there is certainly cross-sectoral dialogue happening, there hasn’t been an organization with the focus promoting the idea that all affordable housing buildings should be “green buildings”. Enter C.A.S.A.H - the Canadian Alliance for Sustainable and Affordable Housing. This new non-profit is small but hopes to grow the push to make all affordable housing more sustainable.

The G.R.E.A.T Housing project came about in part because the Fourth Pig Green & Natural Construction were researching the possibility of doing eco-affordable housing a few years ago and they kept coming across other folks who were working on the same questions in some way or another. While it would be amazing to have every building meet much stricter low carbon standards, building codes are locally controlled and local, provincial and municipal governments play a huge role in determining what gets built and how. You can’t have a national mandate on housing standards.

However, the Federal government is often connected to the development of affordable housing, through incentives and support, some of which goes to provinces. Why not connect the funding for climate crisis mitigation to support affordable housing that doesn’t do such damage to the climate?

C.A.S.A.H aims to provide a forum for housing practitioners to exchange ideas and resources for sustainable building and to explore ways to encourage governments to promote eco affordable housing amongst other ideas. Read more here.

Photo by Tom Rumble on Unsplash