By: Moza Aljassmi - Elias Altman - Christian Malek
<aside> 📌 Low income communities in Boston such as: Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan citizens, struggle with limited access to sustainable resources like urban green spaces and affordable climate resilient housing/infrastructure, while high income communities like South Boston and Charlestown alongside Middle income communities like Hyde Park differ. The city has shown a rise in living costs, Rent rose by 8.1% over the past year. One of the main challenges is aligning sustainability goals with social equity, ensuring all residents can access green and affordable living units
Our key stakeholders are:
Boston municipality and government:
Their issues include Strengthen institutional roles and coordination among city departments and stakeholders to deliver sustainable housing solutions.
Low Income families:
What they need most is Ensuring access to affordable and climate resilient housing for low-income families.
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<aside> 📌 The solution focuses on a retrofit strategy aimed at creating affordable, sustainable housing for low-income families in Boston.
Technically, it is highly feasible: retrofitting with energy-efficient windows, air sealing, heat pumps, and solar panels can reduce energy use by up to 60% in large units.
Financially, the plan leverages economies of scale by bundling existing buildings and expanding them vertically, allowing for lower construction costs and affordable apartment pricing. Government and municipal support, along with partnerships with green contractors, would further reduce financial barriers.
The approach is well-aligned with community needs, offering lower energy bills, improved living conditions, and local job creation. It supports climate resilience and aligns with Boston’s sustainability targets. The project is designed to be inclusive and environmentally responsible, helping residents live with dignity while advancing the city’s green infrastructure.
Overall, this strategy balances technical practicality, financial viability, and long-term social and environmental sustainability.
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<aside> 📌 The team acknowledges the complexity of addressing affordable, climate-resilient housing. It is not a simple issue and involves multiple challenges, such as securing funding, managing construction logistics, introducing or modifying zoning policies, and ensuring strong community engagement.
While the proposal is not a complete solution, it serves as a foundational blueprint that professionals, policymakers, and technical experts can build upon.
Due to limited expertise in contracting and technical construction processes, the team was unable to explore deeper logistical elements. Practical obstacles may include lengthy permitting procedures, labor shortages, zoning conflicts, or resistance from property owners.
Affordability also needs to be balanced with sustainable material sourcing and long-term maintenance costs. However, with collaboration from experienced stakeholders and community allies, this initiative presents a realistic starting point toward a socially equitable, financially viable, and environmentally sustainable housing solution.
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<aside> 📌 More Data concerning the construction of the compounds: Bundling would lower our costs by leveraging economies of scale, and the vertical expansion will help us have a bigger area thus creating more apartments that are ready to use: having more appartments means that the costs would spread out over more units so that would make the average cost of an apartment far cheaper thus it can be priced at a very affordable amount.
In the end of that process, by the retrofitting of 3000 units, with an average of 2.5 people per unit, this project will be able to accommodate over 7500 people . As boston is a big city with over 65000 people in need of such housing, this solution would cater the needs of over 12% of the low income families in only 1 year. Keeping that pace up, by the end of 2030 this project would have solved half the ongoing crisis making everyone happy.
Total cots: By looking at some reports from contractors and big consulting companies, the cost of building and retrofitting one unit in an outskirt zone would come around 110000$ which is far cheaper then a normal apartment in boston, thus it would satisfy low income families as they will be able to pay for those homes and contractors would also be happy as the risk of them not getting their payment is very low as their units can easily be paid using mortgages or any other type of payment
its easier said than done so here’s some metrics that would measure our success: Energy savings: 60% reduction Cost savings: over 2000$ in energy costs Health outcomes: 20-30% reduction in asthma and carbon related diseases Resident satisfaction: over 75% of our newly acquainted low income residents will feel satisfied and happy from that endeavor
For green contractors: First of all we will be stimulating their activity and creating new jobs for them, they are also benifiting from a tax shield as green activities get a drop in interest rates when in need of financing thus helping them cover more projects
Creativity and innovation: The synergy between environmental sustainability and housing equity is the innovative part of our project, its like hunting two birds with one stone as we are tackling to huge problems with one innovative solution that is still in a realistic boundary. By the introduction of new retrofitting zones that have a shared energy network, Boston can become one of the innovative/sustainable cities in the Us thus tackling two main SDG goals
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<aside> 📎 References
1. U.S. DOE (2022)
U.S. Department of Energy. (2022). Energy retrofit guidelines for multifamily buildings. https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings
2. MassHousing (2021)
MassHousing. (2021). Affordable housing financing & development in Massachusetts. https://www.masshousing.com/
3. City of Boston (2023)
City of Boston. (2023). Climate Ready Boston: Building a resilient city. https://www.boston.gov/departments/environment/climate-ready-boston
4. IEA (2021)
International Energy Agency. (2021). Retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency: Global roadmap. https://www.iea.org/reports/building-retrofits
5. MassCEC (2023)
Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. (2023). Clean energy incentive programs and green job creation. https://www.masscec.com/
6. ULI (2020)
Urban Land Institute. (2020). Retrofitting buildings to reduce carbon emissions. ULI Greenprint Center.
7. EPA (2022)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2022). Health and environmental benefits of energy-efficient housing. https://www.epa.gov/greenbuilding
8. HUD (2023)
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2023). Advancing housing equity through retrofits. https://www.hud.gov/
9. RMI (2021)
Rocky Mountain Institute. (2021). Economics of deep energy retrofits. https://rmi.org
10. ACEEE (2022)
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. (2022). The role of policy in promoting equitable energy retrofits. https://www.aceee.org
11. Boston Indicators (2023)
Boston Indicators. (2023). Income inequality and housing access in Boston. https://www.bostonindicators.org/
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