We have Data on Apartment Building Efficiency in Minnesota

For four years, benchmarking multifamily buildings in Minnesota was a big part of my work. At long last, the final report from that project is public.  (A summary of findings is here.) Benchmarking takes the raw data of how much energy and water a building uses, and normalizes it by building size (and more), so […]

On Rental Housing and Markets

You may know that I also blog over at streets.mn, and I just posted a three-part series on rental housing markets, affordable rental housing and related policy. (Three posts so far, it may grow). It was inspired by things happening in my back yard: a lot of hand-wringing about affordable housing, concerns about luxury buildings forcing up […]

Silos

I’m puzzling out how public health and affordable housing developers coordinate their work.

Leverage => Change

I am constantly challenging myself to find effective ways to leverage change in the world.  Sometimes it’s minor, like how to reduce my yardwork responsibilities.  Often it’s ambitious, like reducing apartment building utility consumption across Minnesota, or changing culture to make bicycling so normal people don’t even notice they’re doing it. I embed those efforts […]

Multi-family Apts. & Energy/Water Efficiency

I have spent countless hours of the last few years thinking about making existing multifamily buildings energy efficient.  The short answer is that it’s very, very hard, because there are so many structural hurdles in the way.  The long answer is finally, I see a glimmer of hope…