THE GREEN SOLUTION

Yesterday I was reading an article in the Western Michigan Business Review.  It was about the construction of "environmentally-friendly" housing in downtown Grand Rapids.  The reporter prefaced her article with the tease that it usually costs a lot of green to build green housing, which puts such homes out of the price range of ordinary people, however, two non-profits organizations have joined forces to build affordable green housing here in the city.

Well, that's interesting.  I wondered to myself, how did they square that circle?  I read on.  The West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum, one of those fashionable nags chiding businessmen to embrace the "triple bottom line" and operate their companies on green principles, linked up with the Inner City Christian Federation, a builder of affordable housing for the past quarter century.  Together they have put forward a plan to build River City's first green and affordable housing project in the Wealthy-Jefferson neighborhood near Heritage Hill.  The project is called "My Healthy Green Home".

Well, OK, that's swell.  But how will this team build affordable homes with big-ticket green technologies and materials?  (And, yes, I know, I'm begging the question of just how much this so-called green technology actually benefits the environment.  But that's not the point here.  Right now all we need to know, as visions of Bambi frolicking with butterflies play in our heads, is that it makes feel good to use this expensive stuff.)  As I read on, I find out they won't.  David de Velder, ICCF's construction manager calculated that it will cost $175K to build a "My Healthy Green Home" compared to $115-135K for a similar home of conventional construction.

Well, jacking up the price of house by 30 to 50% to make it environmentally-friendly doesn't sound like a solution to making it affordable.  So what is the green solution?  Well, at the very end of the article, de Velder gives up the ghost:  They will seek subsidies from the state for the housing project.  So whatever benefits the "My Healthy Green Home" program may have for the environment, it looks like it's not going to be very healthy for the green in your wallets, fellow taxpayers.