Biden Administration Announces Over $100 Million for Energy Saving Renovations of Low-Income Households

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Oct. 19 announced over $100 million in funding for new loans and subsidies to renovate the living spaces for 1,500 low-income households to cut energy waste and increase resilience to extreme weather events. The funding is a part of the Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, or GRRP, established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. The investment will help make progress towards the goal of reducing the cost of decarbonizing housing in half within a decade while lowering energy bills and increasing affordable housing supply.

The IRA provided the department with $837.5 million in grant and loan subsidy funding and $4 billion in loan commitment authority for the new program. GRRP marks the first such program by the department to simultaneously invest in energy and water efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, clean-energy generation, and climate resilience strategies in multifamily housing. The initiative aligns with President Biden’s Justice40 initiative, with funding targeted to housing serving low-income families.

The funding will assist working class households and low-income individuals by making enhancements to their homes that would usually be cost prohibitive. The funding will allow the households to increase resilience, energy efficiency and allow the homes to be structurally modernized. Without the funding the housing and development assisted multifamily properties would struggle to make the same investments in greener, safer and more energy efficient properties.

The department, in addition to the GRRP funding, continues to enhance the supply of affordable housing by declaring the Climate Resource for Housing Supply Framework. The framework considers how climate associated investments can strengthen the development of affordable housing. These initiatives enhance the administration’s commitment to reducing climate pollution, advancing fair housing, enhancing climate resilience and reducing household energy costs.

Recently, the Department of Energy launched the “Affordable Home Energy Shot,” the eighth part of its Energy Earthshots program designed to drive integrated program development to rapidly advance solutions towards achieving climate and economic competitiveness goals. This latest initiative sets a target to lower the cost of decarbonizing new and existing housing by 50 percent, while delivering energy bill savings and cutting emissions associated with operating, constructing, and renovating buildings.