 Good afternoon everyone and thank you for coming today to this briefing on the multiple benefits of federal housing and energy programs. We're delighted you could be here. I would also like to welcome new members of Congress and new staff who might be attending one of these briefings for the first time. Today's briefing will be sort of a 101 so we're going to encourage you to ask questions. We'll save the questions till after our panel so that's about an hour for the panel. So I'm again very happy to welcome you. I'm Ellen Vaughn with the Environmental and Energy Study Institute and we are really pleased to present today's briefing with energy efficiency for all and so I would like to turn it over to the senior policy advocate for EFA, we call it, who is Khalil Shai and Khalil is going to moderate the panel and we'll he'll introduce each of the speakers and so I did want to say just a few words about Khalil who's amazing. He is with NRDC, National Resources Defense Council and again he serves as project manager for EFA and also senior policy advocate for NRDC's Resilient Communities Program and he has not only experience and background on these issues in housing and energy efficiency for all literally but also educational background in sustainable international development both the masters from Brandeis and PhD University of Delaware but also has been a community organizer and I think brings just that real authentic experience to why these programs are so important so I'm just so delighted to hand it over to Khalil. Thank you Ellen and thank you everyone for coming out. Again my name is Khalil Shahid and I am a senior policy advocate with the Resilient Communities Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council where I work with with the energy efficiency for all project with our federal policy team and so we're very happy again today to be working with EESI on what is now our second briefing and we hope to do a number of more a number more in the coming months partnering with them but today's briefing we're going to be discussing the multiple benefits of housing and energy programs thinking of them not as separate sectors but thinking of them in unison and the complements between affordable housing and energy programs and why this is important is because housing and the residential sectors where we live is one of the primary places where people every day intersect with energy and and with our energy policy as in use consumers of energy housing and the residential sector is also one of the single largest sources of greenhouse gas carbon emissions that are fueling fueling climate change and so addressing the how and the where we live how we house people how we give people stable homes is going to be a very key factor in how we address climate change going forward and more importantly you know in the coming months year in the election cycle you're going to be hearing a lot more debate about the role of housing and affordable housing and access to housing and what that means for our climate discussion so that's pretty much it for me the easiest part of a panel discussion is being the moderator where I get to hand it off to to four expert panelists that are going to both entertain and educate us about some key issues in the relationship between affordable housing and our nation's energy policy particularly as it relates to energy efficiency and we hope that this discussion again you'll be able to harken back to it again as these conversations about the relationship between housing energy and climate change continue to grow again in the coming months so our first speaker is my colleague Ellen Laurie Hoffman who is with the National Housing Trust and I should say this is a reminder I did not give more detail about if a energy efficiency for all is a national partnership between the Natural Resource and Defense Council and the National Housing Trust elevate energy which is formally CNT Energy out of Chicago and the Energy Foundation and we work in 13 states across the country to increase the share of utility financed energy efficiency programs going into the affordable multifamily housing sector which is a very hard to reach a sector for energy efficiency services and programs and so my colleague Ellen works with me on federal policy for EFA she's with the National Housing Trust where she's been since 2014 and she is the federal policy director at the National Housing Trust Ellen has been responsible for federal housing policies spending HUD budget maintaining and approving the low income housing tax credit energy efficiency investments housing finance reform and fair housing she represents the trust before congressional staff federal officials and other housing advocates and stakeholders prior to joining the trust Ellen worked for the National Council of State Housing Agencies and she's also been engaged where she was also engaged on the HUD budget housing finance reform HUD rental assistance demonstration of the FHA USDA multifamily programs and a host of others she's promoted a primary she's been promoted to a primary role for state agencies for Section 8 performance based contract administration program or PBCA with HUD in Congress she holds a master's in public policy degree from Harvard University's John Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Vassar College so I'll turn it over to Ellen. Thank you. Thanks so much Kalia before I start I'm gonna give it give the mic back to the other Ellen we like to have as many Ellen's as possible on our panel. Thank you Ellen see we did it just so we could say that now I wanted to I am remiss in not thanking very deeply Congressman Paul Tonko's office for helping us with this briefing and sponsoring this room. Congressman Tonko has been such a wonderful advocate for weatherization programs and housing programs so thank you so much back to you. Thanks Ellen and thank and I'll echo Ellen's thanks to representative Tonko we're really delighted to be here today and excited to meet all of you especially those who are new or newly re-assigned so I am the housing person on the panel and I'm going to be giving sort of a very quick introduction to federal housing programs those that EFA is specifically focused on which is rental assistant project based rental assistance and the low income housing tax credit. First I'm gonna first I'm just gonna take a minute and talk about the National Housing Trust so we as Khalil mentioned we're one of the four national partner organizations that form EFA but we're also a national nonprofit we're based here in D.C. we're focused on preserving existing multifamily affordable housing so as you can see from our mission statement we protect improve and maintain existing affordable housing for low income families we do that through three primary lines of business policy at the federal state and local level real estate development and lending and we also have a special focus on energy efficiency within affordable housing because energy is the number one driver of operating costs in housing and so it has a particularly heavy burden on low income residents. Okay so I told the other panelists I'm gonna be relatively quick there this is a lot of information I'm gonna go as slowly and carefully as I can but also please I encourage anyone to feel free to follow up with me to have a more in depth conversation about federal housing policy because it's kind of hard to cover it all in you know 8 to 10 minutes but I'm gonna start with project based rental assistance and project based rental assistance is a HUD program it is appropriated annually by Congress it's a public private partnership and what that means is the properties that apartments multifamily housing is privately owned by private owners and the federal government provides rental assistance and it serves over 1.2 million low and very low income households across the country the average income of those residences under $13,000 a year so these are these are folks without a lot of resources and over half of the households have at least one family member that's either elderly or disabled so a lot of people on fixed incomes PBR properties are everywhere they're in urban areas rural suburban I guarantee you that they're in the districts that you represent and we have lots of data that we'd be happy to share with you about where those properties are specifically in what the population is that served in in your state in your district so I mentioned it's privately owned housing the way that rent that PBRA works is that low income residents who are income qualified pay 30% of their income for rent no more than that and HUD through rental assistance makes up the difference the rents are tied to market so this ends up being a big part of the HUD budget it's a big issue for HUD appropriations every year because the rent levels ebb and flow and generally in the recent years have just gone up and up and up as anyone who's looked for an apartment in the DC area knows so the rents are tied to market so that and the properties are kept as market rate units but the residents are able to pay no more than 30% of their income PBRA does require annual appropriations so every year we make sure that appropriators and members of Congress understand why this commitment is so important these are long term contracts that private owners sign with the federal government but the contracts are dependent on the federal appropriation and I will mention just as a side note that we did have a big problem with project-based rental assistance during the shutdown the recent government shutdown where HUD was unable to renew contracts in part of December and January and I know there's gonna be a T HUD subcommittee hearing about that next week it's something that we're very concerned about and trying to understand what happened there and why there were not adequate appropriations obviously shutdowns are not something that anyone wants to see happen and it's not normal course of business but you may have heard about that there was a lot of press coverage during the shutdown. Okay, quickly pivoting to a totally different program the low income housing tax credit now this is also a federal program but it is through the internal revenue code and this is a program that as opposed to project-based rental assistance provides assistance in building and preserving or rehabilitating properties so it's really the number one tool that the federal government provides if you wanna build an apartment building or multi-family housing for low income people it's almost impossible to put the resources together and to make the numbers work to serve low income people without the use of the low income housing tax credit and at the trust we're really focused on how important the credit is as well for preserving so and let me just pause for a minute and talk about why is preservation you're hearing me talk about preservation and if you don't know a lot about a federally assisted affordable housing you may wonder what I'm talking about. Everyone knows that housing needs to be improved over time if you're a homeowner or even if you're a renter after 10 years things start to fall apart and after 20 years even more roofs need to be replaced windows need to be replaced energy systems need to be upgraded and made more efficient and so there needs to be periodic recapitalization of affordable multi-family housing and that's why the low income housing tax credit is so important for preservation is it provides a tool to bring in a reinvestment in this housing so that it can continue to serve low income people over the long term. So the credit was created as part of the 1986 tax reform act and since then it's served 2.8 it has finance more than 2.8 affordable homes nationwide at about 100,000 per year these properties serve 6.7 million households which includes families, seniors, veterans people with disabilities and once again as with all federally assisted housing residents don't pay any more than 30% of their income for rent. The housing credit I'm just gonna take a minute and explain how it works so it's a tax credit program. It does provide there's an allocation of tax credits to every state in the country and it serves all kinds of communities states have the opportunity to decide where to target their credits and generally they do in urban as well as rural and suburban communities. The federal government issues the tax credits each year to the states and it's based on the per capita formula so depending on how many people are in the state will determine how many housing credits they actually get and then the states determine their own credit allocations through a competitive process they have each state has something called the Qualified Allocation Plan they do a very intensive public participation process where they work with the public they accept comments on their plan so folks have a chance to weigh in and say this is what we think the state should be using its resources for these are the populations that need to be served so it's a very flexible program and the states have done a terrific job over the years in using it to serve the specific needs of their low income populations. The trust runs a database called Prezcat we have the link here and it will be in all the materials and posted online which if you're interested in the housing creditor you wanna see how your state is using it it's a database which will show the Qualified Allocation Plans of each state and what their priorities are and you can see through the Qualified Allocation Plan it's a competitive system so there's points attached to different kinds of housing categories and then developers come in and have to compete and those with the highest scores get the credits so that is really just about the fastest explanation of low income housing tax credit I think anyone has ever provided. Again if people have questions please feel free to follow up with me I'm gonna save the rest of the time for our amazing panelists who are gonna talk more specifically about energy efficiency programs but just to give you the context these federal programs are important to understand even if you don't work on housing at all because in many cases the energy assistance programs are being provided to people in the federally assisted housing so you may need energy efficiency improvements you may need weatherization assistance in a property that was originally financed with low income housing tax credits or in which people are being served by project based rental assistance so IFA is all about the intersection between housing and energy again the most important thing to remember is that energy is the number one driver of operating costs in affordable rental housing and that low income people are disproportionately burdened by energy costs and so finding a way to help them both afford their housing and afford their utility bills is critically important so that they have the resources they need to be able to access other things in their life like education, healthcare, job opportunities. So that's it this is my contact please feel free I look forward to meeting and speaking with all of you and I will turn it back to Kulio. Well thank you so much Ellen and so Ellen just really talked about both the how and the where through our federal programs we provide housing assistance and actually access to housing for people and the outcome of those questions the how and the where also has a very deep impact and influences how we provide energy services to those families and those residents in those housing properties and what we've been finding particularly when we look at the rates of energy burden for low income families is that we're not doing an adequate job of providing access to stable and affordable energy for many of these families and so our next speaker Eric Bena is gonna come in and talk about one of our key federal programs that actually supports and assists families to be able to reduce their housing costs through the weatherization assistance program or WAP. Eric is the policy and communications manager at the National Association for State Community Services Program. He works with both the weatherization assistance program and community services block grant program heading handling communications and legislative affairs. He also supports NASCAP's training and technical assistance activities. Eric holds a degree in political science and economics. Eric, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. As Khalil said, my name's Eric Bena. I'm with NASCAP and I'm gonna talk to you all about the weatherization assistance program today. So just really quickly, a little bit about NASCAP. We are the member association for the state directors of the weatherization assistance program and the community services block grant. You're gonna hear a lot about WAP today but the community services block grant is also another really important grant that funds a nationwide network of community action agencies that are anti-poverty agencies and a lot of those also administer the weatherization program at the local level. So that's kind of the overlap and connection there. So the mission of the weatherization assistance program, a lot of times I talk to folks and they are familiar with the concept of weatherization but they don't realize that we have a nationwide program that has been providing weatherization services for over 40 years and the mission state and the weatherization assistance program you can see up there from the enabling legislation back in 1976. It's to reduce energy costs for low income families, particularly the elderly, people with disabilities and children by improving the energy efficiency of their homes and ensuring their health and safety. So I think that's a really core and worthy mission and we really always like to highlight that. The weatherization assistance program is a federal, state and local partnership. So we have found a great home at Department of Energy because DOE has the science, the research, the standards behind the program. The Department of Energy grants the weatherization funds authorized by Congress to state grantees, the state offices. Those are our members at NASCASP. So in your particular state, you could find the weatherization assistance program in the state energy office in a lot of states that's in the housing office, in Washington state for example, it's in the Department of Commerce. You're gonna hear from Michael from Washington state later in this panel. The state offices really oversee the program and they ensure quality assurance. They leverage additional funds from utilities and other sources. And the state level is also a point to drive innovation in the program. So then the state office contracts with sub grantees, the localization providers. As I mentioned, a lot of those are community action agencies which are trusted anti-poverty fighting organizations that have been around since LBJ's Great Society. A lot of the local providers are local governments and then also other energy efficiency nonprofits. So the weatherization assistance program is a low income program. It's serving clients up to 200% of poverty. So just giving you some context there. And then it's also really important to know that in addition to being nationwide in all 50 states, five US territories, DC, we're really in every county in the nation. So rural, urban, suburban communities and also all different housing types. Single family, manufactured housing, multi-family. So it's really a robust program and as you can see from my next slide, there's a great need for weatherization assistance in this country. So this is from the EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey which is done periodically every couple of years. And you can see from the stats up here, 25.3 million homes reporting energy and security. Millions of homes unable to use their heating and cooling assistance. I think that it's a really widespread problem and the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program plays a key role in addressing this. In addition to these stats, the Department of Energy estimates at least 30 to 40 million households are income eligible for the program but as you can see, there's some really robust need here. And even up to last week, we had the polar vortex across a lot of the country. This is a headline really underscoring this issue when vulnerable families has a last resort, sometimes have to turn to unsafe heating sources and this is really where the Weatherization Assistance Program, the LIHEAP program you're about to hear about from Katrina comes in. So a little bit more about what Weatherization Services are provided by the Department of Energy's program. This is a very specific program. It's not one size fits all. So every home gets an energy audit by a trained energy auditor and that energy auditor determines what measures using the latest building science will save that client, that home the most energy and the most money. So everything from insulation to high efficiency and light bulbs, air sealing, new HVAC equipment. And the biggest thing to remember with Weatherization Services is that the Department of Energy requires a savings to investment ratio of one. So everything that's being installed in that home is paying for itself over the life of the measure in energy savings. Additionally, every home weatherized by the Weatherization Assistance Program receives a inspection by a quality control inspector, so 100% of homes. And then at the state level, the state is monitoring an additional five to 10% of those homes for another layer of quality assurance. Looking at some of the benefits, particularly energy savings benefits, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory did a wide scale evaluation of the program a few years ago. And it really has a lot of energy savings benefits in terms of annual savings. The nationwide average is $283 a year for household, which maybe doesn't seem like a lot to folks in this room, but to a low income family that can be a huge savings. And depending upon where you are in the country and your natural gas price, things like that, your yearly savings could be upwards of double that. So a lot of good energy savings benefits there. And then it's really important to note that the non-energy savings, the non-energy benefits, excuse me, are almost as big, if not bigger than the energy benefits. And when I say non-energy benefits, those are things like health and safety, some of the more intangible benefits. Thinking about that, there are a lot of health benefits to weatherization. I'm not gonna focus too much on this because we're gonna hear about a great weatherization plus health model from Michael later in the panel. But inherent in energy efficiency, there are health benefits. Reduced asthma, reduced allergy rates, better physical and mental health, fewer misdays of work. And that's just inherent in making a home more energy efficient. And then you're gonna hear from Michael that this weatherization plus health model is really using the weatherization delivery network to deliver more targeted healthy homes improvements that can really help out some of those vulnerable populations with chronic conditions. I also have to mention the jobs aspect of the program. That evaluation done by Oak Ridge Lab found that 8,500 jobs were supported by weatherization and then there's thousands more indirectly in other industries like vendors, manufacturers, suppliers. So a lot of small businesses, contractors are supported by this program. There's kind of two models for the local agencies. Some local agencies have their own in-house crew that does the work. Other local agencies contract to their local contractor to do the work. It's important to note that the weatherization assistance program being around since 1976 has really pioneered a lot of the energy efficiency technology that's now standard in the whole residential sector. So the home performance industry, a lot of the techniques, technologies whether it's a blower door or an infrared camera, a lot of these technologies were piloted because of Department of Energy funding and research and then tested through the Weatherization Assistance Program. I wanna talk a little bit about the funding for the program. The Department of Energy funding is really the core source of funding for the program. Despite the president's budget zeroing out the program the past two budgets, Congress really recognizes the importance of this program and has provided some increases the past two budget cycles which we are very appreciative of. Right now for FY 2019, the funding is at 257 million. That's an increase over 2018 of about $6 million. And right now the program is getting back to historical levels of funding. It had been cut in recent years and so we're really just approaching kind of historical funding levels where we can have a really robust program. Additionally of the appropriation, there's also three million reserved for headquarters training and technical assistance which that allows Department of Energy to do training and to conduct research to improve the program and identify opportunities for innovation. You can see in this graphic there are in addition to the DOE funding there are two other sources of funding. There is a lot of LIHEAP funding that goes into the weatherization program and then there's some other funding as well as some leveraged funds. So I won't talk too much about LIHEAP because Katrina's gonna give you some great information about it but the thing to know is that the LIHEAP program Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is administered by Department of Health and Human Services and it really works hand in hand in a strategic partnership with the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program. States can transfer up to 15% of their LIHEAP allocation to their WAP program so they can use that LIHEAP funding to make energy efficiency investments and they can actually go up to 25% if they get a good cause waiver approved by HHS. So states are really able to mix those funds and to the best of their state's needs which I think is really important that WAP and LIHEAP are really two sides of the same coin. Looking at that last bucket of funding the other funds or the leveraged funds these are your non-federal funds. There is a big utility investment in the program and so at the state level and sometimes at the local level the weatherization program can leverage in funds from utilities. In 2017, from our report with our members our state members the about 29 states leveraged close to $255 million from utilities and other non-federal sources so that really brings in some flexible funding to maximize the impact of the program. There's maybe about a dozen states that at the state level from either from the state budget or from a tax or something like that they're able to put state funding into the weatherization program and maximize that. And then in some cases there's other non-federal funds from foundations or something that folks are pursuing recently is healthcare dollars because of some of those health benefits. In North Carolina there's a really great partnership between the weatherization program and Blue Cross Blue Shield and really doing some of that healthy homes work. And then this graphic here I know I'm running out of time but I just wanted to emphasize that the success of the weatherization program lies in the cooperation and partnership between entities at the federal, state, local level, utilities, government, non-profits all working together to ensure that the funding is adequate and that the services are being provided for our vulnerable low-income clients because that's really why this program is around and that's why everyone in the program does what they do. It's a really unique and special program in the sense that not a lot of programs go into people's homes and make a tangible difference in their lives. And I think that it's a really admirable and a program that you and your bosses could take another look at and going into this appropriation cycle definitely take note of my contact information. I'd be happy to come in, meet with your office, talk to your energy LA, connect you up to the state weatherization director for your state to learn more about how the programs run in your state. Additionally, just keep an eye out. Generally every year, Representative Tonko and Representative McKinley on the House side will do an appropriations letter and then Senator Reed and Senator Collins on the Senate side, always looking to get more offices to sign on to those and show support for this program. And then, yeah, definitely I'm gonna be here afterwards. Come up, we're happy to answer any questions about how the program works in your state. Thanks. Thank you, Eric. That was a brilliant overview of not only the weatherization assistance program and the work that it's done over the last 40 years of being the leader through that public investment in energy efficiency services, being a leader in actually creating the technology, the techniques and really some of the innovative financing for how you actually get energy services, particularly to the low income housing sector. And when Eric talked about a lot of those non-energy benefits, those ancillary benefits, be they jobs, health, I think it really showed the centrality of housing and residential housing to any myriad of issues. And if you can stabilize people in their homes, the multiple benefits for jobs, economic development, health, education, all spew from one, having a stable roof over your head. And so with that, we're gonna go into our next speaker, Katrina Metzler. She has dedicated her career to community service and advocating for the most in need. She has a wide range of experience in the field of energy, education, and poverty fighting programs spanning more than 20 years. As an advocate at local, state, and now federal level, she has supported legislation for programs such as LIHEAP, WAP, CSBG and SEP. And she's gonna tell us what all those alphabets mean, I promise you. Previously, Katrina was the executive director for Family, Adult and Children First Council at Fairfield County, Ohio. A county organization that supported families through grant funds for family mental health services. Childhood, injury prevention, early start and more. She also has held positions as energy policy analysts, state services director, energy services director for the National Association of State Community Services program or NASCAP. Prior to her work in Washington, DC, she was employed by the state of Ohio, where she was section supervisor for weatherization, managing one of the largest weatherization programs in the country. Mrs. Metzler was appointed to the state energy advisory board in 2013, serving the assistant secretary of energy where she provided critical assistance to improve access to services and program delivering for the people of Ohio. Let's welcome Katrina. Thank you so much, Kalil. I am really second guessing following people like Ellen and Eric who are so polished and so, you know, so spiffy. I'm gonna do my very best, but I tend to be a little bit more homespun. So, I will, I can promise that I will be informative and hopefully you'll enjoy the presentation but I cannot promise that I'm not slick. To start off, let's get to my slide. I'm Katrina Metzler, National Energy and Utility Affordability Coalition. You got another N-word group that you can write down trying to remember that acronym for. We are primarily associated at the federal level with advocating for the low income home energy assistance program as Eric said. LIHEAP is the primary federal funding source for energy affordability and it helps families meet their immediate home heating and cooling needs. There are consequences, you know, so what? So, what we do that? What difference does it make? I think as we move through the presentation, hopefully it'll be clear to you that there are consequences for families, for communities and also there are humanitarian consequences to letting people remain in interpret homes. So, LIHEAP, what is that? It is a block grant and it was established in 1981. When I look out over the crowd, probably there are a few of us in the room who were alive at that time. Do you guys remember who was president in 1981? Where are the folks who are over 40 with me? Yay! It was Ronald Reagan. So, this is a Reagan-era program. We enjoy bipartisan support on the Hill and we're trying to keep that going. But it was created in 1981 during an energy crunch. Like the other programs that you've heard from, Congress appropriates funds annually. This might be, you might already know all this, but that differs from something called an entitlement program. So, we're not an entitlement program. So, basically our funds don't increase as the need increases. We are appropriated a set amount of funding and when we run out, even if the line is around the block for our services, we can no longer provide any more services when the money is gone. So, right now that appropriation is at 3.69 billion for FY19. That represents a modest increase over the previous year, which we were very grateful for. And honestly, we didn't really expect it in the current environment, but we're really grateful. It would be nice to say that we could help a whole lot more people with that funding, but actually, as fuel prices go up and our funding stays relatively flat, we can serve fewer households. So, just so you know, we did serve nearly six million households in 2017 and I'll talk to you a little bit about who those folks are and help you to hopefully paint a portrait of the LIHEAP customer throughout my presentation. We've thrown around terms today like energy burden. And I don't know if you really know what that means. Those of us in energy circles are really familiar with that term, but I have found that when I say those words outside of energy circles, they're not always even familiar with what I'm talking about. So, it's really basic. It is just the percentage of household income that you spend on your energy bills. And so I have a couple of examples to demonstrate for you what effect that has on low-income houses. So the first example is a household with $5,000 a month income and $250 a month in energy costs. Does that seem reasonable to everyone in the room? A middle-class family, very typical. That means their energy burden is 5%. If you take that same bill, $250 for utilities a month and you apply it to a household where they have a fixed income of only $1,667 per month, then your energy burden is three times higher at 15%. That's the energy burden that we're working on. We are trying to make energy more affordable for folks at the lowest levels of income. There's a reason I picked 1667 and that is because that is the average income for a family who is served by LIHEAP. So what do we do about it? Through LIHEAP, we can do a couple of things. This is a block grant, so it can be very flexible. You can use it to take a look at your state, find out what resources you already have, look at your climate, look at your housing stock, the needs of your specific population within your state, and then design a program that can meet the needs that you have in your state. The first two are what most people associate with LIHEAP as being, they're basically help paying your utility bill. So we give you some money. We help you to pay your utility bill because it's not affordable to you otherwise. The last two are things that people know less about. We actually are very good partners with the Department of Energy Weatherization Program and in 48 states, we support energy affordability by installing those energy efficiency measures in houses. So basically, if you get a LIHEAP, if you get help from LIHEAP assistance, cash assistance, we can follow that up with weatherization and that helps make your bill more affordable the next year. Maybe you need less of a handout and we can help more people that way with the crisis assistance. We also provide services that reduce the need for energy assistance and provide education so we can go out into homes and educate them on the best ways to make energy more affordable in their own house. So how can I save energy first? So those of you who work in an office in this room, which I'm gonna assume is most of you, how might you connect with our program? This was typically how I connected with legislators when I ran the LIHEAP and the weatherization programs at the state level. Let's say there's a polar vortex. Remember that? I mean, I know it's beautiful out today, but we did have temperatures that were 50 or 60 degrees lower than what we have outside today just a couple of weeks ago. During that time, if there's someone who is homebound, someone who is a shut-in, elderly, maybe no family, no resources, and they don't know who to turn to because their furnace has stopped working. They know they don't have the resources to repair it or to replace it themselves and they don't know who to call, they don't know who to contact. Sometimes your offices end up getting those phone calls. So they will call you and say, I need help. What programs are in my area? What are you gonna do to help me? LIHEAP should be your first call in those situations. We are one of the few programs that can go in and repair those HVAC and cooling systems and also provide new ones for eligible customers. So back in my days at the state of Ohio when I was a weatherization LIHEAP director, these were the calls that I would get from the legislators. They were the ones picking up the phone, the staffers were calling me saying, I've got a constituent who has this issue, how can you help them? We just completed a survey and we got a lot of data that I decided not to bore you with today, but I did wanna provide you the outcome of that data. So we spent a lot of money on this survey and I thought if we're gonna pay for it, the worst thing we can do is sit up on a shelf and never look at it and that's what happens sometimes to data. So we developed a social media education campaign using the most powerful and impactful statistics that came from that data. So I'm gonna scroll through those pretty quickly and let you see what some of the information that we learned about our customers was. So this first one is just an introduction to what LIHEAP is. This is who we are, this is what those acronym, this is what the letters L-I-H-E-A-P stand for and this is what we do. We help our neighbors stay safe and warm in their homes. This next one is something that makes you think. So one in three households helped by LIHEAP has at least one child younger than age 18 and now I want you to consider when they go home at night and have to do their homework and they have no electricity, they're doing their homework in the dark. So LIHEAP is one of the programs that helps keep children from having to do their homework in the dark. This is not just a program, it is about people and these are the people who we help. Nine out of 10 households helped by LIHEAP has at least one elderly person, a child or a person with a disability in the home. That's what we're tasked to do by statute. So by statute, we need to target those most in need and we are doing exactly that. Nine out of 10 people are exactly who we're supposed to be helping. Four out of five households helped by LIHEAP has an annual income below $20,000. This is an interesting slide. We had a big conversation at my level about whether we put in an annual income or if we break that down into monthly income. I don't know if you realize this, but amongst the low income population, the people who are eligible for LIHEAP, they talk about income as in monthly expenses. Monthly, I'm getting a check. What's my monthly income? What are my monthly expenses? Can I make it through this month or am I gonna have too much month at the end of my money? However, those of us in this room probably have an annual salary. We're not targeting the people who are eligible for LIHEAP with this social media campaign. We're targeting you guys. So if you think about income as an annual thing, then we want you to think about their income as an annual number two. One out of three households helped by LIHEAP went without food for at least one day in the past year. And these are people who received LIHEAP and they still reported that they went without food at least one day in the past year. I don't miss very many meals and if I do, my stomach lets me know. But it's really hard for me to consider that someone is making choices not between Starbucks and whether I brew a pot of coffee at home. They're making choices like do I buy my medicine or do I pay my utility bill? Do I buy food or do I heat my home? Which one is it gonna be? Three out of 10 households receiving LIHEAP use their kitchen stove or oven to provide heat. This was one of the very specific detailed questions that we ask folks. It's not a broad statistic, it's a specific statistic because I want you to think about the impact and the consequences, the health and safety consequences of this practice. So what would be wrong with opening up your oven door and turning it on to 400 or a broil and heating your home? It's a fire hazard of course and it's a CO hazard and if you have little children, it's a hazard. But desperate people resort to desperate measures and this is one of the examples of that desperation. I think it paints a very clear picture of what a desperate person would do in this situation. NEWAC is tasked with educating you all, the general public, about these types of issues. So we are gonna be in your neighborhood. On February the 28th, that is called LIHEAP Action Day and people fly in from all over the country. We come in to thank you if you support our program and we come in to make sure that you know what LIHEAP stands for and why it's important. We have nonprofits, we even have some customers who come in with their stories. So you might have already been contacted by us to set up a meeting and I look forward to talking to you guys all again very soon when everyone is here later this month. Some examples of how we promote LIHEAP at the very local level. We provided these coloring sheets that you see in the middle of the board to our local nonprofit providers and it just said, draw a picture of your house. So the children colored pictures of their houses and in some cases they sent those to your offices with little thank you notes. And in other cases, oh God, wrap up, okay. And in other cases they put them on a bulletin board and educated their community with those. On my left, your right hand side are postcards. So we also had a postcard project where people who received LIHEAP they would write a little thank you card or they would write a card about how would it help them and then they mailed those all to your DC offices. So if you see postcards like this in your mailbox it's because someone was really helped by this program and cared enough to sit down and take five minutes to say thank you for supporting it. So who we help, the elderly, veterans, the disabled. And if you squint and look really hard at the person on this side of the screen, that's actually me and my two kids who are moderately behaving in this photo. I am a customer who was helped by LIHEAP. Anybody can have a really bad year or two. It could be a health crisis or it can be divorce or I mean there's any number of things that can happen to any of us. And put us in a situation where we need this kind of help and in my case it was all of those things, divorce, health crisis, loss of job, all in the same year. When we need that help it's nice to know that there's a safety net there to catch us and LIHEAP is such an important part of that safety net. This slide is in every presentation that I do. It's actually a picture of a thank you note from a child in Ohio that's hanging on the wall in my office. It's traveled with me around to all my different jobs and I know it's probably hard to read it but it says thanks for keeping us warm in the winter. I'm thankful for everything you're doing for us. We would be cold. So on days when I have a really terrible day and I feel very overwhelmed by all of the things, the fires I have to put out and the things that I have to do, this reminds me that what we do matters to the people who are being helped by LIHEAP. So with that, I will turn it over to the next speaker. Thank you, Katrina, that was really amazing. And you can see the great work that the LIHEAP program is doing and it's not enough to meet the needs. And so we still need more support for programs like LIHEAP and the Weatherization Assistance Program. And remember that number, 1667, and think about the many people who are at 1667, maybe some slightly above, many others actually below. And so when we're thinking about crafting policy, when we're thinking about how these things impact people, think about those people who are at 1667 and what this means for them. It's just so important. Thank you. And Michael, I'm sorry, but you have to follow that. So I'm sure you'll do fine. Our next speaker is Michael Furze. And he joined the Department of Commerce back in 2014 as an Assistant Director for the Energy Division, which includes policy, initiatives, energy, emergency management, and the Weatherization Program. Michael joined the Weatherization Network in 2009, drawn by the convergence of social justice and environmental sustainability to that cause. After working for five years in New Mexico's Energy Smart Program, he transitioned to Washington's Weatherization Program in 2014 and has been actively involved in the Weatherization Network's Weatherization Advisory Committee. Michael has earned a Master's Degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of New Mexico. Let's welcome Michael. Thanks for having me here. Thanks for that introduction and for letting the foundation for me to talk about how in Washington State we ground what our national programs that reach into people's lives and help them out. The Department of Commerce is Washington's Swiss Army Knife for communities. We do economic development and community development work. And if a community has a challenge, we have a program or a tool or technical assistance that can help them out. In a lot of cases, that technical assistance is around strengthening communities and what that means is strengthening families. And the Weatherization Plus Health Program that we administer is just one of those. I'd like for you to bring into your mind one of your stereotypes of the Pacific Northwest. It's gray, it's cold, it's rainy. And I wanna tell you about the Think Bonner family. It's a home that we helped through the Weatherization Plus Health Program. The husband works in the commercial fishing industry on the Lummi Nation. And he's fortunate enough to be able to afford a three bedroom house for his family. Built in 1930, it's about 1,400 square feet. On a typical cold day, not like today when they're gonna get 12 inches of snow, it's cool, it's drafty, it's gray and overcast. It feels really claustrophobic when you're inside. And in that home, there's plumbing leaks in the bathroom. It's really damp in the basement. Fire's going on a wood stove and it's not properly ventilating. So you get that taste of wood smoke when you walk around the house. It's cold and it's drafty. There's no insulation and there are leaks in the ventilation system that they do have. There are 11 people living in this home. One of the seniors has COPD and one of the children has a respiratory condition. The quote that they offered us when they were telling us their story is before our home was weatherized, it was very drafty and cold. The electric bills were nearly $700 a month in the winter and they couldn't afford the repairs to fix their house. And so we collaborated local community action agency, the Opportunity Council, which is in the northwest part of Washington. They worked with tribal authorities using some of their funds and some of our weatherization dollars to go in and do the assessment that Eric talked about, figure out what they could do in that house through the weatherization program, kind of the basic measures. They're to look at insulation and add a Douglas heat pump to install air sealing measures and to make the house tighter. And then they used our weatherization plus health measures to fix the moisture problems, to remove old multi-carpet and do a major roof repair and make the upgrades that allowed the family to live more comfortably in that space. What they said after the work was over was that they felt much cozier in their home. They no longer have a heat source that isn't a fire danger. The roof, bathrooms, the basement are free of water leaks. They don't get colds as often and they feel much healthier and their electric bills are about half of what they were paying before. And given the numbers that Katrina showed, you can get a sense of what that type of reduction in energy burden does for a family that's working to make ends meet. I also wanna tell you about the Osborne family. They're from Snohomish County, which has given us Boeing and the airplane that flew me out here a couple of days ago. And the Osborne's bought a house that was built in 1901. Two bedrooms, single family home for their expanding household. The mother in that household, well, there's a young child and she was pregnant. And I just wanna talk about the difference pre-weatherization plus health and post-weatherization plus health to give you a sense of what the effect can be. During her first pregnancy, she had three to four visits to urgent care to take care of her asthma. She was constantly sick and her husband had to stay home from work in order to take care of her. So again, thinking back to the number of 1666, what the effect of staying home from work does to the monthly finances of that family. And so we were able to partner with the Snohomish County, the local government, that's our cap agency, and they provided a whole suite of measures and education to go along with the measures that we install in the home. As a result, in her second pregnancy, no urgent care, not sick, and the husband did not have to take off time of work. So really a significant transition from one experience to the other. Really interesting thing that the weatherization program does when it goes into a home is provide education. And in the weatherization plus health program, when we get into a really innovative space, we can do it around the specific health conditions of that family. And what we found was that in this case, the household really learned the importance of having a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter, really fine particulates getting out of the air that they're breathing. And using that on a more regular basis helped them stay healthier. Those are just an example of the 300 folks that we've helped in Washington State with our weatherization plus health pilot program. And now I'll war you with the details of the program design. And as some of you may know, I think Eric alluded to this, there's the energy benefits and the non-energy benefits. And the recent research is showing that a lot of these non-energy benefits, we can just go ahead and call health benefits because that's what they really are. And what we're looking to do is to try and take advantage of those health benefits to build on the energy efficiency savings that the program already offers. And it's tricky, quantifying these is a little bit more difficult than measuring kilowatt hours saved and bill reductions. But it's really important to do that. Washington State has been doing this work in weatherization plus health for a while. The opportunity council that I mentioned previously has been a leader in this since the late 90s. King County Housing Authority outside of Seattle has also been doing some of this work. And we are able to elevate it to the national level working with NASCASP back during the Recovery Act. The two pilot programs that I mentioned really helped educate legislators. In 2015, we had a legislature, a legislator who was our champion that took the state funding that we have for the weatherization program and expanded eligible uses to allow us to go more directly after weatherization plus health measures. They gave us additional funding to do that work. The program typically spends about 20 to $25 million a year from five funding sources. And we got five additional dollars to try this weatherization plus health pilot. The graphic on the left shows two phases of that. One is kind of a basic approach to give everybody the opportunity to do more measures and do different measures. And the one in the middle there really tried to go after a more collaborative approach with community health centers to really provide a more holistic connection to those communities. And really the idea is synthesis to take the weatherization program, those services along with health services and social services and to bring them to bear at the families that need them the most. And so it's a little bit different than what we've been doing previously. So it's taken some time to get the collaboration right to develop specific approaches for specific communities that allow us to bring the right households in and get them the right suite of services. And then again, it's a longer term project to identify and track a long-term health benefits of this program. But again, this is the right work to do to be able to demonstrate those non-energy slash health benefits. This is a difficult to read slide that shows the comparison of the basic weatherization measures that are on the bottom that our program builds off of and some of the new measures that we go after in weatherization plus health. Think of things that reduce moisture, that reduce slips, trips and falls that can be customized and targeted for folks that have got COPD or asthma. And really we're just giving people a suite to pick and choose the exact set of services that the household needs. And this is kind of how we stack the services. There's the traditional weatherization approach. We're providing at least basic education both about energy use and about health benefits. When we're partnering with community health workers, we can tailor that to specific households and specific individuals. And then we're providing folks tools so they continue to live healthier in their home that's received services. Eric mentioned leveraging. And this slide is just to give you a sense of how complicated it is to bring different funding sources each with slightly different eligibility requirements to bear to provide these services. As you heard from Katrina and Eric, weatherization and LIHEAP generally play really nicely together. We also get funding from utilities. We get funding from the Bonneville Power Administration. We get money from the state. And they each do something slightly different. And we had to use all the flexibility that we had in order to get houses the right types of services. Good sign, initial results are promising. What we found is that through the education process and through the immediate effects that people are seeing when we do the health upgrades that they're taking action. Folks are seeing improvement in their ability to control the respiration. And what was really heartening to me is that 70% of the participants talked about reporting higher quality of life. So it's nice to know that we're really delivering for the customers that we're seeing. 43 of those customers had fewer doctor's visits, meaning that they could go to work and had additional money in their pocket to make their ends meet by the end of the month. So as I said, this is a pilot program when we tried to develop an approach that would stack on the work that we've been doing for 40 plus years in the weatherization program to give more people a chance to do different measures and try to get that work done correctly in a home. It takes a little bit of time to learn how to do something new. And then we call that the weatherization plus health 1.0. And then we had five community action agencies that kind of stepped into the 2.0 weatherization plus health space. And that's trying to develop an innovative partnership where you're working with the community health workers to identify specific families, customize your education and the measures that they received to treat their specific illness more directly. And we think that while it's a lot harder to do that work because you're bringing two completely different universes together, that's where we're gonna be able to find significant benefits, in addition to just opening up the suite of measures to folks across the state. Big question, every state's different. Can you do this in your state or in your district? And the answer is yes, if you have the right framework, the right strategic vision and you have folks that are willing to try something new. It's that drive to do something different, to treat people in a different way that sparked interest in the Northwest to do this weatherization plus health work. We also benefit by having pioneers that were ready to step forward and try and make this work on the ground to deliver the benefit. And we've had leadership at all levels. It's been helpful to have support from the governor's office, from legislators and representatives to do this work and then from community leaders through the CAP agency that wanna again try something new. Flexible funding I think is the real key. If I didn't state it explicitly, what makes this program work is the state capital dollars that we've got. That's what enabled us to do the pilot program. What we're working on now is collaborating with the LIHEAP office to expand the use of those funds to more directly go after weatherization plus health measures. We continue to receive funding for weatherization plus health from the state of Washington. Appreciate that. We'll see what else we can do with LIHEAP funding. And what we'll be doing in the next two years is expanding the number of local agencies that are delivering that weatherization 1.0 level of service and then trying to find those partners who have strong community health programs in their communities that are willing to take on that weatherization 2.0 approach. Here's a list of references that'll be available in the slide deck. Thank you very much. Thanks, Michael. That was a really great job following that up. You didn't blink at all. Well, thank you. I mean, that was, I think, you know, just again, a really great overview of how against stabilizing housing can provide so many other benefits. And again, starting with an intervention in energy costs and the energy matrix within the home and what the other benefits, you know, then can bring. And so now with the time that we have left, we really wanna open it up to you and the audience. I'm sure that there are many questions. The one thing that I do ask is that you can tell us who you are and who you're working with, whether it's here on the Hill or one of our partner organizations that you're here representing. So please, if you can just, when you stand, tell us who you are and who you're working with so we can keep a good counting. Yes. So the short answer to how it works is it's a challenge. So HIPAA, which is in place for a reason, really complicates the nature of the relationship between the community health workers and the Weatherization Assistance Program. And it led to kind of fits and starts in this process. We've been working with Washington State University's Energy Program to track the savings in terms, in the, track the medical savings over time. And I think part of the problem is that we're sort of new in this process and it takes time for those cost savings to ripple out. So we're working through the challenges of HIPAA compliance with families, with the community health workers and trying to study that over the long term. The short-term answer is that we're waiting for that data to come in and trying to find ways to access it. Hi, my name is Chloe Grimwood. I'm with the National Council of State Housing Agencies. Ellen's predecessor. I was wondering, question for Katrina. I was wondering how is LIHEAP, similarly to how the low-income housing tax credits they go by state, state. How is LIHEAP allocated? Is it really warm climates, really cold climates? Is it based on population size? How is that determined? Yeah, there's a formula that sees to allocate funding from the federal level to the state level and it takes into account the number of eligible folks who are in that particular state climate. So it's renewed every year. They look at the most recent data that they have on all of those many factors. They put that together into a big pot, mix it up, and distribute funding to the states based on that. Generally, you'll see more funding go to the northeast where it's colder and less funding go to the south. But the formula, I could sit here and talk for probably six hours on it. So, but there's a new formula. So as we grow in funding, more money is funneled to the southern states where there's a really, a really huge need. So for example, Mississippi Delta is the poorest area of our country. They get more money when we have higher funding levels for LIHEAP. I'll just quickly echo that with weatherization. It's almost exactly the same way on the weatherization side. The formula is dependent upon climate, low income population, and then it's the same way that once the appropriation reaches a higher level, there's a trigger that alters the formula slightly to give those warm weather climate states more funding. And something to note about weatherization and LIHEAP is they kind of have this reputation as heating programs, cold weather programs, but they both provide a lot of help on the cooling side as well and some of those electric savings are even higher in the southeast and in the warm weather climate. So there's a lot of savings to be had in the cooling base load as well. And the question is for any of you and that is if you could speculate on how climate change may be affecting these specific programs or perhaps? I'll touch on this a little bit. I think that when you think about climate change, what comes to mind first for me is resiliency and that when our climate is changing, it's the vulnerable families served by these programs that stand the most to lose that are most at risk from the negative impacts of climate change. And so when you talk about a severe weather event like a hurricane or a snowstorm or a heat wave, it's probably a WAP client home, an inefficient home that's putting the most stress on the power grid, that's putting the most stress on the reliability of the power grid. So I think that weatherization at least has a potential to serve a real role in terms of resiliency and reliability when you're thinking about climate change. I agree with everything that Eric said and I will add that the populations who are served by our programs are living in the worst housing stock in our country. So when you think about leaky windows and leaky homes, big, drafty houses, multi-family housing, that's where they're living and they are served, they're served better by our programs and also they have, I think what you said was they have the most to lose. They have the most to lose by living in that particular housing stock and they're the most in need. Thank you. What I would add are two thoughts. One is thinking about the fires that we've had in the Pacific Northwest and leaky homes and folks with asthma. Normal recommendations is to stay indoors and even if the house can't protect you, then you're helped us compromise that much more. So that's something to think about. The other thing that I'm seeing, in addition to managing the weatherization program, I also help lead the team that is a part of our state energy office and so there's a conversation that's happening that's different as a result of climate change where more environmental justice stakeholders are coming to the table and wanting to better understand how the programs work and how they can deliver benefits to their communities. And so what that means is that the dialogue's not over and we'll be learning more about how to better do that in the coming years. Oh, thanks. I was just gonna add very briefly from the housing assistance side of things, just that properties with federal, either rental assistance or low-income housing tax credits have to be held to very high standards for construction and renovation. So they would tend to be, for example, we were looking at after the hurricane in Florida a year or so ago, there were some properties with low-income housing tax credits that were the only properties standing in an area where everything else was devastated. So because they have federal assistance are held to a high construction and rehab standard, that doesn't mean that they don't need to really focus on resilience and all of the things that have previously been said. But when we've seen so many people lose their homes or be low-income people to be disproportionately impacted by climate change, you know, catastrophic events, it just points to the need for the federal government to invest in affordable housing because it does give them good quality housing. And one thing I didn't mention, which I regret in my presentation is that federal government only provides enough rental assistance for one in four Americans that are eligible for it. So three quarters of the low-income people who could qualify, whether it's project-based assistance or vouchers, which I didn't talk about today, but it's another huge program, 75% of those people are not being served. And then when you have catastrophic weather events because of climate change, those people are most directly going to be impacted because they're not in housing that's been held to this higher standard. And then... Thomas from Senator Sanders' office. I guess my question is just, first of all, thank you for the awesome panel, but my question is, you know, what approaches have you found effective dealing with rural versus urban populations, I guess is for all of you? And kind of how, what have you learned from kind of dealing with this issue in rural versus urban population? From a weatherization perspective, there are some challenges in rural areas in the sense of, you know, if the homes you're working on are spread out, there's logistical issues with that. I think that there's some data that would show you that rural homes tend to have some higher instances of substandard housing and lower housing quality. So I think that those are challenges in the rural space, but the weatherization assistance program, as I said, is in every county in the nation, and they do a good chunk of rural housing. And I would say that in a lot of states, it's a majority rural program. You could make that assumption in a lot of states. I think this is an ongoing conversation that we're having with LIHEAP. A number of our clients are homebound or cannot leave their homes to come out and apply. So do we offer an online application? How's that gonna be for those who have, who are visually impaired? How do we offer this program to make sure that it's reaching those who are most in need? What we have found is that the best way to do that is not to expect those folks to come to you, but to bring the application and bring the services to them. So you'll see local providers go out into the community to go to the senior center, to go to the head start centers, to go to the places where the customers are, so that we're able to reach them on their turf rather than forcing them to come to an office and stand in line and make an appointment. The traditional way that you think about performing, social services. I'll just add on, and I think I mentioned this on the housing side. So there's project-based rental assistance in every kind of community and quite a bit in rural areas. There's also USDA rental assistance programs and housing programs, which I didn't touch on today, but happy to help anyone who wants more information about those programs. A lot of times in rural areas, we find that the subsidized rental housing is the only rental housing that's available. So that's why preserving it is so important, because if you lose that individual affordable property, there will literally be no place else for those folks to go. And then just to reiterate again on the low-income housing tax credit program, because it is allocated by the states, the states are gonna be focused on the state housing finance agencies that allocate the credit, focus on what the needs are. So for example, in Vermont, I knew they do a great job of evaluating the rural needs of their constituents and make sure that the housing is targeted towards that. And that's gonna vary state to state, but there is definitely a focus on using the housing credit in rural areas to meet those housing needs where it's appropriate. Hi, Noreen Beatley. I'm with the International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology. I don't remember, I guess. And I have two questions, actually. One is, what's a percentage of multifamily housing that are helped by these programs versus single family? And then the second one, especially in relation to multifamily, Michael, your program in Washington State is great, but how do you deal or have you had to deal with the split incentive that the health benefits generally are attributed to the residents versus the property owners because the property owners do get benefit from the energy savings. As Eric said, it's a dollar for dollar, but if you add the health in, there's no benefit to the property owner. So I think that the approach that we're taking to the split incentive with regard to the energy efficiency, to the Weatherization Plus Health program is similar to the one that the regular weatherization program would take, that it's outreach education, and we're relying on the Community Action Agency to know their community and to work with, in the case of multifamily properties, landlords to bring them into the program, help sell them on the benefits of the program and move forward. Where the Weatherization Plus Health program is in terms of its pilot phase, I don't know the split off the top of my head, but my sense is that the multifamily properties would be a significantly small portion of the work that's going on there. And so it's something that we'll have to take on more directly as we expand the program in the next couple of years. So I think more to come is the short answer for that question. Maybe a follow-up to that. My name's Whit Faulkner. I work for the JPV Foundation. When you're doing your long-term planning, these organizations, and the work that you're doing, you've already sort of alluded to kind of a moving target, and we're already at only one and four being able to be served. What's the, even in round numbers, as you've got intense weather, shortening, building, life cycle? None of us are getting any younger. By the day, buildings are aging. How do you make your long-term plans, and what does that look like in terms of the demographic that suddenly, I get a sense that it's increasing demographic that qualifies for these programs, or is it more level? So I guess I'll tackle that one, or I'll give it a shot. In the grant-funded world, we do tend to think from year to year. At any given time, the funding is not guaranteed. It could always go away. The administration has actually zeroed outlight heat for the past two years. And then Congress has been kind enough to reinstate funding because they understand how important it is to their constituents. But we don't think ahead too far in the grant-funded world. When making plans, for light heat, if it's actually one in five, we can serve one in five of those who are eligible. And it's really difficult. So the study that I alluded to when I was giving my speech, that helps us, we get some depth of knowledge about who's in need and what kind of needs that they have. So that kind of research really helps us to identify a number, a dollar figure, that we need in order to support the folks that are in the program. But you also have to take into context the current political environment. So all of those things kind of factor together. And we rely on the expertise and the thoughts of our membership on where they think we need to go. I'll note on the weatherization side, the weatherization grants are three years you have to spend out the fund. So there is some longer term planning that goes into it. In terms of need, it really depends on what community you're in. There are some communities where every weatherization agency has long waiting lists and there's other communities where that's not the case because poverty is uneven across the country and these housing conditions are uneven across the country. But there is a lot of latitude at the state level in terms of how you meet your state's needs and allocate those fundings to your local provider. So there is a lot of planning and the sense of goes into of maybe this weatherization agency was serving this area but the population has changed. It's more of a suburban area now. And so there is flexibility in your state planning. Every year the state grantee has to submit a state plan to the Department of Energy. And so there's a really opportunity there for states to tailor and respond to changing needs in the state. One thing that the low income weatherization program allows at the federal level is something, it's like a line item called leveraging. And it was something I wasn't really familiar with when I was in New Mexico but in Washington state there's been an organization called The Energy Project that's been working since the early 1990s to build relationships through the CAP network and with utilities and kind of partner with community action agencies and sort of what they have done is increase the amount of money that's going to the CAPs to provide services and expanded the type of services that they could do. One of the things that was really shocking for me coming up to the Northwest was how much utilities, which I typically think of as wanting to reduce kilowatt hours, they would allow significant percentages for repairs in order to make those energy efficiency upgrades. And so that is an investment in time energy and relationships that's been almost 30 years. And it's that type of collaboration that's gonna bring resources together that allows us to serve more people. I'm not sure that there's an expectation that we would be able to serve everyone. Last time I did that math was when the Department of Energy pulled together a group of folks to think about weatherization in terms of a moon shot similar to what Governor Inslee thinks about when he wrote Apollo's Fire. How would we do this if it's a space program? My recollection is a little foggy but I think it was $5 billion a year for a few decades would get us to a place where we could solve most of the problem discounting the fact that this population tends to move around a bit and you could never actually get to zero. I would just wanna try to answer that question in terms of basic federal housing programs and assistance. It's really hard, right? So we have, as I just mentioned, only one in four eligible Americans that need some kind of rental assistance get any. There hasn't been frankly political will in Congress to provide anything more than just renewing the existing long-term project-based rental assistance contracts that exists. There has been no new construction that gets allocated a new project-based rental assistance contract in many years. We have been fighting to just hold on to the level of funding that's needed to continue these long-term contracts that owners have agreed to and to preserve the properties that are currently assisted. And as I noted, even the cost of that is increasing as rents go up. So it's really hard and I think, certainly for the trust, we've been trying to just do as much education as we can and we're excited about working with members of Congress to help people better. And this event is a perfect example of that, to help people better understand what is federal housing assistance? Why is it important? Who are these people that are being served? We've also led a project called Where Will We Live? Which provides stories of individual residents, all the different kinds of people who have directly benefited from housing assistance, whether it's single mothers or elderly people, people with disabilities, people who've had health crises that need help as Katrina so articulately described that things happen in people's lives and they may need go through a period of time where they need some help so that folks will, in the general public and especially in Congress, will better understand why housing assistance is so important, especially in the last few years when we've seen housing prices go up so much and incomes not necessarily keep up with that. And then just in terms of long-term planning with the low income housing tax credit, again, the states do a very meticulous job of trying to evaluate what their needs are and project ahead. And I will just circle back to preservation because one thing we know for sure is we cannot afford to lose any assisted housing because the need is growing and growing. We are not currently meeting the needs and it's just gonna become more so. So we are really focused on preservation of what we already have, which also happens to be the most energy efficient way to provide affordable housing because it's, I think, one half to two thirds the cost to preserve something as it is to build a new building, so. Thank you. Right here. Thomas Horner with Water Management in the early 80s, HUD's budget for utility reimbursement, water and sewer costs were less than 6%. I believe last year it was 34% and 40% of the community is the largest utility expense. Is there any movement to combine anything more than shower heads and air radars into your program? Speaking of needing new windows, it's the wind is whistling through the windows here if you can't hear it. I think it's a great question. There was a pilot program that was authorized during the Obama administration called the Pay for Success Program that was trying to incentivize owners of privately owned properties with HUD subsidies to go further with their, and experiment with ways to save on energy costs. To be honest, I don't believe it's been fully implemented and it was just at the point of implementation when we got a new administration. So I think that is a little bit on hold. I know that there've been a lot of discussions with HUD and also on the low income housing tax credit side to look at how and a lot of investment, especially with properties with low income housing tax credits in energy efficiency because of the long term saving benefit. But it's hard. You are dealing with multiple layers of government and I think we have a long way to go. I'll also take a stab at this. This is an ongoing conversation amongst our membership as well, folks who can't afford water. LIHEAP can't help those folks with that particular utility. What do we do about it? A couple of years ago, we hosted a water summit. In a lot of the cases are grassroots nonprofits that are members of NEWAC. They're called Fuel Funds. They're being asked to come to the table with funding for water affordability and so they started talking to one another through our organization about how each of them are doing this and we realized that this is a conversation we need to have. What we've seen is that there are some of them putting a bandaid on the problem. For example, in Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, the community action agency bought a trailer full of showers and parked it outside of an elementary school so that the children could shower before they come to school because so many in the community had no water. Yeah, that works on a short-term basis but how long-term we're preventing those things from happening and helping those folks out has been the topic of conversation that we're having where this energy water nexus and where it meets and what we can do about it. So the Fuel Funds have managed to create sources and resources in some cases for the folks in their neighborhood that are experiencing those kinds of things but I feel like it's a problem that's not, there's no solution for it yet. We're still talking about that solution and trying to figure it out. Halsey Payne with Senator Teem's office. Question for the full panel, just so we get the numbers. I can jump in first. So in the United States, there are 28 million plus folks who are eligible for LIHEAP and we serve just less than 5.9 million. So that's where we're at today. Those numbers are from 2018 so they're the most recent that we have available. Fuel prices are the trends that we watch as far as our program goes to determine what the need might be in the future. It's a little bit like shaking up one of those magic eight balls and seeing what comes up. It's really hard to predict. We keep an eye on what's happening there and the Northeast fuel oil prices are very much up. I think they were predicting twice as much as last year so that's a real concern. Natural gas is flat and then also electricity is up. So we take a look at each of those things and we know where LIHEAP dollars are going to go the furthest and we also know when we're gonna need more. Overall, I would say that, again, with flat funding and prices rising with the same amount of funding, we can't help as many people. So it's really hard to explain that sometimes to the legislature, for example, because they see that our numbers are going down while your numbers are going down. Well, because we don't have enough funding to serve all of those people well. But those are the trends that we keep an eye on. I'm gonna have to follow up with you about the number that could potentially be served because I don't have that number off the top of my head, but for project-based rental assistance, it's 1.2 million currently served and for the low income housing tax credit, 6.7 million have been served and I would have to double check to see if that is currently or over time. But there is data on the number of eligible folks that would meet the income targets and I'd be happy to follow up with you afterwards. For weatherization, it's kind of, in a similar way, it's difficult to get up the number of potential households in need and in terms of income eligibility, it's estimated between 30 and 40 million are just income eligible, meaning 200% of poverty level or below. Not all of those folks are in inefficient housing, so depending upon the housing type who's in need or not, with Department of Energy funding, the program is weatherizing between 35,000, 40,000 homes a year. If you factor in the LIHEAP housing, the number is much higher than that. If you go from HHS, they've served the LIHEAP, probably 65,000 homes in a year, so if you factor in LIHEAP utilities, DOE, you're probably somewhere near 100,000 homes a year that you're serving. But again, the need is greater than we can currently provide. So I just wanna comment a little bit on the trends. The Department of Commerce is fortunate because we have the LIHEAP office, we have the weatherization office, and we have the state energy office all in the same department, so it gives us an opportunity to collaborate and understand the perspectives of the different groups. And some other states may be like that as well, but it's not entirely common. The perspective that you've heard here today is really about serving the individual families and then aggregating that up through the weatherization program and the LIHEAP program. The state energy office through the state energy program funds from the EERE has a much broader, more systemic approach, and so having the three groups together creates an interesting dialogue around what's going on in the clean energy transition? How do you meet the immediate needs of low and moderate income customers that are eligible for these programs? And what's going on in that clean energy transition that's outside of the immediate needs that they need to have served? How do we think about the electrification of the grid, the electrification of our transportation system, and figure out how these communities and the community action agencies that serve them can help these folks benefit in a way that's really critically important? It's an ongoing discussion. One more? Hi, thank you. My name's Liam. I'm with Congresswoman Grace Meggs office. I was wondering, I have a question for Ellen Hoffman. I was wondering, when we are building new low income housing, is there any movement to try and add solar panels or other green energies providing sources so that the energy costs from fuel and the increasing rise in that is mitigated and to decrease the carbon footprint of low income housing? Great, thanks Liam. I'm glad you asked, because the National Housing Trust is trying to do that. We have the, I think the largest, I'm looking at my colleague in the back there, we have the largest solar installation on rental housing in the DC area here, and happy to talk with you more about that. That's slightly off topic, but yes. I mean, I think that the states that allocate housing credits understand the investments in, I mean, of course it varies. Every state is different. The perspective on energy efficiency and renewable energy obviously is going to vary from state to state, but there are some states that have made a really concerted commitment to energy efficiency in low income housing tax credit properties and developments. Renewable energy I'd say is probably on the new frontier. It is very expensive to build affordable housing. As I mentioned earlier about the very high standards that are, and there is quite a bit of oversight for low income housing tax credit properties at the state level, all of those things. And there is the tax credit syndication. There is a lot of legal costs. It's a very expensive process. And so I have not heard about solar panels on housing credit properties. That doesn't mean it's not happening, but I think that we've been trying, the trust and EFA have been trying to make sure that states understand the investment that they make, whether it's in renewable energy or energy efficiency is going to end up paying for itself. The trust has found that by putting solar panels on affordable housing properties, we end up actually generating revenue. We can often defray the costs of utilities so that to really decrease the burden on our residents, but also to enable us to provide more affordability. So we're definitely trying to educate states about that, but they're also challenged with the upfront costs of putting it in and have to really figure out how, because it's a 30 year program. And the development costs have limits on the most states set development costs for themselves. So if it's going to be more expensive to put solar panels on, that's a barrier for them. Just to give you some context from Washington State, we administer a state housing trust fund that leverages with our Housing Finance Commission that administers a low income housing tax credit. And again, because of the policy work that the State Energy Office does, we've been able to partner with our folks that do administer the housing trust fund in our agency. We have what I believe is the most unfortunate acronym for any program in the state that builds on their really strong green building policy. It's called UHE, it's for ultra high energy efficient housing. And the idea is to get the housing as efficient as possible, and then there's a consideration of whether you add enough solar to make it net zero. And that's always sort of a cost and size of roof and shading type of discussion. So we're trying to push those boundaries where it makes sense to do so. I have just a little something to talk about with low income solar. Community solar is a big movement and I can fully support that. I think that I've seen some projects that are really doing good work in helping to lower energy burden, particularly for all electric homes where we go in and maybe we weatherize and we get it as tight as we can, but their bills are still unaffordable. Adding a community solar element makes a lot of sense and can really help those families. However, I really don't wanna see someone install solar panel on a roof that is falling in. It's kind of like feeding caviar to someone who is starving. So I do think it's important to pick the right homes and to be very thoughtful about how we implement solar with low income communities and make sure that we're actually benefiting them and not strapping them with a resource that they then have to, they can't maintain. Yes. I'll just echo that really quickly. I mean, the Department of Energy has put out some guidance or a pathway of how you could incorporate solar into the realization program. As Katrina said, there are some challenges in the low income sector there, but there is some early success in states like Colorado, Oregon, but I think, as Alan said, it's gonna be really key what are the rules and the framework in that state and in Colorado, for example, it's really made possible by the rebates from utilities for solar, so it's a complicated front. Okay, yes. Let's thank our panel one more time. Thank you.