 So welcome everyone to tonight's panel housing policy is climate policy as part of Arlington's eco week or eco weeks as it were. Tonight we will draw connections between the important themes of housing access and choice greenhouse gas reduction and climate resilience, public health and more. And my name is Talia Fox. I am the sustainability manager for the town of Arlington. Thank you for tuning in. We will be recording tonight's panel and posting slides in the coming days. And we invite you to share questions in the Q&A function and using platform during the webinar. We will do our best to answer those questions either in written form or verbally during our public question and answer session. And we thank you for your patience as we try to address all your questions. So we'll begin tonight with a brief introduction to planning for housing and climate in Arlington from myself and the director of planning and community development, Jennifer Raitt. I'll then hand it over to Brucie Moulton, co-chair of Sustainable Arlington to introduce everyone to our amazing panelists. And then we'll hear some presentations from those panelists, and we'll have some time finally for a moderated question and answer session, making sure to get everyone out into the beautiful evening by 8.30 if not a bit beforehand. So with that, I'll hand it over to Jenny, and Jenny will kick us off with an overview of how we approach planning and housing, planning around housing and climate here in Arlington. Thanks Jenny. Thanks Talia. You're going to advance the slide. Yes. Great. So thank you everybody for attending this evening. As Talia said, I'm Jenny Raitt. I'm the director of planning and community development for the town. And I'm going to talk about the intersection of housing and climate. What we're doing here in Arlington so next slide please. So what is Arlington's approach. We have a lot of approaches when it comes to climate change and resiliency and adaptation. There are two primary goals that we follow when it comes to thinking about those two issues. The first one is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Those are the pollutants that cause climate change. And the second is to adapt to and mitigate and to mitigate climate change impacts, which means that we need to change the way we do things and sometimes modify sort of some of the existing conditions. The housing approach that we've taken is about enhancing the availability and the affordability of housing throughout the community and to eliminate structural barriers to housing choice. We see these two areas of practice in climate resiliency and adaptation and housing as having quite an intersection in how we approach our work in the community. And we're always thinking about ways to bring in different committees and boards and commissions who are working on both housing as well as climate topics in the community, which is why we wanted to work in collaboration with sustainable Arlington on this particular event. Next slide. And we have a number of plans that are part of the sort of force behind the work that we do. It actually, it's not listed here, but sustainable Arlington created a sustainable plan for Arlington many decades ago and was really the wonderful plan that much of it was implemented and including a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. More recently, though, we adopted a net zero action plan for the community based upon the goals set by the select board to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to become net zero by 2050. And with that in mind, it meant that other planning initiatives needed to follow that suit. So the next one is connect Arlington. And this is our sustainable transportation plan, which is about equity and multimodal opportunities in the community for access, and it's really about centering equity and creating options for people to get in and around Arlington but also beyond Arlington so not just on, of course, vehicles we want to have vehicle reduction vehicle miles traveled reduced, but also thinking about transit opportunities like bus access and access to the T, and then also bike facilities and pedestrian facilities to make things more comfortable for people to get around Arlington. And then the last two plans have an intersection about affordable housing and fair housing. The fair housing action plan is really a plan that sets forth equity and centers fairness in all of our practices, not just housing, but an access to housing choice, but also in where we're locating housing and opportunities for people to access other amenities in our community. The housing production plan which was recently fully adopted by the select board and redevelopment board also has a number of policies that are really key to centering both housing and access to opportunities in the community. Next slide. And these key plans are the roadmap so the first of them as I mentioned that the net zero action plan that's the roadmap to reduce our greenhouse gas emission connect Arlington the strategies to provide safe reliable multimodal transportation network that meets the needs of all people of all ages and and the fair housing action plan, bringing all of this together with actions to achieve equitable access to housing choice and to eliminate housing discrimination and residential segregation. And lastly the housing plan, which provides us with a full suite of strategies to increase both the supply of affordable housing in all neighborhoods, and more broadly look at the housing opportunities in the community. And now I'm going to hand it over to you Talia so that you can walk us through talking about some of those layers of how these plans intersect. Thank you. Thanks Jenny. So a key goal of the webinar today is to draw connections in the areas of housing and climate. So the plans that Jenny just introduced work together to promote shared themes as she was starting to get at, including equity and environmental justice, mobility, affordability, efficiency, increased choice and public health, as well as resilience. And I'll speak to just a few of these things as they appear in Arlington's plans. So we know that climate change disproportionately impacts communities of color and low impact community low income communities, and that the quality and location of housing are environmental justice issues. So the development of all four of these plans and the actions in them centered equity and environmental justice. For example, the Fair Housing Action Plan is rooted in the concept of affirmatively furthering fair housing, which per the Department of Housing and Urban Development means taking steps proactively to address significant disparities and access to community assets. So this connects to issues of access to healthy environments, food, essential services and transportation options. And related to this last point about transportation options, all four plans promote mobility and accessibility, the ability for residents and visitors of all needs to get where they need to go, using forms of transportation that are reliable and safe, affordable and convenient. The Housing Production Plan in particular has a key strategy of targeting new housing to areas that can take advantage of transit walking and biking. And this takes this strategy works in tandem with the other plan strategies to reduce reliance on private vehicles by providing more options to carpool, bike, walk and take transit. And that makes it possible to choose and making it possible to choose housing in locations that have these options. That's really critical. And the way that we make it possible for people to choose housing options and housing that is accessible that has a variety of transportation options is by making it more affordable. So many residents in Arlington face high housing costs, and when you add transportation costs on that and then energy costs on top of that it really adds up as we all know. And as the Connect Arlington plan notes, not every individual or household wants to or can afford to own a car or more than one car. And at the same time we really have to be mindful of ensuring that more affordable alternative forms of transportation, which are often the ones that use less energy, right and a miss a bit less pollution are convenient and accessible for people. So these plans all work to address all these intersecting issues that impact affordability. Again, this is not, these are not the only themes intersecting these plans but this is the last one I'll speak to. But if we figure out how to use less energy, drive alone less, we can probably save money. As the net zero action plan notes making homes and building super efficient will help us reduce emissions and make energy bills more affordable. And all of the plans here work to do more with the resources that we already have. For example, getting folks to use public transit that exists and reduce existing reuse existing materials and buildings, promote affordability accessibility and mobility at the same time. So, with that, I will turn it back over to Jenny to close out our introductory portion here and then hand it over to Brucey to kick off our panel. And I'm very quick summary, before I hand it over to Brucey is just to thank you Talia for walking us through the shared themes and there's much more that we'll discuss along the way after we hear from our other panelists and just looking forward to illustrating for residents in the community and others who are listening. Just how much intersection there is between housing policy and climate policy and we're going to hear a lot of examples of that as we get into this program tonight. So thank you, Brucey. Can't hear you yet. Thank you, Jenny, and good evening. My pleasure to be here with you tonight as the moderator and as co-chair of Sustainable Arlington and a longtime resident of our town. I want to say two words first about relationship between housing and climate change. One home by itself doesn't have much to do with climate change. All of our homes together do how we locate, design, build, maintain and operate our homes are all factors that relate to increased global warming. The climate crisis is here, not often some distant future. And we are feeling its effects here, not only reading about them happening in some distant place. And that means that many things and ways of doing that we have taken for granted, no longer service well. And that includes things that we have done about housing for a long long time. It applies to housing, transportation and other forms of resource consumption. But there is still good news, we know how to do better as we will hear from tonight's panelists. We can reduce housing impacts on climate while also improving housing affordability and access. And the future will not look exactly like the past. We know that if there will be changes, we have to make them by exploring the options and working together. We have good opportunities to achieve better outcomes. Jenny mentioned something about sustainable Arlington's role in the town over the last 20 plus years. In addition to helping to develop the first Arlington Sustainable Action Plan, we also ran the Solarize Arlington program in 2012. 157 contracts signed and solar panels installed. That was a start. We participated and help run the HeatSmart 2019 collaboration between Arlington and the town of Winchester with many installations of air source heat pumps, solar hot water and even some ground source heat pumps for individual homes. We take a serious approach to education. We want to share what we've learned about resource use, efficiency, new forms of heating and cooling and renewable energy with other Arlington residents. We have done that through EcoFest, which used to be an annual event at Town Hall pre-COVID, and is now morphed into a new program EcoWeek, of which this is art. And we do it through collaboration with Arlington Community Education, which has been a very fruitful approach, wonderful way to reach more members of the community and have more voices heard. So let's start learning together this evening. I want to briefly introduce the panel to you. We're very fortunate to have our four guests. We have Emily Jones, Senior Program Officer with Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and that word support is key to what she does. She works to bring together experts to provide relevant trainings to support owners, property managers and other stakeholders to help them complete energy efficiency and clean energy projects. Focusing in particular on affordable housing sectors. Also, Lauren Bowman, Vice President at New Ecology. Lauren has 15 years plus experience in providing green building and building science advisory services. And that building science term is critical because buildings are very particular combinations of structure and mechanical systems and local environmental conditions. And building science can help us design new buildings and retrofit existing buildings to be as efficient in terms of resource use as possible. Next, I'd like to mention Zoe Wyemode, Director of Real Estate Development for Two Life Communities. Zoe brings over 20 years of experience in the field of affordable housing finance and development, and she has overseen completed projects totaling over $100 million in development costs. Plus, current projects in development worth over $150 million and other potential projects coming up. Finally, Michelle Epidian, Associate Principal of ICON Architecture. Michelle is an architect planner and urban designer who works to design sustainable environments that strengthen communities and celebrate the uniqueness of place. I am particularly interested in her work on the first passive house certified multifamily project in Massachusetts, which as I understand is the one nearby in Cambridge on Concord Avenue. Before dehearing their presentations tonight, they have a lot to tell us about what's possible not only in Arlington, but communities everywhere. And they bring a very hopeful message. And with that, I would like to turn it over to our speakers. Our first speaker tonight will be our first pair of speakers tonight. And we'll be Emily Jones and Lauren Bowman. Thanks so much, Bruce and thanks everyone for having us here this evening. So, so I was asked to kick off the conversation here tonight about housing and decarbonization and climate change to talk a little bit about the landscape that we see as it relates to what's driving housing decarbonization. A little bit more background, the work that we do in building science really focuses very specifically on high performance multifamily housing, and specifically affordable housing. And so, so we're working with developers and owners of multifamily housing across the state to help them design and build as well as retrofit high performance projects and so, you know, we've really seen a bit of a revolution over the last few years in terms of the performance thresholds and standards that these developments are pursuing and achieving. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what we see as driving those changes currently as well as things that we see that are potentially going to be driving changes in the future as well. So to start that conversation I want to talk a little bit about the state level work that's happening. So while while local municipalities definitely led the charge in Massachusetts as it relates to setting emissions targets and goals specifically the net zero goals around 2050 thresholds. What we've seen over the last year is is Massachusetts the Commonwealth kind of catch up with that. We're probably familiar with the legislation that was passed a little over a year ago, essentially mandating that the Commonwealth meet net zero emissions by 2050. And what we've seen in the time since then is the Commonwealth really kind of organizing and starting its planning process around developing a clean energy and climate plan that will provide policy direction around how the Commonwealth as a whole will get to those emissions thresholds. And obviously that is going to include activities and actions that are going to happen at all levels the local level as well at the state so I think that's one thing to keep an eye on right now we expect to see more information coming out of the Commonwealth in July around that clean energy climate plan and sub limits around emissions thresholds for 2030 and 2050. So so lots of good things starting to percolate at the state level that will will likely be driving more and more energy attention and incentives and resources towards decarbonizing residential housing. The parallel process that's currently going on at the state level with the Department of Energy Resources is an update to our energy codes both residential and commercial. So do we are is currently pulling together new code language that will complement upgrades that are being made right now to the base energy code by providing an updated stretch energy code, which would be automatically updated in all communities that are currently members that have opted into the stretch code so you know that that would be something that would come into effect locally in the next year or so. And then in addition to that the climate legislation has mandated that do we are developed what's being called an opt in municipal net zero energy code. That municipalities can actually opt into that will be more aggressive than the updated stretch energy code. And so yet another thing that will will definitely have significant impact at the local level around housing decarbonization within the specific realm of new construction projects. The other place where we've seen a lot of momentum recently has been specifically as it relates incentives driving housing decarbonization. So affordable housing has really been leading the charge from this perspective, much of that subsidized affordable housing utilizes low income housing tax credits that are awarded by the state. So seeing the, the essentially the requirements and or competitive advantage that the state provides to applications that commit to high performance housing, really ratchet up over the last few years with references and points available now to projects that are committing to passive house. And so while a couple of years ago we only had a few passive house multifamily projects in the works at new ecology. Over 30 multifamily affordable passive house projects that are committing to pursuing passive house certification. And so multifamily affordable housing is by far leading the charge from this perspective. We're also going to see some updates and changes to the massive program over the next year or so. So a new year new three year plan that's going into effect and that in combination with the emissions thresholds that have been committed to at the state level are really going to require that the state take a hard look at the massive program and really try and align that with the emissions reduction that needs to happen to meet the 2030 and 2050 requirements. And so we anticipate to see some changes in the massive program that are going to really incentivize electrification the high performance buildings on the new construction side, and also provide resources to existing buildings that are looking to reduce emissions as well through weatherization as well as electrification. A lot has been happening at the local level. You know we've seen Boston and Cambridge really being leaders around utilizing zoning to to push projects further than perhaps they would go on their own as it relates to performance and so good examples of that include article 37 in Boston which requires compliance with the green building rating system certification levels. We're seeing that updated to include carbon emissions thresholds and targets. And so, so really seeing these zoning ordinances that have been around for a little while now, really upgrade to align with the emissions reduction and really focus on those issues. The same as true as it relates to the existing building stock residential building stock so any buildings over a certain size in both Boston and Cambridge are required to report on their energy use, but we're seeing a lot of those municipalities really extending the impact of those programs in order to move towards having required emissions reductions over time between now and 2050 to to get the existing building stock to where it needs to be to hit our emissions thresholds and requirements. And so at least we've seen grassroots advocacy really being a driver around residential decarbonization in communities such as Newton we've seen local grassroots organizations utilizing the special permit process for development to really encourage developers to make even more significant than what's required by zoning or other energy code requirements in order to get their developments to be realized. And so those types of grassroots advocacy efforts are critically important so we see sort of the top down as well as putting them up sort of pressures on these issues. In terms of what we were looking forward to in the future I mentioned you know seeing sort of the state regulations that get promulgated and the policy framework for those. One of the things I want to make sure we talk a little bit about today is that most of what I've discussed so far really relates specifically to the operating energy use of residential buildings. It's critically important that we think not only about the operating energy use of residential buildings, but also what's called the embodied carbon impact. And so that is the amount of energy and the associated emissions pollution that come from producing transporting materials for projects. So there's a very important need to be acknowledging the carbon emissions that come from those materials when we think about our climate issues and making sure that we're very cognizant of those things when we're building new construction buildings and we're making good materials choices as it relates to materials, especially on the structural side that are low emissions really trying to reduce stealing concrete which are very high emissions materials in favor of other types of materials like mass timber. And then also thinking about embodied carbon as it relates to existing buildings. Existing buildings have already spent their embodied carbon with the materials that are currently in place. So being very thoughtful about how we retrofit existing buildings to really leverage the materials that are currently in place, while improving the performance of those buildings through strategic implementation of low carbon materials. So with that I'll turn it over to Emily. Lauren, this is great. And so continuing on as Lauren spoke to what is driving the housing decarbonization. I want to speak a little bit more about now how we actually decarbonize buildings in an equitable manner. So we're, I think the first thing we need to acknowledge is that there are very real transition barriers, particularly for low and moderate income households, as well as owners of affordable housing who are already working to build and preserve affordable housing on very limited or stretched subsidies. So we see the equitable decarbonization in sort of three main pillars. And the first is supporting that upfront cost to decarbonize the building right so that can range from pre energy work. There might be electrical upgrades that are needed safety upgrades asbestos remediation like that to even be able to move forward with a building upgrade. And, and just for, for folks's reference for affordable housing, it usually refinances and gets to renovate on 15 to 20 year timelines. So that's a great time in that building life cycle to leverage whatever usual renovation work that's being done to go deeper and then layer on that energy efficiency upgrade and the transition to those clean energy building systems, heating and and ultimately domestic hot water as well. So, secondly, we have to think about the ongoing operating costs that might result from transitioning from gas or oil powered systems to all electric systems. So the we know that the cost of a unit of energy is more expensive in electricity than in gas at this point. And so to, to, we really need to reduce to maximize efficiency to reduce our overall energy load right, and then we need to ensure that there's adequate financial protections in place for folks who do transition to all electric systems. So that may look like a deeper discount rate for low and moderate income rate payers who convert to highly efficient, all electric systems, renewable energy like Brucie was talking about the Solaris campaigns, that's another great way to lower energy costs. And then we must also ensure that anti-displacement measures, maybe like right to stay protections for lower income renters are in place for buildings who receive upgrades. So how do you really address the protection in this transition for all all incomes. The third pillar of decarbonization or equitable decarbonization as we see it is really ensuring that good paying jobs that are being created as a result of this big transition all across the board right from the solar jobs to the weatherization jobs and everything in between. Go to people who have been historically underrepresented or left out of the green or the, the green building and clean energy sector. So particularly black, indigenous and people of color. And if we follow these three pillars, the upfront, the operating costs and then the equitable job training and access, the benefits of decarbonization are real and they include better climate readiness in the face of extreme temperatures and whether they result in healthier indoor air quality and better comfort for residents. And it's a more stable energy future for for everyone. Next slide please. So, there are the good news is there are concrete steps that individual residents such as yourselves can do to really make a meaningful difference in furthering equitable building tea carbonization. So, as Lauren mentioned, there will be that net zero code that will be finalized by the end of this year. So municipalities can opt in to that net zero municipal code, Arlington can do that. And that's a great way to help support the construction of more high performance low carbon new construction specifically this passive house that we've been talking about for multi family housing that's so important. Currently, we encourage everyone to endorse the hero campaign. So this is a proposal to double our deeds excise tax it would still be in line with other New England states. But what it does is it ensures an additional funding stream of the significant funding stream, about $300 million a year, and half of that would be slated to go to support affordable housing, and have to climate readiness or resiliency upgrades. So the third thing that we're asking folks to do is to join we have a coalition of 90 organizations and strong and growing to join the zero carbon renovation fund. This is a proposal to allocate at least 250 million of American Rescue Plan Act funding or ARPA funding to really prioritize equitable building decarbonization work. This would be prioritizing investments in environmental justice communities and other communities that have been disproportionately impacted by coven. We've got links there so you can learn more about these and join us reach out to us with any questions, but those are just some of the steps that that we recommend you can take to help in this equitable housing transition. And so I think that's the end for us and I'll turn it over to Zoe and Michelle. Thank you. Thanks Emily and Lauren. So, again, thanks everybody. I'm in Lucy for for the introduction but I'm Zoe Weinrobe I'm the director of real estate at to life communities where actually if you can go to the next slide. We're a nonprofit affordable senior housing developer based in Brighton. We are nearly 60 years young at to life and I'm I think one of the things that differentiates life from many housing developers is that you're the developer owner property manager service provider so I think we have a much longer view of our properties and have a different relationship with the many developers because we're working with our residents every day we're maintaining our buildings, you know, Emily said, a lot of developers look to refinance or redevelop their properties every 15 years we're trying to look at our buildings as third when you do new projects or renovations. And so we've got about three to 40 year life cycle cost of what we're doing so we're really willing to put the extra sort of time and money and effort in at the forefront, knowing it's going to save us money over time. So, we've got about 1400 apartments out greater Boston we've actually in addition to that we've got 200 or so apartments currently under construction and about 600 apartments in active pre development and almost all of our projects are on track to be passive house. So we are all in on on passive house, going forward, and I would say let's move on to the next slide. So I think a big, a big focus of to life is we actually really look at our housing as a way to support our mission and our mission is to give older adults a life of connection and and purpose and a supportive environment and and really the housing is a vehicle to support our mission. You know, loneliness and isolation is more detrimental to people's health, and then and then smoking or heart disease so I mean it's all our buildings and our, and our sort of our projects are all about getting folks out of their apartments or out of their small isolated houses and coming to live with us in community where we can, you know, provide amazing programs and services and support and give people a much, you know, a robust sort of a quality of life. And we do that through a really sort of innovative property management operating model. We do you know we because we are the operating you know property managers maintenance resident services we have a whole host of services we're providing for for our residents programming that needs people's cultural needs staff that meet the language needs of our of our residents 24 seven on site emergency response through live in resident managers and and residents for service coordinators at a at a ratio of about 75 apartments for housing units to one resident coordinator who are really the sort of the bench pin of our ability to connect our residents to all the programs and services that are eligible for and to help design amazing programs in our buildings. So, a to life, when we look at new at new projects are when we're thinking about building new buildings. Really, we start with, who are we trying to serve in this community, and what's the sort of the overall goal of the project are we, what's the goal of the project is in that community. In terms of, you know, types of housing, you know, affordability levels, and then, and then of course we then go and look at location we want to be, you know, close to other we want to be close to retail we want to be close to having people, close to our door and, you know, get services or, or restaurants or food, right right outside that right outside their apartment you know we want to be close to transportation that's good for our residents that's good for our staff visitors, you know and and the environment, and we're often about scale I mean to be able to provide the services that we want to provide in our buildings, we can't do that in small 20 or 30 apartment buildings we're looking really at at trying to build buildings you know between 75 and 100 apartments for building to really the more apartments we can build in a building, the more services we can provide, and that's really the number one goal, and then obviously cost, you know, doing affordable housing development and greater Boston is is a challenge and any day and and and high cost communities like our linkedin like me replied, Boston it's all about sometimes that you know it's going to come down to the numbers. So, one thing that we've been doing at the same time as looking at new projects and new and new communities. We also have been really focusing over the last number of years on renovating our existing buildings we work a lot with new ecology, and helping to really look at how we're not just looking at doing renovations of kitchens and bathrooms and, and we do what we always do and a lot of accessibility upgrades to make sure our apartments are designed to help meet the residents needs as they age. But we also are hyper focused on sustainability, the always include utilities in rent at to life and so we really just don't want our residents having to make decisions about whether or not to have heat or food or medicine. And so, so we are, we're often, you know, focused on on sustainability measures we do a lot of work and their existing buildings when we renovate on improving the heating and cooling we historically did not provide air conditioning so as we've renovated buildings we've put in central air conditioning almost everywhere, focusing on the envelope and, and you know that the usual sort of low hanging fruit of high efficiency appliances and fixtures and local low flow fixtures. And as you can see in our go to my year house renovation that we did a number of years ago resulted in pretty significant decrease in pounds of CO2. So one other project I thought would be nice to highlight is a our round family house project and reply and it's actually right in the heart of which corner in on Harvard Street connected to a congregation gale of Israel we actually have a bridge connecting the building to two and we were actually able to do the project in such an amazing location, because we have a long term ground ground lease with Ki, and an amazing partnership there. This building was built to green communities enterprise green communities certification standards and and did me become certified car free for residents made the project happen, and which was not necessarily an easy thing to get through and we were doing a comprehensive permit a number of years ago but we felt really strongly and and got a lot of support from folks in the town to support a car free building for our residents. We also went after, you know, we are very opportunistic when it comes to green opportunities including at the time we were building this there was a really amazing incentive program for us to provide almost 100% of the cost or really significant amount of the cost for a solar water system that is has really we pay almost nothing it's our only gas in this building it's the only natural gas fired source of energy in the building and the domestic hot water and and solar thermal hot water system has really made our gas bills in that building almost a and then sort of again, you know, focusing on the envelope high efficiency heating and cooling and appliances. We can go to the next. Got some pretty pictures of Brown which was thrilled. This building came online actually during coven in the spring of 2020 so Lisa with a bit of a challenge at that time, but we're really proud of the building it became so it's 100% affordable we have many tiers of affordability in this building apartments with project based vouchers serving extremely low income people making, you know, 10 to $15,000 year up to some unrestricted market rate apartments as well. So you can see. So the Harvard Street view on the top left are a beautiful courtyard we have and that's the Ki sanctuary building on the top right and then some some views of our ground floor village center programming. Our buildings are not what you say is like efficient in terms of a rentable square footage to the overall size of the building, because we really focus on having these amazing grounds for what we call village center program spaces to get residents out of their apartment and come downstairs and participate in all of our programs. We can go to the next. So another really exciting project for us is under construction right now in Brighton on Chestnut Hill have 142 apartments 100% affordable below 60% of area median income which right now for a one person household I think is about 45 or $50,000 a year, and it's a partnership with the Boston Housing Authority and it's actually redevelopment of an existing Boston Housing Authority property where a 64 60 that were there were 64 apartments there originally. So we're more than doubling the amount of affordable housing on the site with 142 apartments. There's also an amazing partnership with a pay center which is a program for all inclusive care for the elderly, providing wrap around services at the health care insurance product and provider for low, low income elderly folks who are who are nursing home people and so it's really great partnership. Also, this will be our first passive house building, and we'll have an extensive solar PV system, and then you know the usual sort of suite of green features, but a really beautiful exciting building and we've got some pictures of that on the next slide. So you can see our main entrance on the top left, an amazing actually intergenerational playground that we're building on the top right of just a sort of a sample view of what the, what the ground floor lobby is going to look like. And on the bottom right on that you'll see is actually it's under construction right now so they were just pouring this lab last week and putting up fields so we're really excited with the progress so this will be coming online in the summer of 2023. Next slide. So I think I just wanted to end with, you know, we are, we really are, I think so in line with the two life sort of development philosophy with, with what Talia and Jenny were talking about with the different programs going on in the town, where, you know, we believe in high density, affordable housing, we think that it's green, you know, building in great locations near transit, near services near programs is great for our residents and it reduces the overall energy uses of the residents. So building these bigger, these bigger buildings use less energy, they're cheaper to build and, and, and, and provide housing where people don't need to use their cars, and, and use a lot less energy and operations, and it allows our residents to age in community with and, and, and create a real amazing community ability to create these amazing communities. And, and I think one, one side benefit we talk about a lot is by, by allowing older adults to come live with us in these, these larger buildings, it's freeze up the, the, the existing housing stock to young families, you know, a lot of older adults are in, in much larger houses right now and so being able to come and downsize into our buildings really will free up, free up housing stock for, for others. So I think I would leave it at that. I think one more slide. Thank you. And then I'm passing it on to Michelle. Awesome. Thank you Zoe that was great. Thank you Emily and Lauren. And the whole Arlington team. Next slide. So I'm Michelle, I'm with icon architecture I've been there 20 years now. We are a women owned business based in Boston, and really focused on sustainable communities at all scales. We have a number of practice areas. I'm going to be talking tonight about residential because that's what we're talking about and that's really where my, my work is. But we also do a lot of institutional work with both colleges and universities as well as the city and the state assets. More and more in that middle wedge. We're working with existing buildings in either capacity, it could be housing could be something else but our existing buildings are here to stay, and you're going to hear that theme in my presentation as well. Next. One of the reasons I'm so excited to be in the field that we're in is that climate change is real, and it's important and we need to deal with it, and our industry has a real capacity to do that so the future is undetermined. We really need to keep, we really need to stop saying that we actually need to just dial in what we're going to be doing so that the future is determined but for the moment it's still undetermined and it depends a lot on what we do. Next slide. And it turns out that buildings are a really, really, really important piece of the equation. And globally, they represent about 40% of the overall energy use in this country, they're closer to 50%. And in Massachusetts, depending on how it's all broken out. It's, it's in the 40 to 50% range as well. So it's a huge opportunity, which is the way I need to think about things. And it's great to have the ability to really dive in deep every day and think about how we can do that. Next. I definitely want to echo the comments about existing buildings here in the bottom two quadrants of rectangles is what exists now. And that's mostly not going anywhere. And it's going to need ongoing capital improvements to set us up for the next 100 years of those buildings. What we do with new construction is critically important, we should do it right from the get go and we know how, and that's a little bit what I'm going to talk about. But what we do with our existing buildings is is really the next frontier, and it's where we need to put our energy. Now that we know how to do the new stuff right. The Passive House standards been referenced a few times I just wanted to dig into it a little bit because I do think it's important for folks to understand what makes for a low energy building. So we used to build buildings that have no insulation. I know the home I'm sitting in now was that way. Before we use the Massive Program, thank you very much to put some insulation in our house. And we wore sweaters and they were drafty and we had a single point source of heat, a fireplace typically. We got a bunch of technology and we got really excited and I always credit the architects who did these diagrams this is not us but it's fabulous. And this is kind of the world we're living in now like the things are really complicated they don't always work together they don't always operate. Clearly, people don't know how to maintain them. Really it's a lot of technology trying to do the work that the building could do on its own if we just designed it right. So on the right is a super insulated thermal envelope. It's a building that's going to maintain temperature inside no matter what's going on outside by design. And then we can have really tiny small systems that are very right sized that are much more easy to operate and understand, and they are not fighting with one of them. Next, when we do that, when we reduce the operational energy, Lauren's point earlier we've been talking a lot about that operational energy that build the energy the building uses during its lifetime. We use E UI energy use intensity. And we eliminate fossil fuels that then we have an all electric building and we can add renewable energy. That's not over the top, just right size for the building, and ultimately potentially achieve net zero. It's not as simple as that because different building sizes. And then themselves better than others, but if you don't first reduce that operational energy use your utility bills every month, you can't get there effectively. Next. So we did have, we do have three now passive house, almost the third is not quite certified yet actually Harbor Village almost it's got its TV arrays getting installed this month as I understand it but we've got to certified and hopefully to be certified and many, many more in construction and in design and as has been said, I think the data is there, the building science is there the utility information is there that this is a great choice for having a low energy building from which you can get to a healthy building, and potentially an electric building. So we're excited about the way things are moving, particularly the multifamily world. Next. I love to show this graph. This is actually not Massachusetts this is New York City having taken stock. You can see it's a few years ago now. But of their existing building portfolios and analyzing how much energy, each of them uses, and then on the, the, the red lines across the bottom there are identifying our three first passive house buildings and how much energy they're using relative to, all of those. And I think the key here is to look at the residential right 132 versus way down in the, in the 20s for energy use intensity, and that's where we're going for it and that's what we can do in new construction. If we just plan it right and think through it in the right order. Next. I do, I want to touch briefly on intention which Lauren and Emily definitely hit, but I just want to reiterate how important that is and then I want to talk about that. Next. So, but in 2015, the mass building code acknowledged passive house as an alternative compliance path which is big, a big deal because it means that they're seeing the building science and they're seeing that. If you do that, we trust you, and, and you don't have to jump through hoops to show us else, what else wise how you're meeting the code. And a lot of incentives since then, and Lauren touched on a bunch of them. So I'm not going to dwell but I can't emphasize enough. What a sea change it's been over the last few years, since the mass save incentives kicked off in particular catapulted by mass EC, which is a phenomenal organization. And then ultimately on the affordable side, the Department of Housing Community Development, which, which is a significant factor in funding a lot of this multifamily affordable housing in the state. And they have their own program to evaluate the competitiveness of projects, and they used the data that they had achieved or received from these other, you know, programs and the information that have been gathered, and ultimately decided that the data was that important in their program that it would sort of get that many more points in terms of recognizing teams. And now we've got the net zero stretch code underway. But the community advocacy piece is also huge because there are a lot of towns that don't necessarily have something baked in to their codes, but they do have a group and advocacy group that has made it loud and clear that they're not going to allow permitting of projects that are rarely not doing the right thing. So, this has been fundamental to the change that we've seen in the last few years and I, it's amazing to hear so either like all of your projects going forward and pass fast to me, like, of course it should be right. Next. And I should reiterate the new ecology has been on a bunch of our projects too so we, we highly value their wisdom and their insight and their support along the way. It's going to turn to density. And as an architect. I, I see it so clearly in the way buildings hit the page, the way they hit the ground, ultimately what's left over. So, of course, you can get more homes, and that is, we have a housing crisis. We need, we need more homes. Those homes are in a smaller footprint and they leave a lot more open space on the land, and many of our communities are desperate for more open space. So, continuing to do what we've been doing doesn't allow for that. We also, we don't just use less land but we use less materials because we are, we have a smaller building overall. And that is getting right back to Lauren's point about our carbon footprint it's not just how it hits the ground and how many resources we're using in the land. It's also how big is the building how, how much wood and steel and concrete, etc. Does it take, how much does it take to clad that building and create, you know, your finished product. All of that makes it more cost effective which so it was definitely talking about. And all of that makes it more energy efficient, but not just more energy efficient actually easier to be a high performance building that then can be all electric and we can get off of fossil fuels. And finally, all of that leaves more opportunity within the scope of the project to do things that are special relative to whatever population you're serving. Next. So I want to talk about two projects. This is a new construction projects which was referenced earlier. This is actually our second passive house project in the state that are first of all affordable. And it's 98 units on Concord app in Cambridge family housing. Lots of great accolades of phenomenal owner homeowners rehab based out of Cambridge. But what is so important about it is that it is immediately across the street for fresh pond, an amazing open space, and an amazing connector to bike paths. There's a bus transit, there's the tea within a mile. There is existing infrastructure in the street that we didn't have to bring to some new location because it didn't exist before. And so it's really, it's really leveraging a whole lot in order to make the most of the site. And all of that said, when you look at this building. What we're seeing practically as units in terms of the windows. But on the top floor, because we were able to be so efficient and because we it's important all these projects, frankly, it's really important to have program space that brings the community together. So when you're able to do things that you might never have imagined. Next slide. Like, on the bottom left, create a really grand spacious warm lobby connected to management offices connected to a community conference space that can be used by folks in the building as well as the staff. So on the top, create a whole series of lounge spaces, including a roof deck where they can have plantings and gardening classes, including a lovely kitchen where they can learn to cook and how to make healthier choices. And including kind of flex lounge space on the top right, complete with quiet rooms where folks can study when you're schooling from home, for example, and need just a little bit of space or you're taking a work interview and you need a little bit of space. So just really thinking broadly about what it means to live 24 seven and of course the last few years have really changed our perspective about that and having the ability to offer these kinds of spaces within the community is so important. Next. Excuse me just a moment. Michelle, this is an absolutely fabulous presentation. And I want to hear every syllable. But I'm looking at the clock and I'm wondering if we're ready to wrap up shortly. Totally. I'm just about done. I just got a few more. Yep. So I want to go back to existing buildings, because there's a quite well known phrase in the world of architects anyway, that the most sustainable building is the one that is already built, and that gets back to Lauren's point. Next. And so while I think it's pretty straightforward these days to do this a new construction across the board. Existing buildings matter. And we're now really thinking about how that when capital improvements are needed, when you need to think comprehensively about upgrades, what order to do it in how to do it in a way that's really maximizing the building for the next two to 100 years before you actually have the chance to do it again. And so this project is on target to be passive house certified as well, but it is an existing building that's occupied. So it's achievable. It's kind of the next generation. Next. I'm going to close with some slides because those were two very big buildings and we are talking about Arlington and Arlington has some big buildings for sure, but it's not that's not like everywhere. I wanted to just share a few images of what density can look like every one of these projects is affordable. Hundreds of units in many cases. This is in Rhode Island. Next, this is in Rhode Island, and this was a five part master plan that was built out over 10 years. Next, this is in Chelsea, and also was a many phase projects. Next, this is in Matapan. And this is in East Boston. And so I just want to say density doesn't have to be a high rise or even a med rise. It depends on where you're located. But townhouses versus single family homes. It's a, it's a, it's 100% difference in terms of the way we put things together and the space that's available, and it can still feel charming and appropriate to the character of the community. And that's it. Oh, thank you so much. What a wonderful set of presentations. I want to have you all back to talk at greater length. So I think we've heard about the potential for working with our existing building stock, creating some new buildings as space and opportunity present somewhat limited in Arlington but nonetheless. Building community. Also ensuring that residents who have lived in Arlington for many, many decades, perhaps their entire lives can, if not age in their own homes, at least age in their own communities. And those of us who have moved parents between from one state to another or from one part of a state to another. That is a painful shift to be able to stay in the community that has been your home is enormously valuable. Now we do often think oh I want to stay in my house forever. The time comes when it gets to be too hard, and it gets to be too long. So it is very interesting to think about how the models that you have talked about and and illustrated could be incorporated here in Arlington. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the kinds of resources that might be available to help Arlington accomplish this. And I open that to anyone who wants to jump in and build that question. This is the developer in the in the panel. I'm happy to take a stab at that. But others, please feel free to jump in. I think when we when we as to life are looking at locations, I mean obviously communities like Arlington are amazing, you know, in terms of, you know, the variety of resources available, its proximity, you know, to sort of, you know, main centers and transit and other and other great things. I think what for for for us it's all, you know, it's what we talked about what I talked about is having a large enough size of property that we can find that we can afford and and that's, you know, often what it comes down to I mean, the Brooklyn project that I that I mentioned, we're able to build in Coolidge corner, because we had an amazing program partner with with a religious synagogue, you know, if that had gone out on the open market we could have never afforded to buy, you know, just competing with you know, to build affordable housing. But that's a spot that was a small site that site was less than 20,000 square feet, which is, you know, less than a half an acre and and we were able to put 62 apartments on that site, it was a six building with no resident parking though. So, and, you know, and we did that project as a comprehensive permit, you know, Brooklyn at the time was under 10%, I think it's actually close being at 10% now. But it was a town supported project with being 100% affordable. And so we did get a lot of support from from folks at town hall, supporting this 100% affordable and under 100% affordable opportunity. I should say, the town also put significant resources into that project through their affordable housing trust, and, and their use of home funds that they received, you know, from the House Department of Housing and Urban Development. And I think the town contributed over $4 million to that project to make that project happen. Yeah, I could totally add to that so the Finch project in Cambridge was also highly supported by the city's CPA funds, which is really important. And beyond that, I think it's there are opportunities for the city to think about their zoning. This is to think about their, you know, their policy and how there are requirements on the one hand but there's also incentives on the other hand so one of the positions that Somerville has taken is that there's a bonus, a density bonus. So if you consider if you are going to go passive house with multifamily, then you, you know, you get a little bit of a bump in how many your units versus your parking, etc. So there are different ways to think about it Newton is thinking is looking at it in its own way. But every community kind of has to understand their own landscape. Unfortunately, we have a lot of communities in this Commonwealth, and they all operate quite differently. So you got to take stock of the landscape and then figure out where the opportunities are to offer something more that's going to incense the right thing from my perspective. Thank you so much. So, people will be have seen the pictures that you've shown now and been thinking about these new building technologies. And wondering, how does the cost stack up against conventional construction. Talk perhaps in terms of cost per square foot to complete either a deep energy retrofit, such as you've done or a building a new building completely. So in terms of cost per square foot, our community is going to be looking at Lauren, you want to take that. Yeah, I can start and then I'm sure you guys might have specific examples of projects to talk about but, you know, this is obviously a very hot topic within the context of passive housing, especially within the affordable housing community who you know that housing is is built with subsidy. And those subsidies are limited. And so it is potentially one of the more cost constrained types of development that's happening and so, so incremental cost associated with high performance housing has obviously been a major concern. I'm very lucky as a state to have models to look at from the state of Pennsylvania who implemented incentives around high performance passive house affordable housing, many years before Massachusetts did and so there were a number of projects that were designed and built in Pennsylvania that had actual cost operating incremental cost information to provide. And so, you know, that information was very much leveraged in the advocacy that happened at the state level here in Massachusetts to get passive house to be included as one of the incentives in the provision of subsidy for affordable housing. And I think, you know the first round of projects like, you know to speak specifically about Massachusetts the first round of projects that were part of a pilot that got some money from the Clean Energy to really do this for the first time here came in in the sort of one to 3% incremental cost range with with many projects when you actually factor in incentives. You know, for example the Finch Cambridge project coming in at less than 1% when you factored in incentives from the utilities. And so, so I think that's a super compelling argument around that this work can be done at the scale of housing very affordably. And you get such significant benefits as Michelle was pointing out in terms of the overarching energy benefits and operating cost benefits over the life of the building. And I would add to that and say, that's new construction, and I honestly think we're, we're close to cost parity if you just, if you just got, you know, if your value structure is established and passive house is part of it you're going to make it work we're going to we're going to figure that out. The building and deep energy retrofits is definitely a different ballgame entirely. And honestly, there's so many buildings and so many types of buildings, each quite unique, frankly, that I think the landscape we're in right now is trying to figure out what are some of those fundamental tight typologies, you know the large double load corridor tall building like I showed that we're renovating from the outside. The triple Decker, you know, there are typologies, but even then it's not, it's not a one size fits all mindset so deep energy retrofits are expensive. I think I hope where mass save is, is trying to move is to help figure out the next landscape which is now we've got this on the new side. How do we, how do we help in sense and subsidize a little bit on the existing side so that we can get our wings. Finally, maybe it makes sense to talk about the climate ready housing program. I think that's a great program that's trying to incentivize and and really scale up the work that's happening in the existing building world. So, so you had the climate ready housing program that we, we do have the state last year in the governor's economic development bond bill did allocate 10, 10 million dollars over five years so small change in affordable housing, you know, the world. But that will provide gap funding for affordable housing to do these deep what we're calling deep energy retrofits or building really intense building decarbonization. So, the first round of folks are now into that. We're hoping as I mentioned before that zero carbon renovation fund this asked for like to at least 250 million is now in front of the the legislature like to for consideration. So, but in the meantime, we do have this pilot program where we'll be able to have at least two to three projects per year, really try this see what works. And it's really following on the heels of New York's retrofit New York program, which is, they, they provide $40,000 per unit to do building decarbonization so they do they do yeah so we want to get to that point and we and then of course we we we want to make it more cost effective you know there's the the industry is working with manufacturers to compress costs get like Michelle was saying get those technologies, those solutions for different building typologies a little more replicable. So we're, we're, as Michelle said, we're, we're almost there, we're there for passive house or close to the for for new construction and then this next not to crack is existing buildings deep deep retrofits. So, yeah, I would add to that just in terms of the smaller residential scale that the Clean Energy Center currently has what they call the triple decker affordable program in play where they're working to develop cost effective scalable retrofits that can be made on occupied triple deckers you know obviously the triple decker is a very ubiquitous housing type here in Massachusetts and so I expect a lot of really good technical and financial information to come out of those projects as well that can be deployed across the smaller scale housing. That sounds like it will be a particular interest in Arlington. Thank you so much. I'd like to turn to Steve who's going to pick up some questions from our listeners or audience this evening. Thank you, Bruce. I'll start with, although the it was when it was asked it was specific to Arlington I'll make it a little more general. What resources are available to ensure that low and moderate income households have access to things like massive programs. A really good question. Theoretically, they have access, but only as, as well as they're connected to the opportunities. I have a reference there and Emily you might have more feedback on this but in terms of the new three year plan that was recently implemented for the utilities which is essentially the guide the utilities have to use as they develop and implement their incentive programs. There was a really strong focus on making sure that there's sufficient outreach and engagement with low and moderate income communities across the state. So I think that's a good question line with sort of the environmental justice and equity lens that they try to bring to the conversation and so I know that the massive program is really much more actively looking to engage with municipalities to achieve that goal and also other community based organizations and institutions. And so really thinking strategically about how they do outreach to make sure that they're targeting low and moderate income individuals for their programs and being able to deploy those programs that way. Another really important thing to know is that there are additional resources for low and moderate income individuals so the standard massive programs apply across the marketplace but there are very specific programs at the weatherization. CAP agencies administer where additional incentives are brought to bear to pry and reduce energy and increase weatherization in affordable housing. Making sure we're connecting individuals and organizations that serve individuals that are low income with those programs that have even more incentives becomes very important. If I could just add a little bit to that answer. So Arlington actually has access to an organization called CAPIC which is one of those agencies that Lauren was just referencing. They provide weatherization services to residents in Arlington who are eligible income eligible and can access massive programs as well as many other weatherization opportunities. They're based in Chelsea and also have an office in Cambridge and are able to serve people in Arlington the information about that program is actually on the Department of Planning and Community Development webpage. If anybody would like access to that information I would encourage you to check it out. In that question there was also another or there were there were a couple of questions in there Steve if it's okay for me to take on. Oh yeah the so the what specific plans does Arlington have to increase the number of affordable housing units in Arlington. Yeah I was going to start general and then go specific but go please please proceed. Well the first thing I just wanted to say is actually the person we have 6.54% of affordable housing in Arlington that is actually our percentage now we've increased the number of affordable housing units in the community by 185 in the past six years. So we have 1301 affordable housing units that are on technically listed on our subsidized housing inventory but of course there are plans in in place through the housing production plan which was recently adopted by the Arlington redevelopment board and the select board and is awaiting approval by the Department of Housing and Community Development. And the types of things that we're working on related to affordable housing creation is with providers of affordable housing already in Arlington. That includes the Housing Corporation of Arlington and also working in concert with the Arlington Housing Authority when there are possibilities to work together. We you know and as many of the examples that you heard and in the answers that have been provided. We try to provide any subsidies or funds that we can that we have available to the town including Community Development Black Grant home, Community Preservation Act funding, and eventually once the Housing Trust has funds in it those funds as available to are available also to affordable housing creation. So there are a lot of activities that have already happened. And then there's of course much more to do which is outlined in that plan. Thank you. Okay, Brucey may go for another one or two. All right, good. So one of so this might be this next one might be for a combination of Michelle and or Brucey. So a few of the attendees have noticed that the some of the picture we were some of the buildings that we've seen are larger apartment buildings. We've talked to a few of the Michelle and I think maybe Zoe we've talked about how density is plays an important role in building at the scale that lets them meet their mission and or let's you know allows missions to be met and also to you know provide you know reduce footprints and that sort of thing. Now for a community that has predominantly single and two family homes. And, you know, it's generally a much smaller scale. What sort of considerations, or are there, what are the pros and cons of the, you know, trying to build larger buildings versus smaller. And, you know, what are some of the things that a community should sort of weigh pros and cons in terms of trying to, you know, think that through. And quickly, with the comment that while we do have a high percentage of single and two family housing, we also have a number of apartment buildings. And some of them are getting to be a long in years. At some point they are going to need major capital infusions to upgrade them. And what is the potential for an owner of one of those buildings, for example, to collaborate with you on putting this kind of a program into effect in their building. To collaborate for, there was a discussion of multiple tier pricing. For example, and it doesn't and different age groups being involved. So I wonder how we can foster something in the community. Have you ever done it a collaboration with an apartment building owner or do you always start with straight possession of the building and that's it. So as the architect, I'm never in possession of the building. I'll just start there. These are never my buildings. We're hired by an owner who, if they have an existing building wants to understand what they should and can do with the building. It usually gets a capital needs assessment if it's a larger building in particular to really think through the whole picture, and then they bring on a design team to help them understand how to upgrade it for the 21st century. Otherwise, it's an owner coming to us with a site and opportunity to potentially demolish a building. Rarely are we just coming with open sites in, you know, in this context, but a building that maybe wasn't making best use of the land and maybe more there's much more opportunity there to do something that in lives and livens the street front, you know, and also can add a housing above. And, you know, Arlington is not unusual in the Commonwealth and it's not unusual in the country. There are corridors, there are, you know, down there's the city center elements where more density is perfectly plausible. This already exists. Maybe, maybe what's there isn't what people would have liked. And so there's a little bit of that going on. Kind of the random tall building that feels really out of character with what's going on, but I will just say, for example, the Mass Ave is an exceptionally wide street, and it is largely commercial on the ground floor. And I see in my mind as an urban planner, no reason that we couldn't think about Mass Ave with more vibrance with more density, still meeting all the commercial needs that are there, but adding adding to the infrastructure to that that exists, giving people a direct access to bus transit, close to the T. So there are corridors. It's not everywhere. You don't just insert a tall building into the middle of the neighborhood. It's strategic. It's really thinking about what are your major, you know, where, where does density matter. And that's the work of the city to figure that out. And I'm sure that Jenny would have some thoughts on that. And I'm meeting, I do, but I wonder we have a lot of questions awaiting. So I think we might want to move, move to some other questions. Thank you, though. Yes. So, let me see. So here next one is have any of your new passive house builds used CLT. Can you speak to the depth of knowledge and builders design planners to use or choose mass timber. None of mine yet. We are, we have looked at it a few times now. There is one passive house CLT building that I believe is almost complete. If not complete, do you know about that one line? Actually, if I could jump in for a second, what is CLT is I would have thought community land trust. Cross laminated timber. So these are tall wood buildings. These are built. So in Massachusetts, wood can only go so high unless you're using the special type of wood. But wood is way better from an embodied carbon perspective than concrete and steel, which is often the base of our wood construction. But it's totally happening. I haven't done it yet. I think it's coming. I think it's real. And they've been doing it in Canada for 20 years they've been doing in Europe for the same. So our code was a little late to catch up. And we've been a little late to kind of test it, but it's coming. I think the place where we see cross laminated timber having some uptake right now are really in the taller buildings. So the buildings where you would otherwise be building with concrete and steel. That's where we're seeing, you know, cost competitiveness, essentially, and an alternative that can work from a financial perspective and achieve, you know, just as good structural implications, as well as these really reduced carbon impacts. So, so again, in terms of applicability, you know, you're probably not seeing a ton of those, you know, seven, eight, 10 story buildings in your community. But we do we are starting to see some of them, Michelle, I think the the passive house project that you're referencing that's a that's a Boston based project, I believe seven stories. So that's really where we're starting to see traction of this construction methodology because if you're comparing cross laminated timber to traditional sort of stick frame would construction which you can do for lower rise buildings. It's still a lot less expensive to use to build construction, but again comparing it to these taller types of structural systems. It starts to have some advantages. I noticed that there's a question about where these questions are coming from one of our audience members and of course they're being typed into the Q&A. And there's another audience member who wanted to know how to ask a question again type it into the Q&A. Steve, you have another one ready to go. Yes, so this is about let me just scroll up to see it. It involves deep energy retrofits of existing buildings. So one of the participants has a 1934 home and was able to reduce their fossil fuel use by 75% by taking advantage of a state pilot program called the MVP program. And do we know if there are more programs that are coming online to help owners, you know to help them improve the efficiency of their homes beyond the limitations of mass save. Yeah, and actually there was a head mentioned the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center a few times in the course of this panel. You know the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center actually just finished a pilot program where they were working with homeowners, smaller scale residential homeowners to do deep energy retrofit decarbonization of their buildings and that was a successful pilot. I know that they're starting to engage right now in developing sort of the next iteration of that with the goal of trying to create some scale and efficiency around it so that it could potentially ultimately be adopted by the mass save program. And so I think that we are going to see more and more of that with more and more focus on the electrification side of things as well really converting homes from their fossil fuel based heating systems to electrified heat pump type efficient heating systems. But doing that in a very conscious way and pairing it with envelope improvements, heating energy low reduction measures. May may ask another. All right, so what are some of the challenges and benefits with respect to achieving that zero when building taller structures or in this case it might be more appropriate to ask when retrofitting taller structures, like the housing authorities were building in Arlington Center. So the just so this is a maybe 12 ish story building that was its senior housing it was built in the early 70s. And it's yeah right in Arlington Center. So I think it's a good role to the retro renovation occupied rehab, passive house level renovation we're doing in terms of scale. It's, again, there's no one size fits all. And so we do have to look at them, each kind of independently. But I do. The functionality is so net zero is a term that I love and also I'm frustrated by, because I think people target it without a recognition of what it really means that zero means in my mind anyway, and we can all quibble about it that you're using a certain amount of energy to operate your building on site, and you're also producing that same energy on site to offset that use and then you get to zero. So you're using energy of course but you're able to capture energy, usually from the sun. So zero is harder and harder, the bigger and denser your building gets. But that doesn't mean that the bigger denser building is is a is a bad choice. So what it, what it really means is in my view, when we start. Oh, in the future, I hope that we will start to look at net zero. And broadly and comprehensively and acknowledge that there are places in our communities where it's pretty easy and awesome to put up a put up the right infrastructure and capture renewable energy and offset broadly, because my finch building for example which is, we couldn't have a lot more low energy, but it, the PV array on the roof only offsets about 20% of the energy that the building is using. And that's not to say that it's a bad building. It's not net zero, but it can't get there because it's just got so much going on. Our single family homes should really largely be able to get there and even there's sort of a, an order of magnitude, you know, three four stories, certain scale you have enough room space, you can offset the load. So I love net zero. It's a great goal. Bigger denser buildings are not able to get there on site without an array that's not on the building, which is pretty challenging in an urban context. So, I don't want to conflate it's got to be low energy first. Definitely add that renewable energy as best you can. And then we've got to understand what's the delta, because the delta is real. Thank you so much. We have reached. I'm afraid the end of our time for questions. I'd like to turn it back to Jenny great and tell you folks to wrap up the evening. So thanks everyone for being here tonight and we thank you for your patience as we tried to get to as many questions as possible in the limited time. I'm going to share my screen with a link where you will be able to find the recording and slides from the presentation tonight. And we're just grateful for your participation. Thank you so much to all the panelists. Thank you to Steve and Bruce and Jenny, and we are excited to continue this conversation. It's been a great opportunity to learn so thanks very much and have a great night. Thanks everyone for taking the time.