Loan program at heart of weatherization controversy

The Greensboro City Council voted 6-3 on Tuesday to accept $5 million in federal stimulus funds for weatherizing buildings reflected. Some members such as District Councilman Zack Matheny and District 4 Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw signed on with strong reservations that the money wouldn’t reach its target demographic of the poor and old.

“I don’t fundamentally agree with this,” Matheny said before reluctantly agreeing to vote to accept the funding. “I don’t fundamentally agree with the money not going directly to the poor, the needy and the elderly.”

At-large Councilman Danny Thompson, who voted against the funding, expressed even graver reservations.

“If even a dollar of the ten dollars would actually go to service and labor to the people who need it, I would support it wholeheartedly. It’s like bailing out our financial institutions. It’s not like Washington, DC had $5 million that they found under the seat cushion.”

Most of the debate centered on $2.3 million — not quite half of the allocation — designated for “contracted construction,” or “actual building retrofit work,” estimated to range from $2,000 to $10,000 for single family homes or upwards of $50,000 for multi-family residential, commercial and institutional buildings.

A Sept. 28 memo drafted by community sustainability manager Dan Curry states that “because of the 5 to 1 leverage requirement imposed by the Dept. of Energy, a large portion of the $2,291,963 of BetterBuildings grant funds allocated for construction are likely to be used as a loan loss reserve fund with a lender or pool of lenders. In this way the grant funds will leverage a much larger pool of below-market funding available to property owners who choose to undertake energy efficient upgrades.”

Some council members questioned whether poor people who wanted their houses weatherized would end up trapped in loans they couldn’t afford to pay.

Assistant City Manager Denise Turner acknowledged, “The loan portion of the program is not for poor people.” Turner added, “The great thing about this is its one of the few programs that actually benefits businesses.”

District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade, who also voted against the funding, said, “There seems to be a misconception that this is going to help poor people. It’s going to help businesses, landlords and consultants.”

The program offers modest services free of charge to low-income homeowners. According to a recent memo drafted by Turner, a number of items would be installed at no cost during an initial outreach visit, including CFL light bulbs, water-saving faucet aerators, programmable thermostats and HVAC filters.

Turner told council members that the program would not work directly with homeowners, but rather would engage a number of partner organizations to undertake the work. Among the organizations that have expressed interest in collaborating with the city to implement the program are Habitat for Humanity, Housing Greensboro and Affordable Housing Management. According to the Turner memo, Habitat for Humanity “is interested in working with their roughly 200 homes built pre-2003 to determine potential utility cost savings for their property owners,” Housing Greensboro “has set a goal of repairing 100 homes in 2011,” and Affordable Housing Management “has indicated they have 81 rental units undergoing rehabilitation where they would like to partner with the city in making them more energy efficient.”

The memo also indicates that households under 200 percent of the area poverty level already have the opportunity to have homes weatherized at no cost through the State Weatherization Assistance Program, which plans to retrofit 600 homes in the Greensboro area.

A parade of speakers urged council to approve the funding, and representatives of the Greensboro Community Sustainability Council and the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress said their respective organizations had passed resolutions of support.

Former Mayor Yvonne Johnson told the council: “I ask you to consider keeping this money so that many of our low-income residents can have some cost savings and comfort.”

Katie Scherzer, who spoke to council, elaborated on that theme.

“I’d like to ask each council member to raise their hand if they turned up their heat on one of these cold nights recently without giving it a second thought,” she said. “The majority of our elderly and poor can’t have that luxury of turning on their energy and heat. I know the majority of them are sitting in their homes in jackets and sitting on their hands. When we’re giving this money, we’re giving it back to them in savings on their heating bills. We’re not likely to get another chance to do this.”

District 1 Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small drew from Holy Scripture in an attempt to win over her skeptical colleagues.

“This is akin to two fish and five loaves — what we call leveraging,” she said. “If a long time ago a dude cold take two fish and five loaves and leverage it to feed all those people, we ought to be able to take $5 million and make it $25 million.”