Three years since its inception, Evanston’s Green Homes Pilot is moving forward with the first retrofits funded by the program, according to two nonprofits spearheading the effort.
The pilot program is a collaboration between the city and two Chicago-based nonprofits: Elevate and the Center for Neighborhood Technology. It aims to provide free energy, health and safety improvements for up to 50 existing housing units in the 8092 and 8102 census tracts — two tracts that sit mostly in Evanston’s 5th and 8th wards — whose residents fall below a set income limit.
In late March, city and nonprofit leaders celebrated the first home to be retrofitted under the program. The 5th Ward home, built in the 1930s and last renovated in the 2010s, received roughly $60,000 worth of improvements which included an induction range, an electric water heater and a high-efficiency heat pump to replace gas-powered systems.
“We are committed to taking needed climate action. We are committed to making and keeping Evanston affordable. We are committed to retaining the diversity of this community,” Mayor Daniel Biss said at the March event. “Only through projects like this can we achieve all those objectives simultaneously.”
As of early April, the pilot has another retrofit underway, one pending permit issuance and several dozen in other stages of assessment and planning. In total, around 30 housing units are slated to receive improvements, said Lindsey Wade, who helps administrate the program on behalf of Elevate.
The Green Home Pilot’s planning started in 2019 when Evanston received a $250,000 grant to study climate-related housing vulnerabilities. The city enlisted several nonprofits, among them CNT and Elevate, to make recommendations for a program that would align with the city’s Climate Action and Resilience Plan objectives — 100% renewable energy by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050 — as well as housing affordability goals.
For two years, the nonprofits collaborated on community engagement, assessments of household climate resilience and mapping areas with high levels of social and climate vulnerability, said Ryan Scherzinger, the manager of urban resilience at CNT. In the end, they recommended the city create a “one-stop shop” to connect property owners and residents with a variety of retrofit programs and service providers, Scherzinger said.
In July 2022, City Council funded a two-year pilot program, modeled after the one-stop shop concept, with $1 million from the roughly $43 million of funding Evanston received from the American Rescue Plan Act, the Biden-era program to help local governments recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a written statement to The Daily, Evanston’s Communication and Engagement Manager Cynthia Vargas said CARP inspired the Green Homes Pilot. Ultimately, the city intends the pilot to cut greenhouse gas emissions and benefit community members, especially lower-income residents, by providing free retrofits and “demystify the process of decarbonization.”
According to a presentation given to the city’s Housing and Community Development Committee in May 2022, CNT, Elevate and the homegrown Evanston Development Cooperative would split the program’s responsibilities, with the EDC leading the coordination between property owners and retrofit contractors.
However, EDC has since dropped out of the collaboration — along with a $333,000 grant it secured from the federal Department of Energy, according to reporting by the local government accountability newsletter, FOIA Gras — which Scherzinger said caused the pilot’s delay as Elevate shifted to pick up EDC’s tasks.
Wade said outreach for the pilot started in 2024, and Elevate began following up on applications in August. The process for a retrofit begins with Elevate’s engineers visiting the property and analyzing utility bills to make recommendations for health, safety and energy efficiency measures, she said. Elevate then reviews the recommendations with the property owner to determine the specifics of the retrofit.
Following installation, the nonprofit is also committed to providing ongoing monitoring and support for residents, Wade added.
A common concern of climate-resilient retrofit projects is that retrofits can increase the value of the homes and lead to property owners selling at a higher price or increasing rent, therefore diminishing the supply of affordable housing in the community. The Green Homes Pilot is cognizant of the concern, Scherzinger said, as the program requires multi-family property owners to freeze rents for five years to qualify.
Elevate has made multifamily properties a priority of their targeted outreach, Wade said. While identifying and supporting interested multi-family property owners has been a challenge, the owners have been largely receptive to the rent freeze agreement so far, she said.
Another advantage of the Green Homes Pilot, Wade said, is that it works directly with community organizations and residents in both its design and implementation.
“Since we don’t necessarily have a specific target (of energy or cost reduction) to meet, we’re able to address some of the critical health and safety concerns that sometimes other programs may not be able to meet,” Wade said. “Being able to address health safety, weatherization and building electrification and doing so based on input from the homeowner is something that’s unique to Evanston Green Homes.”
Looking ahead, Scherzinger said the plan is to complete the pilot, exhaust the funding allocated and assess “lessons learned” by the end of the year. In addition to the $1 million ARPA funding, City Council approved $300,000 from Northwestern’s Good Neighbor Fund for the pilot in December.
The city has also applied for a $350,000 grant from the Great Lakes Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program, Sustainability and Resilience Coordinator Cara Pratt told the city’s housing panel at its March meeting.
While the program is unlikely to reach its target of 50 units — the inflation of construction costs hasn’t helped, Scherzinger said — it is set to complete retrofits in a variety of building types and will allow the nonprofits to report their findings to the city. He said the program’s continuation would require additional funding. Vargas likewise said expansion of the program is “dependent on funding acquisition and internal and external partner capacity.”
“We all hope that this thing continues into the future, but that that will require additional support and financing,” Scherzinger said. “So I think a lot of consideration will be put into fundraising and local support, making sure that folks in the community know that this will take the money and support to keep it going.”
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