Acting on Our Value of Environmental Sustainability
Environmental sustainability is a complex and nuanced value, but it’s one we’ve opted to live by here at NHA. We recognize that there are many environmental actions that support long term affordability so that successive generations can access appropriate housing, and we are focused on minimizing any negative impact our community and our organization have on the natural environment.
We also believe that fundamentally, environmental sustainability is linked to equitable access – being able to sustain a long-term tenancy in our buildings often comes down to being able to sustain wellness, and that includes physical comfort and health. Environment matters!
We also dearly want to preserve our buildings in this community (Hillhurst-Sunnyside) because it preserves access to affordable housing in a walkable inner-city neighbourhood – as so many of our residents can attest, this is a key piece to their overall wellbeing because of the easy access to nature, transit, community events, and grocery stores.
NHA’s environmental sustainability policy is based on eliminating our contributions to:
conditions that prevent or undermine any resident’s ability to meet their basic needs
increasing non-renewable resource extraction
increasing non-recyclable or toxic substances that are harmful to the environment and our community
the degradation of nature
For years, NHA has taken consistent steps towards reducing our environmental footprint through a variety of scalable and easily implementable steps, such as:
digital leases and keeping printing paper in-office to a minimum - even the small steps count!
focus on low-flow and energy efficient replacements
transitioning all light fixtures to current efficient standards
moving away from replacing products and working to refurbish or resurface or fix what we can where it makes sense
And now, we’re going even further. With the help of the Canada Greener Affordable Housing Initiative we have received a first-stage grant of $130,000 to allow us to have a study done of our 4 largest buildings in which they will assess the current condition of the buildings; an Energy Auditing and Energy Modelling study for each. Each provide different insights that assist in the next study, and all are covered by the grant.
The independent contractors will provide us with a thorough breakdown and understanding of the efficiency in these buildings, literally ranking recommended upgrades from small-scale to large-scale to help us understand the roadmap to the future of more resilient and sustainable buildings.
From NHA’s perspective resident comfort is of top concern, especially as it pertains to climate resiliency, heat management, and managing the smoke byproduct of increasing wildfires across the region.
The studies will begin this summer and the hope is that they can be used to inform NHA’s plans for 2025! We are committed to looking for more grants, allotting funds, and generally ensuring the long-term comfort of our residents – and the protection of the environment. This study is a huge step in ensuring we know the best ways to do that without having to guess – so we can move forward with a plan, allowing us to make the biggest environmental impact we can, with financial prudence and strategy.
Our goal in sharing our approach to environmental sustainability is to encourage developers and housing providers of all types to consider environmental strategies - not only for new and modern builds, but for purpose-built rentals and aging assets as well.
We can make change even with 40 year old assets by preserving what already exists and making the changes we can to ensure the future of those assets – and the future of our organization - as part of the solution.