Home Depot: $30M Green Building initiative

[From Philanthropy News Digest]

The Home Depot Foundation and Habitat for Humanity International have announced the 2010-11 grant recipients of the Partners in Sustainable Building program, a five-year, $30 million green building initiative designed to incorporate sustainable building practices into five thousand homes nationwide.

More than 135 Habitat affiliates across forty-two states will receive a $3,000 grant for each home built that meets Energy Star standards and up to $5,000 for each one built to a higher green standard. Over the next year, the grantees are expected to build 2,400 homes.

To date, participating affiliates have certified nearly fifteen hundred homes nationwide. By incorporating sustainable practices and using energy-efficient, durable materials in the construction process, many of the homes achieved green building certification with little additional cost, while owners of the homes have reported lower utility bills and noticeable health benefits.

“Habitat for Humanity International and the Home Depot Foundation Announce 2010 'Partners in Sustainable Building' Program Grantees.” Home Depot Foundation Press Release 9/08/10.

Choice Neighborhoods

Department of Housing and Urban Development: Choice Neighborhoods Initiative: Planning and Implementation Grants
Application deadline: October 26, 2010
This program provides support for implementation efforts to transform neighborhoods of concentrated poverty into mixed-income neighborhoods of long-term viability, grow communities and metropolitan areas, support positive outcomes for all residents, and ensure that current residents benefit from transformation. Support is also provided for planning efforts for the development of comprehensive neighborhood transformation plans that integrate effective strategies to implement public and/or assisted housing revitalization, the coordination and design of supportive services, and neighborhood-level planning to improve a range of neighborhood assets.

Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training Grants Program

Section 104(k)(5)(A)(iii) of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to publish guidance to assist applicants in preparing proposals/applications for grants to provide environmental training to facilitate the management, assessment, and cleanup of sites contaminated by solid and hazardous waste.

EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER) provides funds to empower States, communities, Tribes and nonprofits to prevent, inventory, assess, clean up and reuse sites where real or perceived contamination exists and does so by working through OSWER's Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization (OBLR); Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery; Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation; Office of Underground Storage Tanks; Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office; Center for Program Analysis; the Innovations, Partnerships, and Communication Office; and Office of Emergency Management.

In 2010, OBLR undertook an effort to more closely collaborate on workforce development and job training with other programs within OSWER to develop a job training cooperative agreement opportunity that includes expanded training in other environmental media outside the traditional scope of just brownfields.

As a result of this collaboration, the former "Brownfields Job Training Grants Program" was expanded and will now be referred to as the "Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training (EWDJT) Grants Program."

Through a notice in the September 1, 2010 FEDERAL REGISTER, EPA is soliciting comments on the new FY 2011 Application Guidelines proposed for the Program.

Comments will be accepted through September 13, 2010. EPA expects to release a Request for Applications (RFA) based on these revised application guidelines in October 2010 with an anticipated deadline for submission of applications in January 2011.

The draft application guidelines/RFA can be downloaded at http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/. If you do not have Internet access and require hard copies of the draft guidelines, please contact Joseph Bruss at (202) 566-2772. Please send any comments to Joseph Bruss no later than September 13, 2010.

YouthBuild Walmart Foundation grants

[Philanthropy News Digest] The Walmart Foundation has announced a $2.6 million grant to YouthBuild USA to support education and job training for low-income youth.

The grant will provide training in green building skills to two thousand 16- to 24-year-olds while they work toward their GEDs or high school diplomas. Through YouthBuild programs, the young people will help build affordable housing units for homeless and poor people in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Vermont, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

“The Walmart Foundation Awards $2.6 Million to YouthBuild USA.” Walmart Foundation Press Release 8/11/10.

Nonprofit ranked as top national builder

[From Philanthropy News Digest] With the housing and financial crises having dealt a blow to the nation's large, publicly traded home builders, Habitat for Humanity has emerged as one of the top builders in the country, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Habitat, which was founded thirty-four years ago in Americus, Georgia, to build, repair, and rehabilitate homes for low-income families, recently was ranked eighth on a closely watched industry list compiled by Builder magazine of the nation's top ten builders, based on the number of homes sold and closed. Habitat's closings were down by 3 percent in 2009, to 5,294, while two of its competitors on the list, the Ryland Group and Hovnanian Enterprise, saw their closings fall by 30 percent and 50 percent, respectively. "We're a lot less tied to the market as a whole," said Mark Andrews, Habitat's senior director for U.S. operations. "We've been able to keep chugging along at a pretty solid pace."

This was the first year Habitat appeared on the Builder list, and it could be the last. The nation's public home builders, itching for recovery, have been ramping up construction, while Habitat is focusing its attention on acquiring and rehabilitating vacant, foreclosed homes and making them available for sale. The recession also has strained Habitat's finances; last year, the organization laid off 8 percent of its corporate staff and its year-over-year cash donations declined by 9 percent, to $171.8 million.

Governor Rendell Announces More Than $600 Million Available For School Districts for New Construction, Energy-Savings, and Science

Dozens of school districts across Pennsylvania will get a funding boost for a wide range of new construction projects, with attractive financing that will save hundreds of millions of dollars, Governor Edward G. Rendell announced today. Learn more.

Weatherization

Pennsylvanians are invited to offer feedback on proposed changes to the state’s weatherization program intended to better serve the public and help residents lower their energy bills, the Department of Community and Economic Development said today. Learn more. View plan changes.