Getting in Front of Our Work: Investing in Our Properties
This summer has been a great time to dig into capital improvement planning and investments–everything from taking care of our existing buildings, to landscaping, to investing in future properties. We are a small organization with a tight budget committed to deep affordability, so we understand how important each decision is for how to invest in our community. This story shares a bundle of our strategies including: capital improvement planning; steps towards making our buildings green; forward thinking landscaping, and a really exciting update on community investment – see the description in the next story!
This spring, BNCLT hired a consultant to complete our first Capital Needs Assessment. The consultant visited all 32 apartments on our Land Trust to evaluate what each of our buildings will need over the next 20 years. He then put this onto a chart to show a recommended time line for when to address the various needs – so for example, if the boiler in one of our buildings has a shelf life of 20 years, and we are now in year 15 of that time line, the chart tells us to get a new boiler in 2030. We can then try to raise the money or schedule the repairs and improvements in advance – and to prioritize what will be most critical over this time line. This helps us put together our plan for how much to set aside in reserves, plus how much extra we will need to raise through grants or other strategies.
We are also strategizing for other ways to improve our properties and build in efficiencies. This summer we are working with Parterre Garden to transform many of the green areas around the buildings into eco-friendly landscapes with water-tolerant, indigenous plants. The company is collecting input from our residents on what they’d like to see in their yards, and where possible, to include outdoor seating areas so people can enjoy their yards.
We are also on a path towards clean energy and climate friendly buildings! We will soon be adding a solar roof to 14 Leroy, where we completed our full Energy Retrofit last year. The solar credits partially get refunded to us, and we will pass these on to the residents of the building. We will also be receiving additional solar credits to pass on to these residents from another organization. Meanwhile, we are embarking on energy audits and weatherization for our buildings, and over time we will be switching out heating systems in some of our buildings, and moving to fossil-free heat pumps.