The city of Vancouver has released findings of an extensive study on barriers to green homebuilding in the city and Clark County, and will seek builders’ feedback on the study in early 2009.
Funded by a $125,000 grant from the Washington Department of Community, Trade, and Economic Development, the city initiated the study in partnership with Clark County and the Cascadia Region Green Building Council to figure out what is getting in the way of sustainable and affordable residential development.
What they found were several major local barriers to green residential building, including zoning, parking regulations, solar access and stormwater management.
In other areas, there are some gaps with current codes and regulations.
“What we’re doing is trying to get out of the way of people who want to do green building,” said Laura Hudson of the city’s Community Planning Department.
For the study, local planners chose six actual residential projects similar to developments that might be proposed in Clark County. Using those projects’ base plans, planners looked at what it would take for them to meet standards of the CRGBC’s Living Building Challenge, which promotes construction of homes that generate their own power, treat water on-site and have minimal environmental impacts.
When the county received an inquiry about backyard wind turbines, there was no protocol for handling such a request, said Gordy Euler of Clark County Community Planning.
That’s also the case for neighborhoods that would eventually like to generate their own electricity off the grid. There’s not a system in place for communities to share utilities, generate their own power or treat their own water, said Marian Lahav of the city’s Community Planning Department.
Currently, when builders want to use sustainable practices or features on a residential project, they must prove the effectiveness of their materials and methods each time, and often are required to install traditional systems as a back up in case the new method fails.
“Each applicant has to reinvent the wheel,” Lahav said.
Hudson would like to see a library developed of successful local green building projects for use in approving projects.
Project affordability was a key piece of the study, though it was proposed before the housing market fallout.
“We wanted something that was marketable and not just theoretical,” Hudson said.
The study focused on residential building because many issues in commercial development are being studied by the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system. The council’s studies of neighborhood development residential building are in their early stages, Euler said.
Part of the reason green building strategies get more attention on the commercial side is that commercial buildings tend to consume more energy than homes.
“It’s also very visible and developers get kudos for doing it,” Lahav said of green commercial building. “When residential buildings get done there’s some publicity, but there’s not the same audience for it.”
There’s no intent to mandate green building standards locally, Lahav said. Such requirements would have to come from local elected officials.
But streamlining the process for green builders was a priority identified by Vancouver’s Sustainability Coordinator Mike Piper in 2007, Hudson said.
“The sooner we can get out of the way, the sooner it will happen,” Lahav said, noting that the green building industry has taken large strides developing new practices and technology just in the last five years.
Next, the city and county will hold public meetings to get feedback from the building community on the identified barriers to green building and their proposed solutions. Notice of public meetings in January, February and March will be available at www.cityofvancouver.us.
Following those meetings, the committee will work with CRGBC to determine solutions that might come from changes in codes and regulations. Hudson hopes to see a draft of code changes by the end of 2009.
Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com.
