WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Energy-efficient housing will have cheaper utility costs and will eventually save consumers money, but developers and buyers continue to turn their heads because of high short-term expenses, experts say.
"People say you can't do affordable green," said Eco-Housing Corp. President Don Tucker, adding that environmentally friendly housing actually saves money because of cheaper utility prices.
The comments were made earlier this month at a discussion held by The National Housing Conference and Enterprise Community Partners.
Affordable green housing, however, is not the same as low-income housing, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of Energy Programs Consortium, a nonprofit that provides consultation to state energy offices.
"These apartments define low-income housing very broadly," Wolfe said. "These are not poor people."
Wolfe said one of the major challenges affordable green housing faces is how to shift buyers' thinking from short-term dollar signs to long-term price efficiency.
"Their most immediate question is how do they pay the bill," he said.
Energy-efficient housing will not be able to break the price barrier until it can be produced more systematically and on a larger scale, he said.
According to Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and expert on energy and environmental policy, homeowners may not be as interested in buying environmentally friendly housing, even if it is affordable.
"The bottom line here is that housing markets are fairly free and open," said Taylor in a phone interview. If there was a demand for green housing, more green housing would be developed, he said.
For some homeowners, green housing may never be affordable, Taylor said.
"(It) depends on where you are, who you are, and what your habits are," he said.
A homeowner who spends a lot on energy and expects prices to rise will gain more from an energy-efficient house than a homeowner who uses little energy and is not worried about rising costs.
Emily Mitchell, a program manager for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, outlined several considerations in order for a building to be considered green, or energy efficient.
Mitchell said that some of LEED's nationally accepted benchmark requirements for green buildings include affordability, health and safety, durability, energy and water efficiency, in addition to others.
Tucker helped develop a LEED certified co-housing in Silver Spring, Md., called Eastern Village Cohousing.
"Here, 50 percent of the units ended up being affordable," said Tucker, explaining that potential buyers who wanted to buy their units at rates lower than the market value were allowed to reduce the cost by working on the development and marketing of the co-house while it was being constructed.
Other reasons Eastern Village was LEED-certified include the fact that they recycled 70 percent of the construction waste and built the complex close to a Metro stop.
"It's very much a team process," Tucker said. Everyone on the project -- including the contractors and sub-contractors -- have to want to achieve energy efficiency.
Wolfe said that achieving widespread green housing is still a distant goal, but states such as New York and California have gone further in creating energy mandates than others.
Wolfe said the American mindset toward becoming energy efficient needs to change.
"We don't think holistically about it. The Europeans think holistically," Wolfe said.
Taylor said Americans don't want to be energy efficient because they'd rather invest in a more lavish lifestyle. Europeans may be more inclined to be energy efficient than Americans because their economy is not as strong.
"As income rises, demand for larger and larger homes probably follows, and U.S. standards of living tend to be high," Taylor said.
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