How to Power a Renewable Energy Startup

Donnel Baird grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in a low-income neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. “We didn’t have heat that functioned consistently,” he says, “so we had to heat our apartment with the oven, which of course is really dangerous and also unhealthy.” Plus, as Baird notes, “It’s also really bad for the environment.”
Solving several problems at once is what BlocPower, the company Baird founded in 2013, is all about (disclosure: Baird is a member of the NationSwell Council). BlocPower’s software analyzes how buildings operate, recommends ways to save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and then installs renewable energy technologies. The company secures financing for the retrofit projects by grouping multiple buildings together — usually religious institutions, small businesses and public housing, all in underserved communities — and identifying investors. And Baird and his team aren’t just taking on climate change; they’re also addressing unemployment in the New York neighborhoods where they work, by training local workers for jobs in the green economy.
They are certainly big thinkers,” says Rachel Wald, Social Impact Fellowship manager at GLG. The GLG fellowship program provides select social entrepreneurs with free access to its platform and membership of more than 600,000 experts across industries. Baird and BlocPower joined GLG’s 2015 class of fellows with big goals and a clear need for the technical experts with whom GLG could connect them. “Donnel is uniquely suited to be doing this work. He grew up in these communities and knows them really well,” Wald says, adding that Baird is “pretty unafraid.”

GLG Energy 3
The GLG Social Impact Fellowship helped Donnel Baird expand BlocPower to markets outside of the company’s base in New York City.

Baird’s parents — his father is an engineer and his mother is a social worker — are from Guyana. “My mom has a set of values around trying to help the less fortunate,” Baird says. “She built a career around that, and she did pass some of those values on to me.”
Those values have informed Baird’s entire career. He was working for the Obama administration, implementing a green building program as part of the economic stimulus plan, when he got a call from a pastor he knew in Brooklyn. The pastor was looking for help with the energy costs in his church, which were eating up 30 percent of its budget.
When Baird saw how much money energy efficiency and renewable energy projects could save buildings in low-income neighborhoods, the idea for BlocPower was born. He enrolled in Columbia University’s business school and started to explore building a company to take on projects like these.
“I had to quickly learn a lot when I started — about corporate finance and accounting, and a lot of concepts that were foreign to me as a community organizer,” admits Baird. Columbia also gave him exposure to entrepreneurship, which was a little more familiar. “You hear ‘no’ a lot in both entrepreneurship and politics,” Baird says. “You have to talk to lots of people, most of whom tell you no.”
Despite BlocPower’s early promise, there are still obstacles ahead, including the current administration’s tariffs on imported solar equipment and the steep cuts to the corporate tax rate. The latter has reduced companies’ taxes enough to weaken the incentive to seek renewable energy tax credits, Baird says.
“Many people who believe in climate change and want to do something about it have actually given up on the belief that we can do something about it in a massive way,” he says.
But Baird isn’t one of those people. He envisions a total of 3 to 4 million BlocPower-enabled buildings nationwide. And he says that if BlocPower hits those goals it can assist the country in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2 percent. It’s the same goal laid out for the U.S. in the since-abandoned Paris Climate Agreement.
“That’s what’s on the table,” Baird says. “It’s just a matter of getting people to believe.”
So far, BlocPower has worked with 3 percent of the buildings it’s targeted in New York City. The company works with utilities and regulators to electrify the heating systems of 1,000 buildings in the Bronx, and it’s beginning an expansion to Oakland and Los Angeles in California.
Each energy-updated building is another step toward BlocPower’s lofty goals. An example can be found Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, where BlocPower studied an apartment co-op’s energy efficiency and identified interventions, including changing the boiler settings and temperature controls in units. They also connected the co-op’s management with a company that has since installed a solar array on the roof.
Annabelle Heckler is treasurer of the co-op and worked closely with BlocPower on the project. She hopes the solar array will fully power the building’s common spaces and offset electricity costs for tenants. “We’re certainly interested in keeping our building affordable for the long term,” Heckler says, “and we’re also interested in creating a more sustainable and resilient city. New Yorkers really struggled in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and we want to be part of the solution.”
Being part of the solution motivates Baird too. “I have a 3-year-old,” he says. “By the time he’s 50, the question is, ‘What kind of planet is he going to be on?’ That’s really what’s driving me now,” says Baird.
“What we’ve got to do is get back to dreaming big and really going for it, because we don’t really have a choice.”

This article was paid for and produced in partnership with GLG. GLG Social Impact is an initiative of GLG to advance learning and decision-making among distinguished nonprofit and social enterprise leaders. The GLG Social Impact Fellowship provides learning resources to a select group of nonprofits and social enterprises, at no cost. Read more about the program here.

How HUD is Helping Four Cities Rethink Housing Projects

In our opinion, the best prize is always cold, hard cash.
And this year, that’s exactly what four cities are receiving from the federal government after competing for funding to support low-income communities. This year’s winners are using the money to rethink the potential of public housing.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded a total of $119.7 million (about $30 million each) to Norwalk, Connecticut; Columbus, Ohio; Philadelphia and Pittsburgh for its annual Choice Neighborhood Initiative.
These four recipients bested 40 other cities that applied for the urban housing program. Each will combine the grant money with private funding to transform aging public housing and depressed neighborhoods into mixed-income, mixed-use communities, Next City reports.
“By working together, with local and state partners we will show why neighborhoods should always be defined by their potential — not their problems,” said HUD secretary Shaun Donovan. “Together, we will work to ensure that no child’s future is determined by their zip code and expand opportunity for all.”
Donovan, who led President Barack Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Task Force, has made sustainable building a priority at HUD in the wake of recent natural disasters. The agency has collaborated with FEMA in redesigning recovery projects, which extends to Norwalk’s project: rebuilding a blighted public housing development devastated by Sandy.
New units will be built six-and-a-half feet above the floodplain and will be protected by FEMA-funded storm-proofing infrastructures. The new development will also include community gardens, fitness trails and parks with playgrounds and sports fields.
In Pittsburgh, officials will use the grant to redevelop two of the city’s low-income neighborhoods. Plans include a one-to-one replacement of 155 public housing units and development of the area surrounding the new, upscale Ace Hotel.

“It will be the most significant investment in low- and moderate-income communities in the East End in 75 years,” Councilman Ricky Burgess, who represents the neighborhoods, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

HUD began the initiative under President Obama’s order in 2011, awarding Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and New Orleans a total of $122.27 million in grants. Submission for applications for next year’s funding is slated to begin this fall.

MORE: What Cities Can Learn From San Francisco’s Newest Public Housing Project

 

One Key to Higher Test Scores? Affordable Housing

It’s no real surprise that research shows that affordable housing increases families’ health, security, and well-being.
And now, a new study by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore discovered that another benefit: Kids that live in modest homes perform better on tests.
More specifically, “Families spending about 30 percent of their income on housing had children with the best cognitive outcomes,” Sandra J. Newman, the director of Johns Hopkins Center on Housing, Neighborhoods, and Communities, told Phys.org. “It’s worse when you pay too little and worse when you pay too much.”
The study, whose findings are reported in the Journal of Housing Economics and Housing Policy Debate found that when families used more than a third of their income to cover housing expenses — which was the case for 88 percent of the lowest-income families surveyed — they spent less on education boosters such as books, computers, lessons, and trips to museums and performances. The families that spent 20 percent or less on housing tended to live in distressed neighborhoods where the instability impacted the kids’ cognitive performance.
“The markedly poorer performance of children in families with extremely low housing cost burdens undercuts the housing policy assumption that a lower housing cost burden is always best,” Newman said. “Rather than finding a bargain in a good neighborhood, they’re living in low-quality housing with spillover effects on their children’s development.”
When families saw the percentage of income they had to pay to cover their housing decrease, the money they spent on their kids’ enrichment increased. “People are making trade-offs,” study researcher C. Scott Holupka told Phys.org, “and those trade-offs have implications for their children.”
MORE: These Seniors Needed Affordable Housing, And These Kids Needed Love. Together, They’re Beautifully Solving Both Problems.
 
 
 

What Do Kid Rock, John Mellencamp and Mitch Albom Have in Common?

Despite their divergent musical styles of classic rockers John Mellencamp and Z.Z. Top, rap-rocker Kid Rock, and country star Kix Brooks, they’ve come together in the fight to prevent homelessness among veterans.
These well-known Americans are giving their time and money to Toledo, Ohio-based Veterans Matter, a nonprofit working to unite the efforts of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Department of Housing and Development to identify veterans at risk for falling into homelessness and those already on the streets — connecting them with the resources they need to find an affordable place to live.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom is involved with the nonprofit too, serving as the honorary chairman of Veterans Matter’s Michigan chapter, fundraising and speaking to groups to raise awareness of the problem. “Our veterans — those men and women who have sacrificed so much to ensure our freedom—deserve better than a home on the streets,” Albom told Veterans Matter.
Ken Leslie, founder of Veterans Matter who once was homeless himself, explained to Lissa Guyton of ABC13 how the program works: “The VA finds the vets and gets them ready for the housing. HUD finds the section 8 housing long term and we provide the deposit money which is often the last barrier preventing them from getting over the threshold.”
Veterans Matter recently celebrated housing its 200th veteran in six states: Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Indiana, Washington, Tennessee, and Massachusetts.
Leslie told Guyton, “Helping people is probably the most powerful thing there is. There are more than 57,000 vets on the streets of our nation, and many of them are abandoned and forgotten. Some of them are beaten, robbed and even killed on the streets. If that happened behind enemy lines, Americans would be outraged. Veterans Matter is our outrage.”
With more vets helped every year, Veterans Matter will continue to demonstrate the power of transforming that outrage into compassion.  
MORE: Which Celebrity Treats Wounded Vets to a Trip to Disneyland?

These Seniors Needed Affordable Housing, and These Kids Needed Love. Together, They’re Beautifully Solving Both Problems

In Portland, Ore., there’s an idea so innovative that it has managed to bring together two sets of people with different problems — and solve them for both.
Welcome to the Bridge Meadows housing development, which helps elders and kids by providing a supportive environment for families that adopt foster kids alongside 27 units of affordable housing for seniors who agree to pitch in for 10 hours a week to help out with the kids. It’s a solution to a problem you don’t hear about often on the news: According to the PBS News Hour, 15 percent of seniors in America live below the poverty line, which often makes them struggle to find affordable housing. Meanwhile, families who adopt foster children face their own difficulties, as they are pressed for time, money and support.
Jackie Lynn, 60, is in the process of adopting her niece’s children because both of their drug-addicted parents are in jail. She works full time and felt she wasn’t able to give the kids the attention they needed until they moved to Bridge Meadows. Her family is partnered with neighbors Jim and Joy Corcoran, the “elders” who volunteer to spend time with the kids. “They are the reason that we thrive,” Lynn told Cat Wise of the PBS NewsHour. “Jim takes the boys every Sunday morning for about three hours. And they come home excited, with all these wonderful stories. You see children running up to them and giving them hugs. It’s just incredible to watch it.”
Meanwhile, the Corcorans experienced financial trouble after Jim lost his construction job, but now they live comfortably at Bridge Meadows with a $500 monthly rent payment. Joy Corcoran told Wise, “It was really difficult to find any decent housing that we could afford in any regard. And so when we had the opportunity to move here, it was just a godsend. It was like a huge relief.”
Bridge Meadows is funded by rents and donations from corporations and the community, and it provides a myriad of ways for kids and elders to interact every week. Elders lead story times, teach music lessons, tutor kids in school subjects, give them lifts to school and more. Derenda Schubert, the executive director of Bridge Meadows, said that there have been a few families who moved in and found the togetherness a bit too much, but for most of them it’s a perfect fit, and several seniors reported that their health improved through so much interaction. “Connections across the generations is critical, absolutely critical for aging well,” Jim Corcoran told Wise.
Plenty of people agree with Jim — which is why another intergenerational housing development like Bridge Meadows is currently under construction in Portland. But there’s good news for those who don’t live in Oregon, too: The staff of Bridge Meadows is consulting with people across the country who want to start their own such housing projects.
MORE: These Startups Offer Sleek Technological Innovations for the Elderly

How ‘The Golden Girls’ Can Help Solve a Problem Facing Senior Women

“The Golden Girls” went off the air in 1992, but many of us still remember the show about four senior women sharing a home in Miami, in part because there hasn’t been anything else like it on T.V.
It turns out “The Golden Girls” was ahead of its time in more ways than one, and that its model of communal living—with some good-natured bickering thrown in—might provide a solution to a problem facing millions of Baby Boomer women as they reach retirement age. One third of Baby Boomer women live alone, and 50.8 percent of the 78.2 million Boomers in America are women. Many of these single women are divorced, a situation that often leaves their finances in disarray as they head into retirement.
According to the PBS NewsHour, the median income of senior women in Minneapolis was $11,000 less than that for men, which gave Connie Skillingstad an idea. She runs Golden Girl Homes, Inc., which helps match older women in the Twin Cities with others who’d like to reduce loneliness and split expenses by sharing a home. She told Spencer Michels of the NewsHour that each of the women who band together as roommates offers some asset that can help the others. “For example, there are women who have no money, but they have a house. They have space and they can share it with somebody, and it will help them to survive,” she said.
Karen Bush, Louise Machinist, and Jean McQuillan are longtime friends in their 60s, each of them divorced, who now share houses in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Sarasota, Florida. The women reach agreements about cooking, cleaning, finances, and what to do should any of them fall ill. They have legal documents in place stipulating what would happen if any of them are no longer able to take care of themselves. Together, they’re renovating their Florida condo to allow them to age in place. Bush told Michels, “The whole setup that we have here is going to help me be independent for a long time. And at the point at which I can no longer be independent, I will have additional resources to pay for what I need.”
Half a million women over the age of 50 in America live with roommates who are not romantic partners. Now this sounds like a case of smart women banding together to solve their own problems. Could a sitcom be next?
MORE: Why Is This Doctor Telling Grandmas To Balance On One Leg While Brushing Their Teeth

How Straw Bales Helped Solve an Indian Reservation’s Desperate Need for Homes

On South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, 4,000 Oglala Sioux families are in desperate need of homes, and now several groups are working together to solve this problem in an environmentally-friendly way. The Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation has teamed up with the University of Colorado’s Native American Sustainable Housing Initiative to build four prototype houses. South Dakota college students are helping to build homes insulated with straw bales or packed-earth blocks, with radiant floor heating that should save its future inhabitants money, as well as a shallow foundation that’s more energy-efficient than the drafty basements usually found on the reservation. They plan to build 100 such homes, and fulfill the families’ energy needs through solar panels and other energy-saving techniques.
Nick Tilsen, the executive director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation told Nate Seltenrich of High Country News, “We’re trying to build a net-zero affordable house. We’re looking for these 34 acres to be almost like a laboratory for Indian Country, for Pine Ridge, and for the country when it comes to sustainable communities.”
MORE: Can Ancient Native American Techniques Heal Today’s Vets? 

Meet the Landlord Whose Rentals Include a Second Lease on Life

Twelve years ago, Sidney Moore of Battle Creek, Mich., was working at a grocery store when he broke his finger trying to stop a shoplifter. The store offered him work he could perform with his injury, but Moore had a better idea: He cashed out his 401K and bought his first rental property. He earned enough money as a landlord that he continued to buy more properties, and as his business took off, he decided he would only rent to low-income and homeless families. Moore now owns 32 properties, and with the help of the Red Cross, the city of Battle Creek and private donations, he keeps rents low and provides families with the necessities they need to live. He even waives security deposits for those who can’t afford them. Moore’s generosity hasn’t been easy — he’s not sure whether he’ll be able to pay some property taxes that are due this year. But as he told Chuck Carson of the Battle Creek Enquirer, “The more I got into it, I found it’s what made me happy when I looked at a person who didn’t have a chance in the world, when everybody turned them down except me. They just need another chance and I’m that second chance.”