Hot Air from the HACP

The Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh is digging itself into a giant hole,it seems:

Big drills roared at Northview Heights last week, their truck-mounted bits boring 300-foot-deep wells in the rocky earth, seeking neither oil nor gas, but only access to the subterranean temperatures that promise to warm, cool, and save money.

The drilling of geothermal wells is part of the transformation of the 501-apartment Northview, plus its 91-unit high rise, into models of energy efficiency.

Eventually, the Pittsburgh Housing Authority's 3,300 occupied apartments, plus 200 that are now empty, will get an energy overhaul. It's a $25 million project run by Minneapolis-based Honeywell that involves everything from weatherstripping to new refrigerators, and is guaranteed to pay for itself.

OK, fine so according to the report (and unless I'm reading this wrong), this translates into $800,000 a year in savings -- or up to $9,600,000 in today's dollars -- for the geothermal wells. Now, that means that the rest of the savings, or a maximum of $28,800,000 is from other mechanisms, like weatherstripping, new refrigerators, low flow toilets and shower heads, etc., etc. There's no indication in the article how much money it costs to dig and operate geothermal wells and how much it costs to do low tech solutions.

My question, therefore, is whether the geothermal heating actually is providing a net benefit to HACP or whether it only works, financially speaking, if it is wrapped up with the low-tech stuff. And, if the latter, why are we going out of our way to do the geothermal work... unless it was the only way that Honeywell could make money off of it.

Our good buddy Fester argues,

Geo-thermal air conditioning will significantly reduce peak demand for expensive summer time electricity and geo-thermal heating provides a much higher and thus cheaper temperature base for winter heating. Maintenance will be needed, but ongoing costs for fuel for these base heating/cooling needs will be massively lower. And it is damn hard for an apartment to lose access to the earth for non-payment of a bill, so it provides for a bit of a fiscal cushion for some tenants.

Ah, and you'll notice that I emphasized a bit there, what does that all mean in the context of HACP's long term public housing strategy?

It means, quite frankly, that Northview, Homewood North and Arlington Heights aren't going anywhere. This means that communities that are currently cut off from the rest of the neighborhood and away from jobs and services, will continue to be cut off from jobs and services for the foreseeable future. It means that there is no indication in HACP's plans that there are even considering anything else beyond the current isolation model of public housing... models that they are taking equally great pride in destroying up in the Middle Hill and West Oakland. It means that we've quite honestly given up on integrating public housing into the larger community, and are OK with segregating people in low-income ghettos.*

And this all says nothing, by the way, about the waning and waxing need for public housing in this city, and how that plays a part in HACP's long term facility needs.

So, while I appreciate what HACP is trying to do, I get the feeling that it's fundamentally messed up.

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*Too much?

Public Housing & Garfield

The Post-Gazette has an article about the rebuilding of the Garfield Public Housing in today's edition. Here are the nuts and bolts:

When the reconstruction effort was announced in April 2006, it was billed as a $60 million project involving 265 homes that would meld seamlessly into the rest of the neighborhood. The local public investment in the 90-unit first phase, to include 20 market-rate apartments, was put at $10 million.

Not included then: the cost of preparing the site and building roads and sewers. Not anticipated: a market downturn that reduced the value of federal tax credits backing the project.

Now the local public investment in the first phase is expected to be $17.4 million, and the authority may make another $3 million loan to KBK...

Housing Authority Executive Director A. Fulton Meachem Jr. said Friday that he knew a year ago that he had yet to identify $4.1 million needed for roads and sewers. He was holding off on committing his agency's money while he sought state funds...

The gap was filled when [Former HACP Chairman Pat] Ford got a $2 million commitment from the Water Authority and the Housing Authority put in $2.1 million.

And so on.

Dawdling over the Pat Ford scandal once again, Rich Lord doesn't get to, what is in my mind, the big issue until the last few paragraphs:

Some in the community, though, are wondering whether the final product will truly mesh with the rest of Garfield, or remain isolated, allowing it to revert to its troubled form. An older plan involved abandoning some land near the highest part of Garfield Heights and instead building lower down, right into the street grid that runs north of Penn Avenue. That option seems to be off the table.

Indeed, if you look at so much of Pittsburgh's Public and Low Income housing, very little of it is in places that you can get to easily: Addison Terrace, Bedford Dwellings, Arlington Heights, St. Clair Village, Fairywood, Garfield Heights, etc. are all set away from the rest of the communities and, more importantly, without easy access to amenities, necessities, and jobs. Indeed, if you want to get anywhere in these communities, you'll either have to take a long walk, take several buses, a jitney, or drive. None of these options seem sustainable for people that are, by definition, on a low and fixed income. One would have thought that, if HACP was thinking this all the way through, they would have strategically disbursed their public and low income housing throughout the communities or at least provide them with reasonable access to transportation.

I mean, the goal is to get people OUT of public housing and into private housing eventually, right? Right??

Of course, the reason why they didn't is obvious: the Housing Authority had a problem, they had a place that they owned, and they had a budget (and God help them if they deviated from that budget!). It was a short term solution to a long term problem.

It would seem that, as the middle class struggles with $4/gallon gasoline, planners in the Housing Authority should have considered that the costs of transit and access would be equally (if not more) burdensome to the working and lower classes.

But, hey, I'm sure that they'll enjoy replacing Garfield Heights in another 50 years.