WASHINGTON D.C.- Yesterday, Kevin O’Connor, CEO of RUPCO – an affordable housing organization committed to creating homes, supporting people, and improving communities in the Hudson Valley- attended the White House Summit on Climate Resiliency and Sustainability in Affordable Housing. O’Connor was one of thirty-eight national housing leaders that included housing owners, developers, and asset managers to meet with Administration officials along with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development staff to discuss best practices for incorporating physical climate risk reduction, resilience, and sustainability into affordable housing portfolios and opportunities for leveraging federal dollars for bolstering this work.
The summit was part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s additional measures to protect communities from extreme heat using President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act to reduce the risks posed by extreme heat and other climate impacts after millions of Americans have been severely impacted by extreme heat waves, which are growing in intensity, frequency, and duration due to climate change.
RUPCO remains committed to finding new ways to forge sustainable housing solutions for communities in the Hudson Valley; currently, the agency is developing 56 units of senior and workforce in Tannersville that will obtain Passive House (PHIUS) certification that has received local approvals. RUPCO has been a member of the U.S. Green Building Council since 2007 and has developed award-winning housing projects that include the LEED Platinum certified Energy Square (Kingston), the first net-zero for living affordable housing development in New York State, which houses 56 mixed-income apartments. The Lace Mill (Kingston), a 55-unit development with a preference for artists, employs various sustainable approaches and Green Building techniques, including a rooftop 160 kW photovoltaic (solar) panel array. Woodstock Commons, a 53-apartment multi-generational campus awarded Gold-Level LEED certification, was one of the first nine LEED-eligible affordable housing projects in upstate NY.
