East Harlem complex sets sustainability standard for affordable housing

NEW YORK — The city’s Housing Preservation and Development department is showing off the success of a new standard in sustainability for affordable housing.
Overlooking train travelers fast-tracking along Park Avenue in East Harlem shines Sendero Verde, Spanish for “green path.”
A public walkway gives name and mission to the three buildings it bridges, housing more than 700 families. The complex is credited as the largest, all-affordable Passive House-certified project in the nation. The HPD says, “Passive House is a high performance building standard developed by the Passive House Institute (PHI) originally in 1990 and by the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) in 2007.”
“The building itself is just simply using less energy than most buildings, by a lot,” said HPD Chief Sustainability Officer Jen Leone.
The first of more than 25 now-completed HPD Passive House designs, elements incorporated into every aspect of life reduce its energy use by more than half that of a traditional New York City complex of comparable size.
“You can’t see it,” Leone said. “You don’t know that the windows are better than normal windows … and that every breath of air you take is cleaner.”
The complex includes two childhood education centers, a community art program, plus supportive services for the more than 50 formerly unhoused families who have also found a home at Sendero, allowing space for all on the path towards a greener future.
Sendero Verde’s apartments are all in the process of being allocated, but there are still plenty of projects in the pipeline, so HPD advises you to join the agency’s lottery now, if you qualify. To learn more, click here.
HPD also launched a new Green House Fund last week, allowing property owners to offset their emissions by buying credits that fund the agency’s sustainability efforts.
Michelle Oliveros and her family were among the first to move in, after watching the towers take shape from their one-bedroom apartment a few blocks away. Two years later, besides all the luxury amenities available to ease her life, like computer and laundry rooms with terraces, it is the clean air that has quieted her son’s asthma, she said, that has had the biggest impact.
“It’s still giving me goosebumps because we never thought,” Oliveros said.
Rebecca Crowley and Germain Louis went from living in a one-bedroom in Brooklyn with their three children, to a three-bedroom unit in Sendero with space for them all.
“The endgame was making a better environment for my family, so I just I kept going,” Crowley said. “I never in my dreams thought I would have a place this nice.”
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