Building Healthy Communities

I’m at the National League of Cities annual meeting in Washington. The President, Mayor Ron Loveridge from Riverside, CA, just announced our new partnership with NLC around sustainability. Together, we will be helping local leaders think about making their cities run more efficiently, and more economically, for the long term.  (To see more of the resources we’re providing cities, see our Sustainable Cities Institute website.)

Attending the conference are about 1,000 city leaders – mayors, aldermen, council members and staff – who have gathered to talk about the issues they are facing. Unfortunately, the list of issues is long and seems to grow every day. And finding solutions is particularly difficult given the budget situations cities are facing now and will continue to face for at least several more years.

Because they have so many problems that need to be addressed, it’s interesting to see what these leaders have picked to be on their focused agenda. Their four primary issues are 1) job creation, 2) strengthening and stabilizing the housing market, 3) investing in transportation infrastructure, and 4) energy efficiency and conservation. Now I know that list covers a lot of complicated ground, but those are the ones the local leaders are talking about. I found this list of particular interest because it aligns so closely with the Foundation’s focus on creating healthy affordable homes as the cornerstone of sustainable communities.  In fact, our stated vision is for all families:

• to have healthy, efficient homes they can afford over the long-term;
• to have access to safe, vibrant parks and greenspaces; and
• to receive the economic, social and environmental benefits of living in a sustainable community.

I guess the similarities could be by coincidence or from lack of creativity or imagination on the part of each of our organizations. I think, and hope, that instead it’s because we each understand that these are long-term issues facing families, neighborhoods and governments across the country that need to be addressed now. And while we urgently need to find solutions, we must also think about whether these solutions will continue to work over time and whether they will cause more or different problems in the future. That is, the solutions need to be sustainable – in the broadest sense of the word. Here’s what I mean:

First and foremost, the issues are economic. We have to return our families to financial stability, which will allow our communities and governments to become stable again as well. Employment (or more accurately, unemployment) and the housing market are inextricably linked: if you don’t have a job, you can’t pay the rent or mortgage; if you don’t have a stable place to live, you aren’t going to be able to hold down a job. If you lose your job or your home, there’s a pretty good chance it’s just a matter of time before you lose the other. And we’ve sadly seen what happens to cities when their property tax and sales tax collections start decreasing as families struggle.

Second, a home has to be affordable not just to move into, but to live in as well. Once you pay the rent or mortgage, you have to have enough money left to pay the utilities as well. At this point, energy efficiency should be a given for all new homes, and everyone should be doing the best he or she can to save energy no matter how efficient or inefficient their home may be – even if that just means turning out the lights when you leave a room. The same is true for cities: they should be making their buildings operate as efficiently as possible. Otherwise, you’re just throwing money out the window or flushing it down the toilet or leaving money on the table or whatever metaphor you want to use.

Finally, place matters: the location of your home and the options you have for getting there determines where you can work and what you can do outside of work. Transportation costs have to be a factor in calculating whether a family is going to be able to live in a home. Putting environmental considerations aside, commutes that eat up a family’s budget and time aren’t smart, and they aren’t sustainable. That’s why we encourage the development of homes that are within walking distance of places where people want to be or close to mass transit and are in areas with safe, green places to relax and play.

I hope that if you look at it like that, the National League of Cities and The Home Depot Foundation don’t share the same priorities because sustainability is the hot topic of the moment or because we just happened upon them. Instead, I hope you agree that we’ve made these issues our priority because they are important and practical and they make sense for today and for the long haul.

If you’d like to learn more about The Home Depot Foundation and our initiatives to support healthy, affordable housing in sustainable communities, please visit our website.)