Condensing a Sea of Speech Bubbles into a Report on Energy Efficiency in CT

I can hardly believe that December is only a few days away! I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my work here at the Housing Development Fund. Half of the reason is because I get to speak with and engage with a variety of stakeholders on a daily basis and the other half is because my work is inherently meaningful to me. My focus is on energy efficiency in the residential sector in Connecticut. Through the months of August and October, I engaged with a community of over sixty stakeholders together with a small group of committee chairpersons from other organizations to produce a set of recommendations on residential energy efficiency. We then submitted these recommendations in the form of report to the state’s Energy Efficiency Board and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) as part of public comments for policy planning.

Ethnographic training from anthropology certainly came in handy during the first two months on the job, as I learned about the different stakeholders and organizations in the energy efficiency field. In some ways, I was also learning and adapting to working with others in a more general sense - being cognizant of their roles, interests and the multiple hats people have to wear. I am ever grateful for the examples of others including my organization's CEO Joan Carty for demonstrating sensitivity and tact in this respect. 

While the months leading up to the report involved a fair amount of administrative and detailed work (conference calls, transcriptions, summaries, reminder e-mails etc.), this foundational work provided a corpus of data from which the other chairs  and I could cull recurring stakeholder concerns and ideas for action. Ensuring that the minutes were clearly written, correctly labeled and accessible via the cloud helped make the report writing process much easier and more reflective of stakeholders’ views overall. What did I learn from this? Never look down on the small tasks that make the big tasks better.

In the Finance committee, we heard presentations from energy efficiency programs from seven other states on their financing programs. From this series of webinars, we collected a set of data about their program processes, loan terms and performance in terms of number of loans and delinquency rates. From this information, we did a comparative analyses of programs and uncovered some best practices that we could implement in Connecticut. One of these recommendations was to launch a pilot loan program with credit unions and community development financial institutions, I am excited to say that this is in the works! My organization, HDF, is currently in the midst of launching a loan program for low-income households in small multifamily units while the Clean Energy and Finance Investment Authority (CEFIA) is planning on launching another pilot with credit unions in January 2013. 

Since the publication of the Megacommunities Stakeholder Report, I’ve gotten the chance to represent this group of stakeholders at several meetings. On November 16, I presented the recommendations on a panel at Connecticut’s Green Economy Summit, an event organized by the Connecticut Working Families Party. Other members of the panel were representatives from the Governor’s Office and DEEP, who spoke about the state’s Comprehensive Energy Strategy (CES). More recently, I provided a brief summary of the recommendations at the Building Efficiency Technical Meeting to DEEP staff members as part of public comments for the CES and presented several questions together with Kerry, one of our Megacommunities chairpersons. I am grateful for these opportunities to represent my organization, as well as the stakeholders who participated in these discussions. 

Attending these events, as well as the monthly meetings of the Energy Efficiency Board, has enabled me to interact in person with many of the stakeholders who I had spoken with during the conference calls and webinars in the previous months. It was enjoyable to finally be able to put a face to the names and voices I had gotten to know. We’re in the process of launching two more committees (or working groups, as we call them) in the next few months. I’m looking forward to fostering more conversations!

Maximizing downtime

Today, the folks at my office experienced a morning and afternoon of technological limbo. We have been in the midst of a server upgrade since last week and the people from our Internet Service Provider (who will not be named) were in the office doing some work today. As a result, we were offline for most of the day and not just that – we had to log out of our computers.

Since we could not use our desktops, I was unable to do my normal tasks such as replying to e-mails and compiling documents. Instead, I wandered over to where Mary, my fellow PP55 fellow, sits and we had a conversation. What happened was that we saw people we don’t normally see creep out of their offices and talk to each other. (I’m guilty of the same thing – sitting with my headphones on and my door closed when I’m taking minutes from conference calls.)

Mary and I were discussing our social media efforts when a brainwave hit – why don’t we grab some photos of the staff at the Housing Development Fund and post a sound-bite from each of them on our Facebook page? This could give prospective clients a better idea of who the people “behind-the-scenes” are and what they actually do.

This led to a conversation about photographers and events with our Director of Operations, Joanne, who sits in an office near Mary. This was when we realized that we really should make sure we have the personal contact information of the event photographer we really like, so that we keep in touch even if she were to leave the company she is working for right now.

Later on, our colleague Debbie, the Director of Counseling, came over and told us about a credit workshop she was going to run in the afternoon. I asked her if we could take a look at her slides since Mary and I were just starting out in terms of building our credit history. Not only did we get to read the slides, but Debbie also gave us a nutshell version of her workshop which was really useful.

And then, since the computers were still not online, Mary and I joined in a massive collective effort led by Valerie, our Director of Lending, to organize our filing system – checking and ordering the client files alphabetically from left-to-right, and removing damaged dividers in the drawers. Since we had five people sorting through the drawers, we got that done within an hour.

Takeaways? Downtime doesn’t need to be wasted time. It can be the time to do important things (like doing "maintenance" for the filing system) that usually take a backseat when we are constantly barraged by e-mails and other tasks. Downtime is a great time to connect with colleagues face-to-face. This might be that opportunity to walk over and learn from the expertise of someone else in your organization. In the midst of your conversations, you might even come up with some innovative ideas. Come to think about it, downtime can be pretty productive too.  

September at HDF

It’s been just month since I started my fellowship at the Housing Development Fund in Stamford, Connecticut (allow with my fellow Fellow, Sabrina.) My title is “Development Assistant,” which I have learned encompasses a wide variety of roles!

After just two days on the job, I found myself in Cincinnati at the 2012 NeighborWorks Training Institute. I took classes about company branding and grant-writing, and participated in the 2012 Young Professionals Symposium. It was a great opportunity to get to know some of my co-workers,  meet other professionals from all over the country, and generally to get a crash course in the field of community development and housing!

Recently, I’ve been involved in the “Communications” part of Development and Communications. My first big project was putting together and sending out our summer newsletter, which was a great way to get informed about HDF’s initiatives and achievements. Hitting ‘send’ on a message to over 4,000 people was an interesting experience!

I’ve also been organizing several events coming up in the next few months, from a ribbon-cutting on a new property whose construction HDF financed, to a Post-Purchase meeting following up with clients who have purchased their first home through our First Time Homebuyer Program, to an event celebrating HDF’s charter with NeighborWorks America at the State Capitol.

When I’m not working on event planning things, I’m updating our website, helping to design invitations and promotional materials, scheduling clients for our First-Time Homebuyer Program, and planning for a database architecture project meeting next week – a good mix of planning procedures, coming up with abstract and creative solutions, and working directly with the people we serve.

Championing affordable housing in CT: Housing Development Fund, Inc.

It has been nearly a month since I started work at the Housing Development Fund (HDF) in Stamford, CT. So far, I've really enjoyed the process of learning and getting involved at work. HDF is a community development financial institution serving three counties in the state of Connecticut. The mission of HDF is to facilitate the development of affordable housing, both rental and homeownership, and to assist individuals and households to enter into responsible homeownership. Thus, HDF provides services such as counseling, lending and homeowner education, supporting a range of clients from those who aspire to become first-time homeowners to people seeking to avoid foreclosure on their properties. At the moment, HDF is working towards incorporating energy efficiency financing into its portfolio. That's where my fellowship comes in!

My focus area at the moment is supporting program innovation in residential energy efficiency for the state of Connecticut.  This involves co-ordinating a series of stakeholder discussions that will feed into the planning process of the state's Energy Efficiency Board. To say that I jumped into the deep end right at the start would not be an exaggeration. On my second day at work, I attended a energy efficiency workshop in New Britain, CT where representatives from the state government, utility companies, nonprofits and home energy contractors engaged in a day of presentations and best practice sharing. I was tasked with taking notes and following up with the event via a survey and the launch of working groups that would craft recommendations for the Energy Efficiency Board.

Last week, my organization sent several staff members including the two PP55 fellows to a training conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. We were there for almost the entire working week.  I attended a course entitled "Green Building Fundamentals for Affordable Housing" where I learned about building science principles and how they could be applied to green building projects. The course provided great basic knowledge about the importance of good insulation, ventilation, air sealing and energy efficiency. Beyond that, I got to visit several nonprofit organizations who were engaged in neighborhood revitalization in their areas. It was inspiring to see how groups such as Gabriel's Place and the Northside Business Association and Community Council were bringing about real change in the community through their work. Gabriel's Place hosts a community garden which brings fresh food to a food desert community where the last supermarket closed down in 2009. Their youth employment program hires local youth to work on the gardens (two paid hours every three hours of work) which encourages young people to adopt healthier eating styles while providing a source of part-time income for them. Northside Business Association has been buying and redeveloping abandoned buildings to attract new homeowners and businesses to the neighborhood - literally taking over streets controlled by druglords and gangs. In addition to learning about these "green" community transformations, I also got to watch a Reds game at the stadium and taste Cincinnati chili! It's been a really fun first month on the job and I look forward to sharing more soon.