Promote Green Affordable Housing Development by

This thesis examines development barriers to green buildings, particularly to green affordable housing. Green buildings offer intangible benefits in the form of improved environment and health through better air quality. Certain green features also offer significant life-cycle operating savings. These advantages are particularly valuable for affordable housing projects, where low operating costs are critical to affordability and higher indoor air quality is beneficial to modest-income residents that can rarely affect the quality of their living environment. Furthermore, there are many monetary, regulatory, and technical regulations and incentives in the U.S. to promote green building development. Notwithstanding the above advantages and supports, green affordable housing is not yet standard practice. Information and incentives are identified as two of the most important and easy-to-implement tools to promote green affordable housing development. Examples o