Operations: Sustainable sites lead to simpler life

San Marco, a Walking Oasis in Jacksonville, FL. Every neighborhood has some walkability or simple mobility element.

In the prior post on LEED v3 changes, I touched on the sustainable sites requirement. Essentially LEED is attempting to encourage a bit of smart growth by reducing the number of vehicle trips generated by development (and separately develop in areas with existing infrastructure or minimally disturbed greenfields). For this post, I’m focusing on existing communities that either are not actually or do not consider themselves sustainable sites.

Operationally, you can create a sustainable site by studying your neighborhood, using resources such as Yelp, Urban Spoon, and other location-based web services to help residents find their way. For those exploring social media, culling local event listings provides great fodder for resident-focused Twitter feeds.

Celebrating or publicizing neighborhood based events, services, or vendors enables managers to serve as (apartment) community resources, local economic generators, and pushes the apartment community into the center of a resident’s life, rather than simply a place to sleep. Understanding and sharing information about locally-based resources puts a little more meat to the notion of “Life made simple.”

Focusing on your immediate surroundings improves your local outreach efforts by showing businesses 1) your property is a part of the neighborhood, not just a parcel; 2) better acquaints you with the employers and employees of the neighborhood. Finding potential residents within your local surroundings greatly improves the chances of renewal, and I strongly believe reduces your overall marketing costs.

As an operationally-focused asset manager with a portfolio of over 50 properties nationwide, I consistently found that 35-50% of my new resident prospects came through drive-by. When added to the number of resident referrals, that number was consistently between 40-65% of total applications. Signage, landscaping, and general appearance (all of which affect existing residents as well) is a far stronger indicator of the living environment than a static print ad. Reaching prospects while in the context of searching for a new home and residents while in the context of their daily life is a better use of marketing efforts because it provides something of use to your customers. Very few management companies do this well and with such a low hurdle, any sustained effort is appreciated.

At every property visit, in every conversation with managers and leasing agents, I asked some variation of the following questions, my keys to a ‘sustainable site’:
1. Do you know where you are? Do you know how to get here?
2. Who lives here and why?
3. Where do your residents work?
4. What is there to do around here?
5. Where is the nearest park, house of worship, child care center, grocery store, and school?
6. How do you involve the property with the surrounding community?

If you can’t identify your property as part of a larger community and explain that role to a resident, you’re not trying to improve sustainability, you’re not looking beyond your property line, but most damning, you’re not trying to make life simpler for your residents.

Rent Green: Useful links for further reading

We’ve mentioned previously that the Intertubes are full of information about living sustainably. A couple of articles on “Green Renting” might be helpful to fill out your knowledge:

1. Utne Reader’s “Green Renting Revolution” (January 2009) By the way, failing to include links in your article is just not acceptable in 2009.
2. Green Renter, provides a small (but growing!) database of self-selected ‘green apartment communities’ in major metropolitan areas. I think there’s still more work to be done, but additional information can be found courtesy of Sustainable Industries.
3. National Geographic (!) provides a smooth interface to some useful information at The Green Guide. The Home & Garden section shares useful information about household cleaners.
4. Apartment Therapy posts eclectic items on apartment living. One of their recurring features is a focus on small spaces. You can find more of this vein by using a tag search.
5. Planet Green has a multi-page discussion via one of their “How-to” guides. They include a helpful 10 point list of property tips. (additional How-to guides available)
6. Grist’s Umbra Fisk lists some ways to be a Greener Renter.

(Image by Peter O. Zierlein / www.peterozierlein.com)

Rent Green: Coffee Grounds and Eric Corey Freed

Shamelessly appropriating the theory behind “Can’t Someone Else Do It?, EPA’s Greenversations posted a recent article about reusing coffee grounds. Among the uses were:
1. Composting or fertilizer
2. Dye paper
3. Flea (and odor) repellant (!)
4. Grease absorption

In our townhouse, coffee grounds are sprinkled around exterior door and window sills to repel ants for an effective and pet friendly insect barrier.

Two weeks ago, Eric Corey Freed, author of Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies offered tips on a greener home to the New York Times. For “space reasons” the NYT only ran 5 of the tips, causing Joe Romm at Climate Progress no end of distress for highlighting impractical, overly simple, or questionable recommendations. Additional correspondence revealed that the NYT cut Eric’s list of 21 to a random 5. Leaving aside the somewhat heated and holier-than-thou storms that occasionally blow across the green world, Joe also embraced the “Can’t Someone Else Do It?”. He linked to, and critiqued, “100 Ways to Conserve“.

Taking just Freed’s 21, many can be used in a rental situation, including:
1. Insulate and turn down the water heater to 125F. (And use the vacation setting)
2. Reduce the amount of water flushed.
3. Replace incandescent bulbs with CFL.
4. Turn off unused lights and electronics.
5. Replace thermostat with a programmable model. Even on a 60 year old house with 80 year old wiring, it only took me about 15 minutes.
6. Request low or no VOC paints.
7. Caulk or seal around tubs and windows. Weather seal doors.
8. Install a low flow showerhead. I replaced one a few weeks ago.
9. Never buy bottled water again.
10. Install a ceiling fan (sometimes you can get one installed at lease renewal).

(Via Greenversations and Green Building Law Update.)

Rent Green: Where does your life take place?

Out on the Intertubes, there’s a wealth of information about living a sustainable lifestyle. Here at MFG, we’ll try to identify those that are particularly relevant to apartment living.

First and foremost, choose a place to live that is located conveniently for your lifestyle. This means looking at where you work, entertain, and play. So look at a map and start figuring out where your life takes place. If you live in or want to live in a less car-dependent area, be sure to check Walk Score, a great resource for helping to determine how much of your life can be lived without a car.

[Note to owners/managers: Your marketing and leasing efforts should emphasize these benefits. Get to know and love Yelp, Outside.in, and other sites that help define your community. If you don't know what is going on around your property, it's impossible to convey that to your residents. If you can't name three things going on in the next three days, how are you going to convince a prospective resident that you live in a convenient location, that you have an active resident base, or that you're any better than the commodity down the street?]

Once you’ve chosen an area to live in, it’s time to start narrowing down the product types. We’ll get to that in the next entry.

Rent Green: How to be a Green Renter (Series starter)

Note: For those who aren’t using it yet, Twitter is an exceptional tool for exchanging information on operations, marketing, building, and sustainability. I think this will become a series, but the following short post was inspired by @Sallan_Found who asked for information on how to be a green renter.

Many of the improvements that homeowners can make can be easily made by renters. While you obviously can’t do anything structural (e.g. no new windows or a green roof), you should also carefully read your lease for proscribed activities. This might preclude changes to shower heads, replacing washer-type faucets with cartridge faucets, indoor composting, excessive caulking, or replacing appliances, there are many other things you can do to improve your sustainability profile.

Easy things to do are living near transit, shortening shower times, washing clothes with cold water only, and replacing light bulbs (not fixtures!) with CFL bulbs.
If you live in a home, it might be possible to
1. install a programmable thermostat
2. replace aerators (reduce GPM from 2.0 to 0.5)
3. flush with less water (other upgrades here).

If you live in an apartment, the following are easily done:
1. Air dry laundry (does not require outdoor drying)
2. Keep curtains and shades open to heat your rooms.
3. Remove window-mount AC units during the winter.
4. Speak to your landlord about installing ceiling fans.
5. Running dishwashers when fully loaded.
6. Set your fridge to 38-40F (4C) and the freezer to 0-5 (-15C).
7. Don’t use plug-in air fresheners. Open windows, sprinkle (then vacuum) baking soda, burn a beeswax candle, use oils + water spritzer, or a potpourri sachet.

We’ll have more ideas in coming weeks and always welcome suggestions.

(HT: The Green Your… blog)