Cleveland's EcoVillage: green and affordable housing through a network alliance

Abstract

This article presents a case study of the inter-organizational network that formed to produce four housing projects in Cleveland's EcoVillage designed to integrate social equity and ecological stewardship as the basis for neighborhood redevelopment. Our paper builds on concepts of community development and housing production through inter-organizational networks spanning nonprofit, public, and private organizations that developed and supported four “green” and affordable housing projects. We are interested in understanding how development of the housing projects changed and connected traditional neighborhood development and ecologically-oriented organizations and how their interaction changed the practice of housing production and environmental and sustainability advocacy locally and regionally. The results of the study reveal that the marriage of green and affordable housing in Cleveland, despite some challenges, was viewed as important and beneficial by the organizations involved, and resulted in a range of demonstration projects that not only changed the EcoVillage, but affected other neighborhood housing projects in Cleveland as well. The projects resulted in enhanced capacity for green housing production through creation of a new network of organizations spanning the housing and environmental sustainability fields of practice that continues to support sustainable housing and neighborhood development in Cleveland.

Keywords:

• affordability
• green housing
• inter-organizational networks
• neighborhood development

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Eli Auerbach and Amelia Caldwell, graduate students in the Master of Urban Planning, Design, and Development program for their assistance with the project.

Notes

¹Beach was a former environmental reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer and founded EcoCity Cleveland as an advocacy and planning organization in 1992. Now the GreenCityBlueLake Institute (http://www.gcbl.org), the entire EcoCity Cleveland web pages, with extensive materials about the EcoVillage, are available through the GCBL website.

²The study was completed by W. Kellogg and the Center for Neighborhood Development at the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.

³Projects include creation of community and market gardens, creation of neighborhood bike paths and walking trails, two new neighborhood parks, a new “green” Rapid Transit Station that includes community space and a small park, an intensive weatherization program in the neighborhood, solar panels at the neighborhood middle school, work with the city to make two new bridges in the neighborhood more pedestrian-friendly, numerous events to bolster neighborhood cohesion, outreach and programming to neighborhood schools, and redesign of the twenty acres of greenspace surrounding the city's community recreation center to be sustainable.

⁴Participation by Building Science was funded through the Building America Program, which provides research money through the US Department of Energy to teams that assist communities with development of new housing types. The program teams develop prototype green housing, monitor environmental performance, and make design adjustments for model homes. The program's objectives are to build homes that use less energy, are faster to build, are lower cost, and provide a healthy environment for inhabitants (Pettit 2005).

⁵Ohio Green Communities is a program of Enterprise Community Partners, Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing, and the Ohio Housing Finance Agency. The program's purpose is to “make environmentally sustainable development the mainstream in the affordable housing industry” (CHN 2009). To date three projects have been designated, representing 257 green dwelling units and reached a milestone of 100,000 households that have received energy conservation and utility assistance.