Weatherization & Energy Assistance

[Jason Foy]

Hello Everyone

I am reaching out to all Landlords and Rental property owners across Minnesota. I work with and help manage a program that on average spends and invests over 50 million dollars statewide into income-qualified dwellings yearly. I sit on the Energy Assistance Policy Council board, which provides oversight for the federally funded energy assistance program in the state of Minnesota. I also am a member of the Minnesota Weatherization Advisory Group and Weatherization Policy Action Council. These two boards help guide policy and development for the Department of Energy-funded Weatherization program. I have worked in the field for several years and I am a Weatherization & Housing director at a non-profit in Todd, Crow Wing, and Morrison counties. I also work with several large utility companies, which are required to spend a certain amount of their profits on income-qualified dwellings. I am also a real estate investor in central Minnesota. 

I am reaching out as across the state we need to service more renters. Overall 50% of people on energy assistance are renters and less than 2% of renters actually receive full benefits awarded to them under these programs. Our programs focus on lowering energy consumption, ensuring homes are ventilated properly & have efficient heating systems installed in them. The biggest measures we install are attic insulation, wall insulation, furnaces, water heaters, bathroom fans, rim insulation, smoke and co detectors as well as light bulbs and refrigerators. The overall arching goal of the program is to lower income-qualified people's energy bills, improve housing stock to be more energy efficient, and help keep rents affordable for those on a budget. 

These programs are less well known outside of Section 8 Housing vouchers, but we want to develop systems that we are providing equitable access to all of the people partaking in these programs. The benefits of a property owner are pretty outstanding. On single-family dwellings, all the measures we can install are at no cost to the property owner and on dwellings, up to 4 units still have no cost to property owners/investors. Once you get above 5 units each agency has some rules about some contributions given by the property owner.  This means a lot of times we can insulate attics, and install new furnaces, refrigerators, and other energy-saving upgrades on rental properties at no cost to investors. The overall benefit is it helps you save some money on upgrades that don't necessarily bring equity value but do bring value to your tenants and help save them a bit of money so they can more easily afford to pay their rent. 

I am looking for people who would be willing to have a meet-up or would have space for me to speak at a meetup about the programs we are using. I want to build awareness and systems that can ensure we bring that 2% number up to more like 50%. They are 50% of the end recipients, we should be able to get them resources and help you as a property investor at the same time.  Anyone who uses section-8 vouchers should be aware of this program as all your tenants qualify and would be an extreme help in a lot of cases.  

Thank you for taking the time to read this!