Earth Day 2025: Sustainable Supportive Housing Is a Key Part of the Climate Solution

Earth Day provides an annual opportunity to reflect on how everyone needs to step up to protect the environment and combat climate change. Concern’s focus on helping our most in-need neighbors by building high-quality affordable housing with on-site supportive services has enabled us to also reduce emissions and improve the health of our communities.

We're doing that with a two-pronged approach.

First, we’re adopting sustainable practices in our construction, rising to meet the state’s challenge of ensuring that all new affordable housing projects are fully electrified. Second, we’re making improvements to existing buildings with older heating and hot water systems that have deteriorated over time. Concern is currently in the process of upgrading these and other systems at several of our buildings on Long Island, installing new, more energy efficient electric heating and hot water systems.

Improving the efficiency of our buildings is a key component to fulfilling New York’s ambitious climate change goals. Direct emissions from the built environment make up roughly 30% of total carbon emissions in the state, so every step to reduce that helps by adding up over time.

These improvements are made possible by funding awarded to Concern by the Community Preservation Corporation’s Climate Friendly Homes Fund (CFHF), which will be used to enhance the energy efficiency of three of Concern’s Long Island Community Residence Single Room Occupancy apartment buildings (CR-SROs): Pollack Gardens, Concern East Patchogue, and Concern Riverhead.

The aim of The Community Preservation Corporation and New York State Homes & Community Renewal (HCR) is to finance electrification retrofits in at least 10,000 units of multifamily housing that serve economically disadvantaged communities to help empower small building owners and nonprofits like Concern to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings and decrease their greenhouse gas emissions.

With the adoption of more energy efficient heating and hot water systems, our programs will not only help the residents we serve to work towards being able to live independently, but we will also help to reduce the environmental impact of our buildings.

Making the switch to energy efficient heating and hot water systems will reduce pollution and improve community health as a result. Cleaner air has been proven to reduce the number of hospitalizations for asthma, strokes and heart attacks and reduce premature births.

The supportive housing community has a significant role to play – not only on Earth Day, but all year-round – to reduce our environmental impact and help foster healthier communities in New York. Together, we can combat climate change one building at a time.