Judy Smith is the Executive Director and one of the founders of homeWORD, a non-profit organization based in Missoula, Montana.  homeWORD focuses on providing affordable housing to residents of the Missoula area, and on infusing those projects with sustainable building and design principles.  Judy accepted the first annual PLACEMATTERS Innovator in Place Award on behalf of homeWORD at the conference this fall.  John Fox spoke with Judy about homeWORD's strategies and innovative projects.

What first motivated homeWORD to get into the business of developing affordable housing for families in Missoula?
 
It was actually the other way around. As WORD [Women's Opportunity and Resource Development, Inc.], we were already working with women and single-parent families in need and began to hear from our program participants that they could not find an affordable place to live. Almost no housing was built in Montana in the ‘80s because of a downturn in the economy, so we had a housing availability crisis as we began to grow in western Montana in the ‘90s. We wanted to directly address the housing need, so when HUD approached us (WORD) to become a CHDO [Community Housing Development Organization], we were ready. 
 
What motivated the organization to simultaneously commit to sustainable, energy-efficient design standards and affordability?
 
Several founders of homeWORD, both on the Board and the early staff, had a long-term interest in sustainability and energy efficiency. That’s pretty common here in western Montana. We also cared a lot about aesthetics and livability for the folks who would be the residents of our developments. We wanted to put it all together because it was the right thing to do. We also knew all along that homeWORD would never build Missoula out of the affordable housing crisis by itself. Instead, we wanted to model innovations that other developers could incorporate in a larger effort to address the housing crisis.

One of the first public events we did was an alternative building materials expo, which grew into our annual sustainability tours. We later found out that it was also cost-effective; we save money on alternate building materials, we save money on maintenance and replacement, we save money on energy bills, and those savings can be applied to our rents. Sustainability also makes housing more livable; it’s much healthier for families, communities, and the environment to have non-toxic paints, recycled carpet that doesn’t give off gas, access to a community garden, solar- heated water, and more.
 
Has building sustainable, energy-efficient homes led to greater costs to you and/or residents of your developments?
 
As I mentioned earlier, over the long term homeWORD’s way of building actually saves money. We keep the housing we build affordable for over 40 years, so we have a long-term commitment to each development. In the short-term we do need more capital per unit to build in all of our features. So far we have been able to get that capital by demonstrating what we can do. Funders interested in sustainable, green features want to be part of our projects. Once they see a completed project, they want to be part of the next one as well. It never costs the residents more, though. The rent for HUD-subsidized [U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development] housing is always 30% of income or lower and homeWORD targets households at 50% or below of AMI [Area Median Income] for our developments.
 
Can you give us a sense of the families homeWORD serves?
 
Our primary target has been single-parent families, often with young kids and very limited resources; or, as we say, the most in need. They need to be working or have another income source such as a housing voucher or SSI [Supplemental Security Income] so they can pay the rent. Many of the families consist of moms and kids, with the moms working one or two minimum wage jobs. In Gold Dust and Orchard Gardens, our latest developments, we are mixing “target populations” to create more diverse communities. We have some families with little kids, some seniors, and some folks with disabilities. All of these households are 50% or below the AMI.
 
Do you try to address communities’ distinct “heart and soul” or character in your projects, or are you in fact helping to shape and evolve that heart and soul?
 
It is very important to us to fit into and work with the neighborhoods where we develop our projects. Each development homeWORD has done is different because each reflects the context of where it is built. We do charrettes with the neighborhood, potential residents and housing supporters for each project. We take visions from the charrettes and build them into the projects. For example, at Orchard Gardens we have a large barn as our multi-unit building, with parking underground and the resulting open space dedicated to gardens and an orchard. This is because the neighborhood is at the edge of the urbanizing area and the neighbors wanted to keep a semi-rural environment.

At Southern Lights, our new development in Billings, we are working with a Hispanic community neighborhood on the south side of town. At the charrette they were interested in design that integrated with the nearby Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, so we have a bell tower and an interior courtyard. The neighbors also named the development Southern Lights as a statement about their side of town. All of our recent projects have community rooms at the developments that are open for neighborhood meetings and activities. So yes, I think we help heart and soul evolve where we build.
 
Do you see the success of the affordable housing work you're doing in Montana as part of a broader movement of change?
 
We’re beginning to see and participate in a national dialogue about sustainable affordable housing. Green building conferences are starting to invite affordable housing developers like homeWORD and affordable housing conferences are having sessions on integrating green building techniques as long-term money savers. homeWORD definitely sees itself as a change agent in Montana. We hoping to see a change in approach so cost-effectiveness will be come a central tenet of green building and sustainable building materials will become available to a much broader market. We feel that homeWORD is a part of that push to open up important connections between affordability and sustainability. We also want to see a change in approach to building all housing so that it does honor a sense of place. Community building is a design issue in important ways, one that we embrace. 
 
At PLACEMATTERS06 we heard you, John Abrams (who was interviewed in December, 2005 for this column) and other place Innovators express the philosophy, "Just do it!" (apologies to Nike). Do you see it as your job to model success and prove the naysayers wrong?
 
Yes. From the beginning we wanted to make a statement about the housing crisis that went way beyond the old ideas. We wanted to show what affordable housing could be like if folks with values like ours had the resources and will to do it. We wanted to model respect for the people living there as well the surrounding neighborhoods and the natural environment. We wanted our developments to be livable, human scale, linked to green space and trails, energy efficient, sustainable, beautiful, and the list goes on. We were a group of people with experience creating successful projects and saw no reason why we could not figure out how to do this work as well.

From what I've seen of your developments, I'd love to live in one myself. Do you secretly enjoy the fact that your affordable housing is better designed and more attractive than much of the un-affordable housing out there?

I think one of the most fun things is to give a tour of one of our developments to a funder or a decision maker and have them say with surprise at the end that they would really like to live there themselves. We should all be able to have this opportunity.