Dedham Savings Community Foundation supports weatherization work with $25K grant

A $25,000 grant from the Dedham Savings Community Foundation will help South Boston NDC lower the utility costs for tenants in two multifamily buildings the nonprofit purchased last year.

The grant was awarded to support weatherization and energy efficiency improvements to two buildings on Woodward Street in Andrew Square. South Boston NDC purchased the Woodward Street buildings in early 2019 through the City of Boston’s Acquisition Opportunity Program (AOP), which helps convert market-rate housing into permanently affordable homes. 

In South Boston, where median rents have jumped nearly 30% since 2010, creating new affordable homes is a critical tool in fighting displacement, and converting existing buildings is much faster and typically less expensive than building new housing from the ground up.

Improvements were needed to make the Woodward Street apartments more energy efficient and code compliant, but because these buildings are still in the process of converting to affordable, South Boston NDC does not yet qualify for programs designed to help make repairs and improvements to affordable housing. 

“Our tenants are already overburdened by heating and cooling costs because the buildings were not weatherized properly in the past,” said South Boston NDC Executive Director Donna Brown. “We couldn’t wait another year or two to become eligible for low-cost improvement programs while our tenants grappled with such high costs, so we decided to invest in these improvements ourselves. It would not be fair to our tenants to wait.”

In 2019, South Boston NDC worked with MassSave to add insulation to the apartments and install energy-saving devices, like digital thermostats and low-flow faucets and showerheads. Replacing windows and converting the heating systems will make the biggest difference to tenants’ utility bills and the buildings’ environmental impact, and those projects are next on the list for South Boston NDC.

The Dedham Savings Community Foundation grant covers a significant portion of the window replacement work, which is scheduled for the spring. Dedham Savings also made donations this year to help local small businesses, which were hit especially hard by the pandemic.

“We are grateful for this Dedham Savings Community Foundation grant, and for Dedham Savings’ continued support of the South Boston community,” said Brown. 

The weatherization and energy efficiency work at Woodward Street is part of South Boston NDC’s larger climate action initiative. Since 2019, the organization has been working to reduce its own carbon footprint, and to raise awareness of how climate change is impacting the South Boston neighborhood. Read more about South Boston NDC’s climate action work at www.sbndc.org/climate-action.