AFL-CIO Invests $274 Million into LEED-Certified Construction Projects
AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, announced the creation of 1,653 LEED-certified housing units and approximately 4,100 union construction jobs through investments by their Housing Investment Trust (HIT), a fixed-income investment company registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
To date, HIT has committed $274 million to eleven LEED-certified construction projects in Minnesota, California, New York and Massachusetts. These projects include: a 94-unit multifamily complex in San Francisco, a pediatric center in Yonkers, redevelopment of a 92-unit affordable housing complex in Boston and a 337-unit mixed-use community in St. Louis Park (just outside Minneapolis). The sum total of capital invested into these projects is estimated at $660 million.
“The HIT is proud of its long history of socially responsible investing,” said HIT Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer Stephanie Wiggins, in a prepared statement. “Investing in LEED-certified projects that help conserve natural resources while providing healthier places to live and work is just one more way the HIT is making a positive difference in the lives of working people and their communities.”
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a certification system created by the United States Green Building Council with the purpose of providing third-party verification that a building project meets the highest standards in sustainable green building and performance measures. The USGBC considers the following criteria when determining whether or not a project meets LEED certification standards: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. In addition to certifying construction projects, the USGBC offers a LEED professional credential, which has certified over 157,000 building professionals since its inception in 1998.
According to the AFL-CIO website, HIT, first registered as a housing investment trust with the SEC in 1981, manages nearly $4 billion dollars in assets for approximately 350 institutional investors, which include union and major public employee pension plans. Investing almost exclusively in high credit quality multi-family and single family mortgage back securities and other mortgage-backed instruments, HIT targets socially responsible construction projects with a mandate of expanding the supply of affordable housing, creating family-supporting union jobs, opening doors to home ownership for working families and revitalizing communities where union members live and work.
In addition to funding LEED-certified projects, HIT also launched a Construction Jobs Initiative in 2009 (in response to the significant drop-off in construction work as a result of the Great Recession with the goal of creating 10,000 union construction jobs by the Spring of 2011. In the summer of 2010, HIT released a report documenting the progress of this initiative: 9,000 union construction jobs created through $695 million in direct investment.
Image Credit: Matthew Bisanz
This article originally appeared on Just Means.