In 2019, RiseBoro Community Partnership, a New York City-based nonprofit developer that owns a portfolio of affordable housing, set out to renovate nine century-old apartment buildings in the city’s rapidly gentrifying Bushwick neighborhood. Not coincidentally, construction began the same year that the city enacted Local Law 97—the landmark legislation establishing strict caps on greenhouse gas emissions for large buildings, setting the stage for mandated mass retrofits.
RiseBoro’s project, titled Casa Pasiva, is novel in more ways than one: not only did RiseBoro complete it to Passive House energy use standards, but it did so largely without disrupting the lives of longtime residents. Leveraging financing from city and state sources, and utilizing the expertise of architect Chris Benedict, the project added new insulative cladding, replaced windows, and installed electric HVAC systems within the exterior walls—eliminating the need for invasive in-unit construction that would have severely inconvenienced residents.
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