LiveGreenInPortland.com

Join us at the Portland Plan Fairs!
Find an event near you: March 2nd, 6th, 10th and 11th

The Portland Plan will be the City’s road map for the next 25 years, guiding our direction as the city grows and changes. We face some real challenges, and our response to those challenges will create the Portland of 2035 — the city of our children and grandchildren.
Phase Three of the Portland Plan presents draft strategies for Portland’s future. Developed with the community, these integrated strategies address Portlanders’ key concerns about jobs, education, health, access and opportunity. Learn more about the strategies at an upcoming fair, in your Curbsider or on this website.

Achieving great things takes guts. As we work through the process of building the Portland Plan, we need to look at the tough issues the City faces now and the problems that impact our day-to-day lives. But we also need to imagine the future we want 25 years down the road. What do we want to achieve? What kinds of big, ambitious changes will we need to make Portland a better place?  Learn more

The Obama Administration’s newly unveiled housing finance plan may have clouded the picture for policymakers, lenders and bond buyers, but it made the future for borrowers starkly clear: It’s going to cost more to get a home loan.  Mortgages have already become more expensive in recent weeks, as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began adding risk fees to almost all of the loans they sponsor. Average rates on 30-year fixed rate-loans have already moved from 4.4% in November to 5.2% now, according to Mortgage Marvel, a loan comparison web site.  In a much-awaited report released Friday, the administration proposed winding down the role of the two government-sponsored mortgage repackagers and left open for prolonged Washington debate what would remain in their place.  It also called for higher down payments, a lower cap on the amount of mortgage that could be guaranteed and another increase in the fees Freddie and Fannie charge in the short term. All of those measures are likely to steepen the cost of securing a home mortgage.

“Rates are probably on the rise, due to the increases in fees,” said Keith Gumbinger of HSH Associates, a mortgage research firm. “But will the borrowing process get better, faster or easier as a result of reforms? No.”If you can effect a transaction now, it’s probably not a bad idea,” Gumbinger said

Rates are also likely to rise as the economy improves and the rock-bottom interest rates that have been protected by the Federal Reserve Board edge up.  The rising credit market rates will have a bigger effect on mortgages than the winding down of Freddie and Fannie, said Scott Happ, president of Mortgagebot, a company that builds and runs mortgage web sites.  The cost of loans that are not handled by the guaranteed mortgages and those that aren’t guaranteed is roughly 0.6 percentage points now, he said.

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Energy-efficient lighting can illuminate a whole new world of cost savings and enhance the work environment or guest experience. Lighting upgrades are the best—and often, the easiest—first step in any energy-efficiency program and can pay back your investment cost through energy savings in as little as two years or less. Energy Trust offers cash incentives for lighting and lighting control projects. Energy Trust offers incentives for a variety of lighting fixtures and controls (see below). Custom incentives are also available for lighting projects and are 35 percent of the total approved project cost, not to exceed $0.17/annual kilowatt hour (kWh). All standard and custom lighting projects must be pre-approved by Energy Trust.

Limited-time bonus offer has been extended to November 1, 2011: Energy Trust is offering a bonus incentive on upgrades from T12 to high-performance T8 lamps with electronic ballasts. Measures marked with an asterisk below are eligible for the bonus incentive. Learn more at EnergyTrust.org

Green building (also known as green construction or sustainable building) is the practice of creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building’s life-cycle: from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. This practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort.

Although new technologies are constantly being developed to complement current practices in creating greener structures, the common objective is that green buildings are designed to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by:

• Efficiently using energy, water, and other resources
• Protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity
• Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation

A similar concept is natural building, which is usually on a smaller scale and tends to focus on the use of natural materials that are available locally. Other related topics include sustainable design and green architecture. Green building does not specifically address the issue of the retrofitting existing homes.