Empowerhouse: A Sustainable Housing Alternative
Last Updated: Apr 13, 2025To help curb the effects of global climate change, more homeowners are building new or remodeling existing homes to reduce their carbon footprint. Buildings, both commercial and residential, account for 39 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. Transitioning our existing building stock toward net-zero or carbon-zero homes is an important part of creating a post-carbon economy.
A sustainable home also makes economic sense. Energy-efficient, high-performance homes in the Washington DC area, for example, sell for 3.5 percent more than homes without sustainability features. Savings on monthly utility bills help pay for sustainable upgrades over time, which is why leading home builders and remodelers recently surveyed by Dodge Data and Analytics expect that almost two out of every three homes they build will be “green” by the year 2020.
Moreover, sustainable home design and construction is broadening beyond high-end, single-family homes to introduce more affordable alternatives, even in communities with low-income residents. One initiative bridging the divide is the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon. For two decades, this competition has challenged groups of college and university students from around the world to design, build, and operate attractive, energy-efficient, solar-powered houses. The competition has resulted in a variety of sustainable housing alternatives, some of which were designed specifically for low-income residents.
Table of Contents
- Empowerhouse: A Public Model for Sustainability
- Net Zero, Synergistic Components
- Passive Home, Productive Home
One of them is Empowerhouse, which was designed and built by students from Parsons School of Design and Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School
Stevens Institute of Technology for the 2011 Solar Decathlon competition. Empowerhouse was exhibited on the National Mall of Washington DC along with other contenders in the competition. Empowerhouse then relocated to Washington DC´s Deanwood neighborhood where it was transformed into a duplex for two families. Collaborators on the innovative, energy-efficient duplex also included Habitat for Humanity, and Washington, D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development.
Empowerhouse: A Public Model for Sustainability
The design of Empowerhouse grew out of a community-based approach to building affordable, net-zero housing. While many of the homes in the Solar Decathlon competition come with a multimillion-dollar price tag, the Empowerhouse design team prioritized creating a sustainable home priced for working-class families. Each unit in the duplex sold for $220,000, making Empowerhouse a reasonably priced housing alternative that also allows the homeowners to generate major savings on energy bills.
Lakiya Culley lives in and owns one of the units. A working mother with three children, Culley told a local news station that she found the experience of owning an Empowerhouse unit “surreal when I stepped into the finished product… I was amazed. It was more than I could even imagine.” Culley participated in a home-ownership program that allowed her to purchase the unit for $220,000, according to Teresa Hamm, senior project manager, Habitat for Humanity of Washington, D.C.
An underground cistern collects excess rainwater that can be used for irrigation, or water the gardens, during droughts and dry months. Off-street parking areas have permeable pavers that reduce stormwater runoff and maximize water infiltration into the soil.
Combined, these synergistic, sustainable-design strategies mean Empowerhouse requires less than 4.75 kBtu of energy per square foot per year. This achievement reduces energy demand by up to 80 percent. Designed for transportation and replicability, with details that ensure easy construction for volunteer labor, Empowerhouse is a replicable model for affordable, sustainable homeownership that aims to change the way affordable housing is built in America.
Tobias Roberts
Tobias runs an agroecology farm and a natural building collective in the mountains of El Salvador. He specializes in earthen construction methods and uses permaculture design methods to integrate structures into the sustainability of the landscape.
