16. Partner Spotlight: Heading Home Incorporated
Community Solar Means Opportunity
by Shruti Gupta, Investor Development Associate
Sunwealth’s 362 kW installation in at Unifirst in Woburn, MA will provide discounted power to both Heading Home and LICSS participants.
It is difficult to conceptualize the sheer scale of homelessness in the United States. In Massachusetts alone, nearly eighteen thousand people experience homelessness on any given day. An unprecedented statistic came to light in January 2020: more single adults were living outside than in shelters. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge called the growth of homelessness during 2020 “devastating”.
Heading Home is working to change that.
Founded in 1974, Heading Home serves homeless and formerly homeless individuals and families in the Greater Boston area by providing emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent housing, and supportive services. Heading Home’s mission is not just to eradicate homelessness in the Greater Boston area, but also to empower their clients by giving them all of the necessary resources and community based tools to sustain their housing long term.
One of Heading Home's projects with Sunwealth is a 362 kW community solar project that will provide participants with an estimated $160,597 in savings over the project life.
How It Works
Unifirst will host the solar projects at their storage site in Woburn, MA.
Heading Home, the primary offtaker, and Low-Income Community Shared Solar (LICSS) participants, the other offtakers for the project, will purchase clean power at a 25% discount from Sunwealth.
Green Earth Energy Photovoltaic will design, build, and maintain the project.
Sunwealth developed, manages, and operates this project which drew $1.74M in tax equity capital provided by one of our community bank investors.
A Multidimensional Partnership
Chief Development Officer Suzanne Picher described the partnership between Sunwealth and Heading Home as a multi-faceted opportunity. Firstly, the organization experiences major energy savings. According to CFO Kris Dougert, “Over the course of the project lifetime, the savings are transformational.” Secondly, the discounted power goes toward their housing and shelter buildings, allowing clients to access green power and its benefits.
Picher also sees the partnership as a two-way education opportunity between both organizations: learning about one another’s work is an important piece in addressing the unique challenges that lie at the intersection of housing and environmental justice issues.
The Role of Solar
To Heading Home, community solar is a vehicle to realize collective impact. Picher describes housing as the epicenter of a bigger ecosystem that includes solar as a connection point. Not only is clean energy a powerful tool that helps tackle multiple social impact-related goals simultaneously in a tangible, connected way, it also builds a sense of community through partnerships and shared value systems.
“We’re an organization [that] believes in breaking cycles of intergenerational poverty, providing a pathway toward a better future for all people, and we know Sunwealth shares that same core value,” Picher said. “Actually being able to activate on that held belief is invaluable.”
Conclusion
One of the reasons that it is so difficult to conceptualize the homelessness crisis is because too many times, unhoused populations are rendered invisible through “out of sight, out of mind” policies. From hostile architecture to bulldozing encampments, many initiatives criminalize homelessness by making it illegal for people to eat, sleep, sit, or even stand in public places.
In a just clean energy transition, marginalized and vulnerable populations are not just seen, but also served. Sunwealth is proud to be a part of the conversation about affordable housing and the housing advocacy ecosystem by helping reduce utility debt through clean energy savings. We are committed to racial and economic justice; partnering with values-aligned organizations like Heading Home helps us and our community bank investment partners put these principles into practice.
