Partner Spotlight: Heading Home
“Solar Means Opportunity” - Putting Principles into Practice
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 18,000 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
1. Unifirst, one of the largest uniform manufacturing companies in North America, will host the solar project at their storage site in Woburn, MA.
2. Longmeadow, MA-based developer Green Earth Energy Photovoltaic will design, build and maintain the project.
3. Sunwealth will develop, finance, manage and operate the solar project.
4. Heading Home and income-eligible residents of Greater Boston will purchase clean energy credits from the project through a Low-Income Community Shared Solar (LICSS) agreement at a discount of 25%, applied to their regular energy bills.
A Multidimensional Partnership
Heading Home’s Chief Financial Officer Kris Dougert and Chief Development Officer Suzanne Picher described the partnership between Sunwealth and Heading Home as a multidimensional: creating financial, environmental and educational opportunities.
First and foremost, the nonprofit organization benefits from the energy savings. Heading Home applies these energy savings to their housing and shelter buildings, which in turn means the organization can direct its valuable resources to serving its clients. According to Dougert, “Over the course of the project lifetime, the savings are transformational.”
Second, Picher points out, the partnership allows Heading Home to access clean energy and its benefits — doing right by the environment while also doing what’s right for the organization.
Picher says the partnership also provides a two-way education opportunity between both organizations: providing Heading Home with an opportunity to learn more about clean energy, while providing Sunwealth with insight about the housing advocacy ecosystem and how to ensure the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable residents have access to clean energy’s economic and environmental benefits. Learning from one another and working in partnership are critical in addressing the unique challenges that lie at the intersection of housing and environmental justice issues.
Using Community Solar to Realize Collective Impact
To Heading Home, community solar provides 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 does clean energy help the organization 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.”
Putting Principles into Practice
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 partner with organizations like Heading Home that create pathways out of homelessness and strengthen our affordable housing ecosystem. As we work to build a better and more inclusive clean energy future, partners like Heading Home help us translate principles around racial and economic justice into practice.
Shruti Gupta is an Investor Development Associate at Sunwealth. She is passionate about environmental justice and equitable access to clean energy. Outside of Sunwealth, Shruti can be found gardening or looking for a good spot to hammock.