The next meeting of Weatherize Harrisonburg/Rockingham will be on:
Monday, April 20, 2015 5:00-6:30PM, Gilkerson Community Activities Center Craft Room 2
Westover Park
305 S.Dogwood Dr., Harrisonburg.
All welcome!
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We are helping to plan a Public Meeting with representatives of Community Housing Partners sponsored by the Northeast Neighborhood Association on Thursday, March 26 at 7:00 PM, Simms Center, 620 Simms Ave., Harrisonburg.
If you qualify as a low-to-moderate income household, Community Housing Partners can help reduce your energy bills, make your home more comfortable, energy efficient and affordable year round. Clients approved for the Weatherization Assistance Program will receive a free energy audit which will determine the work that can be done in your home.
Join the Northeast Neighborhood Association at this meeting with representatives of Community Housing Partners and Weatherize Harrisonburg/Rockingham to learn more and obtain an application.
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February 26, 2015, Meeting at the downtown library:
Our agenda for the meeting is to learn who you all are and where your interests and expertise lie. Are you interested in helping to ferret out all existing weatherization programs and funding sources, whether “official” or volunteer? Do you work with an agency or business or volunteer group already involved in a program ? Do you know groups of people who might be in need of having their houses worked on? Do you have useful contacts with any of the above or would you like to develop some?
We want to flesh out the list we’ve begun from online sources and add to it with personal contacts, and we need your help to gather as much information as we can. Only then can we decide the best ways of making the information available to the people who need it, whether it’s an online website, public meetings, or going door to door–or all of the above.
We can also decide how often we need to meet, when, and where.
Hope to see you tomorrow.
Joni Grady, Joy Loving, Les Grady
Find our working document of resources here: WHAT WE KNOW and DON’T KNOW about Local Weatherization/Energy efficiency options. Please offer any comments and contributions you may have!
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We ended the advocacy workshop last month talking about ways to improve the energy efficiency of low and middle income homes in our area. Energy efficiency is the cleanest, cheapest fuel there is. It is one of the cornerstones of the President’s Climate Action Plan. It can save low and middle income families real dollars and let them benefit even more should a revenue neutral carbon fee be put in place. And the feds have been working on it since 1976, almost 40 years! Here in Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a proclamation designating October 30, 2014, as Weatherization Day. The WAP (Weatherization Assistance Program) network was also recognized at the Governor’s Housing Conference in Norfolk, Virginia last November.
There are other programs that Valley residents could tap into if they only knew about them and had some assistance in making use of them. Members of the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley have decided to create an ad hoc committee to:
1) create a database of programs already in place or potentially available, the people involved, what they offer and to whom
2) get the information out to the people who need it and help them connect to the help that’s offered
3) hopefully hold a one-day volunteer weatherization event, put actual (work) boots on the ground
We need your help. The first step is the research and data gathering, an activity a lot of you who came to the workshop were very interested in! We have begun making lists of program/contacts, just as we did at the workshop, but we also need to figure out exactly what information we need to put into the database. And when that’s done, we need people who will gather that information from the online links and then call the contacts to fill in missing information.
I know you’re interested in making a real difference in the Valley so join us for an hour to plan and organize. Also, please let us know if you’re interested in the project but just can’t make the meeting.
Joni Grady, ad hoc committee on Energy Efficiency
contactcaav[at]gmail.com
Update, February 16, 2015.
Joy Loving and I have been busily gathering some background information to find out what we know and what we don’t know about the weatherization options available to low and middle income residents of Virginia and Harrisonburg in particular.
Please look it over–it’s the Weatherization document on Google Drive –and make any comments (using Review) you might have about people you know, groups that you know, etc. When we do meet, we’ll at least have this as a basis for making a plan for further action and know what blanks we need to fill in. We’ll update it as we continue to find more clues to what we can do and we’ll incorporate your comments appropriately. One overall impression that I have gotten is that Virginia and Harrisonburg are strong supporters of energy efficiency action–as long as the feds are paying for it. Which means that there will be ample opportunity for advocacy as well as local action.
We have been asked to attend the NorthEast Neighborhood Association meeting Thursday, February 19 at 7pm at Simms School to introduce what we’re thinking of doing and the information we need from homeowners.
I’m excited about the opportunities we have for making even a small difference where we are.
Joni Grady
540-209-9198
Climate Action Alliance of the Valley 