Burlington surveying residents about loan program that would help pay for greener homes

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Published October 6, 2021 at 9:12 pm

The City of Burlington is asking for resident feedback on a pilot program where residents could get loans to pay for climate-friendly home renovations.

The city has opened a survey, which will be open over the next three weeks until Oct. 25, which will ask for input about a home energy efficiency retrofit (HERO) program. Burlington has partnered with Centre for Climate Change Management at Mohawk College to develop such a program. The recommendations would likely be presented to city council early next year.

With a HERO program, homeowners get low-interest loans from the city in order to pay for energy conservation and quality-of-life improvements to their homes. A municipality can borrow money at much lower interest rates than the typical individual borrower. The loans are usually applied to the property rather than the borrowers (in the event of sale). Neighbouring Hamilton has a similar loans program for replacing lead pipes in private residences.

The Take Action Burlington group has stated that 98 per cent of homes in Burlington and Hamilton that were built before 2017 will need to be retrofitted in order to meet the cities’ carbon reduction goals by 2050.

The survey, which is intended to be completable in eight to 10 minutes, is available at getinvolvedburlington.ca.

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