May 1, 2009 — Every 80 minutes, another low-income family moves into a better place to live with the help of the Enterprise Foundation, a nonprofit group rebuilding homes, neighborhoods and lives across the country. In an era of housing foreclosures and vanishing jobs, Enterprise is rescuing communities, introducing neighborhood solutions through public-private partnerships with financial institutions, government offices and community organizations.

The most recent addition to those partnerships is the Institute for Building Technology and Safety (IBTS), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting public safety and energy efficiency in the building environment nationwide. IBTS has worked with low-income and affordable housing initiatives for more than 30 years, acting as the manufactured and modular housing monitoring agent for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

IBTS has a tremendously broad array of expertise to bring to the table to help Enterprise stabilize and restore communities, and make them more energy efficient. IBTS's Energy Manager, Kevin Powell, is a certified LEED/AP Rater, Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) Home Energy Rater, and ENERGY STAR Rater. IBTS has experts in everything from disaster management services to training, helping new building officials to obtain their certifications.

IBTS will be serving Enterprise as a technical advisor to affordable and green developers working on Green Communities projects. Enterprise's goal is to match specific green technical expertise to the most urgent development needs in order to increase overall building performance and maximize energy, water, and health savings for low-income residents. In addition to creating a national registry, they will offer green technical assistance grants to qualified green affordable housing developers. This grant fund will encourage participating developers to contract with IBTS in order to support on-site energy assessments, design review, construction monitoring, performance evaluation, and resident operations training in underserved communities.

IBTS has worked since 1974 to be ready to provide every one of those services at need. And the need to serve, preserve and rebuild America's low-income communities has never been greater.