Renovate America Passes Key Job-Creation Milestone
Renovate America Passes Key Job-Creation Milestone
Over 25,000 jobs estimated to have been created via innovative HERO PACE financing for home energy, efficiency and resiliency improvements
SAN DIEGO, April 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Renovate America, a leading U.S. provider of home-improvement financing, announced today that its HERO financing option is now estimated to have created more than 25,000 jobs - a key milestone that underscores the economic value of the innovative public-private partnership.
HERO is the nation's leading form of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, which empowers property owners to make energy, efficiency and resiliency improvements and then pay for them over time at a competitive, fixed rate through an additional line item on their property taxes.
Since HERO launched in late 2011, the owners of more than 115,000 homes have used it to make investments that can save energy and water. HERO-financed improvements made to date are projected to save homeowners over $3.45 billion on their utility bills over the expected useful lifetime of the products installed.
PACE financing options like HERO stimulate home renovation activity, which increases demand for local contractor services and brings more money into the local economy. As a result, HERO has supported the creation of an estimated 26,100 regional jobs, many of which are in the local construction sector and cannot be automated or offshored.
Because PACE programs like HERO rely on private financing, the resulting economic and environmental benefits are achieved at no cost to local government budgets.
PACE GETTING STRONGER
Most of the jobs created to date by HERO are in California, where a series of laws passed in 2016 and 2017 have established a robust consumer-protection and regulatory framework for PACE financing in the country's largest PACE market. A new provision of the California laws that took effect on April 1 requires all PACE providers to conduct an ability-to-pay analysis prior to funding to ensure property owners can meet their annual PACE obligation in addition to current debt obligations and basic household expenses.
"PACE enjoys bipartisan support across California, where it is widely viewed as a successful and important policy tool for addressing climate and local economic development priorities," said Renovate America Chief Strategy Officer Ari Matusiak. "We're convinced that PACE is necessary in order to improve the energy performance of the nation's aging housing stock, and that the emerging blueprint for PACE in California - where expanded access to affordable financing is delivered with real and sustained consumer protections - will eventually become the standard for PACE in markets across the country."
About Renovate America
Renovate America offers a tech-enabled financing platform for home improvement and commercial retrofits that empowers communities to modernize and make their housing stock more efficient, while giving small businesses the tools they need to grow. In addition to financing home improvements through an unsecured lending product, Benji, Renovate America offers communities HERO financing. HERO is the leading residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program in the U.S. and has been used by the owners of over 115,000 homes to make energy and efficiency improvements. It is estimated that HERO is on track to save billions of dollars in energy and water bills, and has created over 25,000 local trade jobs that cannot be offshored or automated. Renovate America has built the world's largest green bond platform, with a volume of originations that enables securitization of HERO PACE bonds multiple times a year, attracting international investment to meet U.S. clean-energy objectives.
Contact: Greg Frost
(619) 568-6747
gfrost@renovateamerica.com
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SOURCE Renovate America
