海角社区

Making Homes More Resilient and Affordable

For 15 years, 海角社区 AgCenter鈥檚 LaHouse has showcased storm-resilient and sustainable home construction methods and materials that are both customizable and cost-effective for Louisiana residents who live with the high risk of flooding and wind damage as well as rising insurance premiums and energy bills. LaHouse, short for Louisiana House, is leveraging $500K from the Louisiana Legislature to bring its more than 250 educational exhibits online and add science-based tools to the Louisiana FloodMaps and Flood Safe Home online portals where residents can evaluate their flood risk and make a plan to break the disaster cycle. LaHouse is also positively impacting Louisiana鈥檚 policies, building codes and insurance prices.

鈥淚t鈥檚 all about providing people with the information and resources they need to get away from disaster-repair-repeat,鈥� said Carol Friedland, director of LaHouse. 鈥淧eople naturally want to live on the coast and near water and there鈥檚 a way to do that sustainably, but not if we repeatedly build to fail.鈥�

A long-term partnership between 海角社区 AgCenter鈥檚 LaHouse, the Office of Community Development and the Louisiana Housing Corporation鈥攕tate agencies working to ensure safe and affordable housing for everyone鈥攔ecently led to a statewide policy change on resilient construction for low-income housing.

鈥淭hat vision started with 海角社区鈥檚 technical expertise and our strong partnership with LaHouse and OCD when we asked, 鈥榃hat is a resilient project?鈥欌�� LHC Executive Director Joshua G. Hollins said. 鈥淥ur new standards and guidelines in the 2024 Qualified Allocation Plan are a direct result of what we鈥檝e learned in recent years.鈥�

In addition, statewide building codes are becoming stronger based on 海角社区 research.

鈥淭his has the potential to be our greatest contribution,鈥� Friedland said. 鈥淲ithout the support from the legislature, we wouldn鈥檛 have been able to generate and share enough data and results with the task force and code council to get to this point this quickly.鈥�

鈥淭he current insurance crisis has given us a spotlight on the need for stronger building codes and more resilient construction, but in Louisiana and thanks to LaHouse, we鈥檙e already ahead. Because of our work with 海角社区, we already had in place what we needed to change our building codes. LaHouse predicted this insurance conundrum years ago and helped push the conversation. 海角社区 has been the leading voice and is helping us get to the other side of this crisis.鈥�

Jacquelyn Dadakis, CEO of Green Coast Enterprises and technical committee chair of the Louisiana State Uniform Construction Code Council Freeboard Task Force