Jacy Marmaduke

jmarmaduke@coloradoan.com

When Darci Clark and her family started the Fort Collins house hunt in 2014, they weren’t looking for The Ritz-Carlton. In a city with a vacancy rate of 0.23 percent, four walls and a roof would suffice.

They settled for the left half of a white clapboard duplex in east Fort Collins. The ‘70s-era Craigslist rental was in the family’s budget but came with single-pane windows and no insulation.

“We were warned,” about what that would mean for chilly nights, Clark said. “We had a next-door neighbor who said, ‘You’ve got to do something, or else you’ll freeze your butt off in the winter.’”

For Fort Collins renters, though, “doing something” is harder than it sounds.

Large-scale energy efficiency upgrades that cut utility bills and make a home more comfortable – think adding insulation, replacing old windows, upgrading a cranky water heater — are often out of the question for people who don’t own their homes. That lack of agency is becoming increasingly problematic as Fort Collins, a city where more than 45 percent of homes are rented, strives to bolster energy efficiency community-wide and consequently reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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The city's Climate Action plan calls for the city to reduce community greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2030. Households account for 27 percent of electrical and natural gas consumption, according to the plan.

Fred Kirsch, director of Community for Sustainable Energy, has spent years knocking on doors and presenting to city council to advocate for sustainable energy policies for all Fort Collins residents. He said there's a long way to go for renters.

“Rental houses tend to be the ones that need the most work done, and the people who live in them have the least resources to do it,” he said.

City staff calls the renters' energy efficiency dilemma the “split incentive”: One person owns the property; another lives in it and pays the utility bills for it. What incentive does a property owner have to pay for new insulation in a rental unit when the electricity bill has someone else’s name on it?

“That’s kind of the core issue of efficiency for rented and leased properties,” John Phelan, energy services manager for Fort Collins Utilities, said. “It’s gonna be a challenge that we’ll have to find a solution for.”

Fort Collins Utilities since 2013 has offered low-interest loans for home efficiency improvements, including insulation and air sealing, heating and cooling, solar installation and water service line repairs. The program allows property owners to finance expensive upgrades through small monthly payments on their utility bills. The city has facilitated 60 loans for a total of $600,000.

But the program is a tough sell for renters, who can only take part if they persuade their property managers to take out the loan themselves. To Phelan’s knowledge, few rental properties have taken part in the loan program.

Kirsch is pushing the city to allow tenant billing for the loan program, so the payments could be transferred from renter to renter rather than being tied to the property owner. Property owners would still need to sign off on the upgrades but tenant billing could make the program a more feasible option for renters who are less likely to stay for the entire loan repayment period.

Problem is Utilities’ current billing software isn’t compatible with tenant billing, Phelan said. The department plans to modify the software to make it so.

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Kirsch said he’s heard that line for years and has seen no changes. Phelan said the department is tentatively planning an overhaul of its billing software in 2017 or 2018 and isn’t sure if adding tenant billing is worth the expenditure before then.

Utilities staff isn't sure how much any software changes would cost and wouldn’t say how much the city is willing to spend.

The other issue for renters is one of investment. Energy efficiency upgrades pay for themselves in about 10 to 15 years depending on the project, Phelan estimated. That’s not fast enough for people left strapped for cash by Fort Collins’ average rent of $1,260 a month as of September 2015.

Lori Roland, who owns four single-family homes in Fort Collins that she rents mostly to students, said she paid for insulation upgrades and replaced furnaces at the houses during the last few years because she knew her tenants wouldn’t be able to afford it and wanted them to stay warm in the winter.

“I was getting phone calls every December from tenants saying, ‘Lori, I’m cold,’” Roland said.

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Some of the upgrades cost thousands of dollars, and Roland is doubtful she’ll see a financial return on the investment until she sells the houses. Even then, it may not be dollar for dollar.

“There are a number of people who really do care about the property and want their tenants to be comfortable,” she said. “But for some of the bigger property managers – I know some of them, and they’re good people, but you’re working for a business. It’s not a charity.”

That philosophy has left some renters, like Clark, searching for do-it-yourself tricks to save on bills.

Thermal curtains hang from the windows in winter; blackout curtains in summer. Her husband used masking tape and shrink wrap to keep the single-pane windows from frosting over. LED and CFL bulbs light every room.

Clark, her husband and her two daughters, transplants from southern Utah, made the changes as soon as they moved in. Clark said they would do more if they could, but she’s not optimistic. Getting the go-ahead for home repairs has proved a hassle so far, she said.

“It was a shock coming from a place where people were proud of their homes, even if they didn’t live in them, to here where it’s, ‘How much money can you give me?’” she said. “It feels like our home is just an object to them.”

Reporter Jacy Marmaduke covers environment and breaking news for the Coloradoan. Follow her on Twitter at @jacymarmaduke and Facebook at facebook.com/jacymarmaduke1.