Fuse: Faiths United For Sustainable Energy

Crossposted at Green for All BlogIt's amazing what a little money can do. As soon as the Obama Billions from the stimulus package started to trickle down, community groups around the nation began to mobilize with a new found zeal. All of a sudden, programs parched by decades of under-funding are springing to life – the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), which has had an average yearly budget of roughly $200 million just received a whopping $5 billion. That money, however, isn’t flowing as freely as it needs to. In this case, state and local agencies which renovate the homes of families with low incomes to be more energy efficient and thus more affordable to live in, are simply overwhelmed.In Miami, Florida – my hometown – the local agency providing weatherization assistance employs two full-time employees and weatherized fewer than 100 homes last year. Now, they have the funds to retrofit 3,000-4,000 homes. This is going to require a new kind of organizing. State and local agencies are not used to h