Sustainability

Defining Sustainable Apartment Living

We take sustainable apartment living as a promise, a promise to make communities like The Perch about conserving resources. Our built LEED Gold community was selected as the Green Builder Media Home of the Year in 2014 and built on a carbon neutral footprint. To say we get excited about green living is an understatement, we define it through things like the use of reverse cycle air-to-water chiller that transfer ambient heat of the parking garage to the hot water supply. Yeah, we're nerding out, but in a very good sustainably eco-way.

Built to a standard, not to a slogan

LEED is a whole-building standard. It looks at how a building is sited, how it uses energy and water, what it is made of, how construction waste is handled, and what the indoor environment is like for the people inside it. Gold is a high tier. What separates that from a marketing claim is that it is measured and verified against criteria the building had no ability to negotiate.

What it means once you live here

Efficiency is easy to talk about in the abstract and easy to feel in practice. Energy efficient windows are the clearest example. They hold temperature better, which means a home that stays comfortable with less effort through a Seattle winter and through the stretch of hot days that now arrives each summer. They also cut street noise, which matters on Capitol Hill. The wood-look flooring is a durability decision as much as an aesthetic one: surfaces that hold up over years do not need replacing, and the greenest material is the one that does not have to be manufactured twice.

The rooftop lounge belongs in this conversation too. Shared outdoor space is a sustainability feature in a dense city, because it gives a small home somewhere to expand into. A studio of 436 square feet works differently when there is a roof deck with grills, city views, and the Olympic Mountains behind them.

Location is part of the math

A building's footprint is not only the building. It is also the driving that living there requires. The Perch sits on Belmont Ave E in Capitol Hill, in a neighborhood where daily life is walkable. Harry's Fine Foods, Single Shot, Analog Coffee, Captain Blacks, and Sol Liquor Lounge are in the surrounding blocks. Tashkent Park and Summit Slope Park are close by, with Cal Anderson Park, Volunteer Park, and Broadway Market in the wider neighborhood. Density done well means fewer trips taken in a car, and that adds up faster than most building features do.

Housing policy is environmental policy

The Perch participates in Seattle's Multifamily Tax Exemption program and Incentive Zoning. Both are city programs designed to keep a range of incomes living in neighborhoods like this one. That belongs on a sustainability page. A well built, low-carbon building that only a narrow slice of the city can live in solves less than it appears to. Building efficiently and keeping the door open are two halves of the same idea.