Anne Evens is working to ensure everyone has healthy, safe, and affordable power, water, heat, and cooling – regardless of their income or where in the country they live.
She is the CEO of Elevate, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has helped more than 1.3 million people, saved families more than $129 million in utility bills, retrofitted over 312,000 housing units, and created more than 1,800 clean energy jobs. Evens brings over 30 years of experience in the nonprofit and governmental sectors. She is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health.
A longtime partner of Enterprise, she has been instrumental in merging the affordable housing and clean energy sectors. Her honors include the 2022 Health & Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2022 Heinz Award for the Environment. She spoke with Enterprise about how equity guides her work, and why reaching communities of color is essential.
Since joining Elevate in 2006, you helped grow it from a small shop to a nationwide organization with more than 200 employees. You work with everyone from residents and housing owners to nonprofits and governments – tell us a little about how you serve all these groups today.
We work to create a world where everyone has healthy, safe, and affordable heat, cooling, power, and water. More than 30 million families are struggling with decisions about whether they will be able to heat or eat, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Energy efficiency works, water efficiency works, renewables work.
But we have historically not delivered these benefits to communities of color, who are most in need and have suffered the greatest disinvestment. So we are inspired and motivated to make sure resources now coming largely through the Inflation Reduction Act in terms of home energy rebates and Solar for All programs finally reach the communities that need lower utility bills, stable housing, and good jobs that come with investment.
We talked about Elevate’s comprehensive approach and how it goes well beyond replacing one appliance. How do you work with communities?
Our approach is to meet homeowners and building owners where they are and address their immediate concerns. Sometimes folks come to us in an emergency heat or cooling situation, and we just need to meet that need. In a cold climate, if you lose heat and your pipes freeze – that’s a big risk. And over time, we work with them on a plan to improve efficiency.
People care about their health and the environment and know there are things they can do at no cost and sometimes lower cost. Energy and water costs are not fixed, they are variable. There is so much you can do reduce costs, and even get to a place where you are net-positive and generating enough electricity with solar panels that you’re selling back to the grid.
We are also addressing maintenance issues – it could be roofs, leaks, mold from flooding. We’re making sure the buildings are resilient to more extreme weather. We’re also electrifying heating, hot water, and cooking systems when it makes sense, and adding renewables as quickly as we can.
What motivates you to do this work?
It’s 100% the wonderful people I get to work with at Elevate and in partnership with others. There is this saying that if you go alone, you go quickly, but if you go together, you go far. We believe that going together is required to address the climate crisis, reduce emissions in affordable housing, and put people to work in high-paying jobs of the future, like installing solar panels.
It is inspiring to see people, including second-chance workers, be a part of positive change in their communities. And emerging leaders [exist] across the board – in the climate movement, the housing movement, and the democracy movement. They are big thinkers; they are not thinking incremental solutions.
There are people like Tonika Lewis Johnson, an artist and social justice activist who is telling the story of redlining in Chicago and other cities. She’s rebuilding the blocks in her neighborhood that were destroyed and harmed by redlining and other policies, so that’s inspirational to see.
There is a lot of excitement over federal initiatives like the IRA and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). Is the sector at an inflection point? What kind of changes are you seeing at the intersection of affordable housing and clean energy?
I’m seeing more of both/and as an operating principle. One of the things that was important for Elevate was bridging clean energy and affordable housing and learning how to show up in both ecosystems in a way that brought other partners and voices to the conversation.
Every unit of affordable housing we lose is a tragedy because we are losing stable housing for a family, which we know is important for their future.
We are now consistently talking about affordable housing and energy efficiency together. They are not at odds with each other. In fact, bringing energy efficiency to affordable housing is one of the most significant ways to preserve affordable housing.
Equity is at the heart of Elevate's mission. You discussed how it’s not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do – from multiple perspectives.
We need all the greenhouse gas reduction we can possibly find, and we know that affordable housing, particularly in communities of color, has suffered from decades of neglect. We must correct past harms that are felt from institutional racism in all our systems.
And from a business perspective, we don’t have enough workers and companies to do solar installation and other green jobs. We need to take this opportunity to advance inclusive growth strategies that provide good job opportunities for women, people of color, veterans, and our vibrant immigrant population. We hope many of them become entrepreneurs and not only grow their incomes, but also the wealth of their communities.
You said one of the biggest challenges you see is siloed funding. How do you address that?
Maybe there is funding to address lead or other environmental hazards, or maybe it’s for solar panels or energy efficiency. But when you think about a family and their home, they need a comprehensive solution that works for them because the problems are not siloed.
It’s incumbent on organizations like ours to weave together funding to provide comprehensive solutions. It’s always an imperative, but especially now, that we don’t walk away from families or affordable housing. We’ve got to preserve every affordable housing unit in this country. Just because a home has a problem that is not aligned for a funding source doesn’t mean we walk away. We collaborate with partners and find solutions.
What do you see as your organization’s priorities in the immediate future?
It’s about implementation and making these upgrades happen as quickly as possible with the highest quality, and that we reach the most people. And that we reach people who are struggling the most first. That’s where we’ll have the greatest impact, see the greatest emissions reduction, and save the most money.
So, our message is: join us! There is lot of work that needs to be done, and everyone’s ideas are welcome. We’re taking on a big challenge by addressing climate and racial justice and we need everyone at the table.