How affordable housing impacts public health and environmental justice (interview with pete gombert of indiedwell and goodwell)
Pete Gombert (@pgombert) is the founder of GoodWell Venture Partners (@goodwellworld), which oversees the GoodWell Certified label, and the co-founder of indieDwell (@indiedwell), a Public Benefit Corporation focused on building durable, healthy, affordable and energy-efficient homes to help address our housing crisis.
In this podcast episode, Pete sheds light on what it means for companies and organizations to meet GoodWell's minimum ethical standard for how they treat their employees; how affordable housing is connected to public health and environmental justice; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Pete and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Power to Change by Luna Bec
“It’s essential that we ensure that we are not only providing access to housing but that we are making sure that the housing has the right elements to create a healthy indoor air quality.”
If you feel inspired by this episode, please consider donating a gift of support of any amount today!
This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological balance, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or any podcast app to stay informed and updated on our latest episodes.
On how affordable housing relates to public health:
"When you're in an unstable housing environment, it causes so much stress on your life that it becomes very difficult for you to be a productive member of society, and it becomes this deep, cascading swirl of events that drag you down and away from the chances of being healthy—whether physically healthy, mentally healthy, or able to hold down a job.
We incur these stresses in our lives that are unnatural to us, and then those stresses get passed on to the public in the form of healthcare (or sick care) costs.
That is a big, emerging field of science and data. It is proving to be really smart and to be a good investment for cities, counties, and states to start thinking about providing access to safe, affordable housing.
Ultimately, even if you're just looking at it financially, you're going to be saving money by housing those who would otherwise be accessing services from an unstable housing environment.”
On how to ensure healthy indoor air quality in affordable housing:
"We spend about 70% of our time indoors. And when we're in an environment where we have volatile organic compounds (VOCs) being off-gassed from the elements in our homes, we essentially inhale chemicals that make us sick.
Oftentimes, in the affordable housing industry, we're using products [that off-gas VOCs] because they are less expensive.
[But it's essential] we ensure we are not only providing access to housing, but also that the housing has the right elements to create healthy indoor air quality—things like an energy recovery ventilator (which we include in every one of our homes) that bring in fresh air 24 hours a day and pump out stale air are critical to maintaining indoor air quality.”
Final words of wisdom:
“Keep a positive attitude, become more aware, and support everyone that you possibly can that's doing even the smallest thing right.”
