Poor in Tucson: How to Get Your Home Weatherized for Free

If your finances are strapped and you're (always) looking for ways to maximize your budget, you make have considered ways of reducing your energy expenses. Perhaps you've already changed your thermostat setting to reduce cooling or heating costs. Maybe you wander through the house turning off lights your kids have left on, muttering "Electricity isn't free, you know." Undoubtedly, you know that there are all kinds of ways to weatherize your home to make it more energy efficient, but you've probably discarded weatherization as an option because of the expense.

Consider it again.

Tucson Urban League's Housing Resources Center helps low-income households to repair, renovate, and improve a home for maximum energy efficiency, at no cost to the owner or renter. This is no mere sticking of weather-stripping to the bottom of the doors either: low-income residents can expect to have their homes and energy use habits analyzed by experts, and improvements come in a variety of forms. In addition to such inexpensive and easy improvements as caulking and weather-stripping doors and windows, residents may qualify for new insulation in the attic, walls, and around ducts; water heater and exposed pipe insulation; attic ventilation; sunscreens; painting of roof and exposed ducts, service of an evaporative cooler; replacement of evaporative coolers or motors with two-speed motors, shade trees planted on south/west exposures; installation of an evaporative cooler thermostat; and installation of low-flow shower heads. Not every qualifying resident will receive all of these benefits, but even a few of these measures can have a dramatic effect on energy usage- resulting in reduced energy bills and a more comfortable home.

To qualify, residents need not own the home they reside in- renters also qualify. Household income must be at or below the 2006 Federal Poverty Income Guidelines, which means that a family of three must can gross no more than $2,075 a month ($24,900 annually) to qualify.

Think you may qualify? Contact Tucson Urban League or Pima County for an application!