Welcome to HomeFree
A national initiative supporting affordable housing leaders who are improving human health by using less toxic building materials.
Latest News
The First of Three HBN Webinars Kicks-Off Next Week, Offering Practical Advice On Healthier Materials Selections for Your Next Project
You make all the difference in making healthier and affordable housing more accessible! Get the knowledge you need for healthier materials selections in these three webinar offerings. Choose one or all three webinar topics, where you’ll learn the importance of healthier building materials selection, and get actionable steps for choosing...
Read MoreWhat’s New at HomeFree? Resources to Help You Select Healthier Insulation.
HBN is keeping pace with changes in insulation product offerings with updates to our insulation hazard spectrum. We're also supporting our users by providing on-demand educational materials to match. HBN’s latest course released on our HomeFree Campus is Selecting Healthier Insulation with HomeFree.
Read MoreLooking to Strengthen the Equity Conversation? How About Including Building Materials!
Wondering what makes building materials a public health issue? The word equity plays a big role! Equity and buildings seem worlds apart, but Healthy Building Network is changing that paradigm through research, education, and our HomeFree initiative.
Read MoreTake the Transparency Pledge, Lead the Way to Better Health
Building owners and designers in the affordable housing sector are leading the way to healthier products by taking a pledge to prefer products with full and public ingredient disclosures. HBN’s HomeFree Champions have co-designed both a process and tools to make it easier to achieve transparency. Join these leaders by...
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DonateFeatured User
Jess Blanch
Assoc. AIA, LEED, Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow
Jess is a Design Associate and Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow at Capitol Hill Housing (CHH) in Seattle, where she is focused on advancing CHH's capacity in design excellence, sustainability, and community engagement in a variety of low-income housing and community development projects. Jess brings over a decade of experience in affordable housing and community-engaged design work.
A champion for healthy materials in affordable housing, she has presented the topic at AIA Seattle’s Material Matters education series. Jess is spearheading CHH’s Healthy Homes Initiative to promote healthier work and living environments by reducing toxins in CHH’s 48 low-income housing properties, and educating over 2,300 CHH residents and staff on using healthier materials and green cleaning products.
Jess uses HomeFree on the Liberty Bank Building project, one of HomeFree’s pilot Demonstration Projects. The HomeFree principles and lessons learned from the design of the Liberty Bank Building have heavily influenced the CHH Healthy Homes Initiative, especially in creating design and operations guidelines to be used at all of CHH’s affordable housing properties.