Welcome to HomeFree
A national initiative supporting affordable housing leaders who are improving human health by using less toxic building materials.
Latest News
New HomeFree Resources to Help You Achieve 2020 Enterprise Green Communities Criteria
Enterprise Community Partners recently announced that the new 2020 Green Communities Criteria are now in effect. HBN has created a resource to help you achieve the updated healthier materials requirements.
Read MoreTurn Black Friday into GREEN Friday
As Thanksgiving approaches, so does a range of retail-focused days, including Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. We all want our holiday gifts to be magical and memorable, but often these purchases have real human health and environmental impacts. Learn how you can make choices that are healthier...
Read MoreHomeFree Champions: Industry Leaders Paving the Way to Selecting Healthier Materials
Healthy Building Network is excited to welcome a cohort of new affordable housing professionals to our HomeFree advisory committee, the HomeFree Champions! Learn how these industry leaders help shape our work by creating, testing, and disseminating better practices and building product solutions that are affordable, healthy, and effective.
Read MoreBy Popular Demand: A List of Safer Paints
Are you lagging behind in selecting safer paints? With healthier paints readily available on the market at a variety of price points, there's no reason not to be making a safer choice. Check out our list of paints that are free of the most common hazardous chemicals.
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DonateFeatured User
Ruchi Shah
Senior Sustainability Manager, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation
Ruchi is a Senior Sustainability Manager at Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC), one of the largest multifamily affordable housing developers in San Francisco. She leads sustainability in the built-environment initiatives for a portfolio of over 50 buildings (circa 3.5 Million Sq. ft and 5000 units). Under her leadership, TNDC has reduced portfolio-wide energy and water usage by over 20 % as part of the National Better Buildings Challenge and announced the planning of a portfolio-wide carbon and waste reduction strategy in 2019.
Ruchi has over 8 years of experience in sustainability across real estate and consulting sectors, helping companies reduce operating costs and manage climate risks. Ruchi is a LEED Green Associate, a Fitwel Ambassador, and holds a Master’s in Sustainability from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), and a Bachelor’s in Biotechnology from Mumbai, India.
As a HomeFree Champion, Ruchi leads demonstration projects to identify healthier flooring, insulation, and air-sealant solutions that meet cost and performance criteria for affordable housing projects. With support from the HBN research team, Ruchi developed a practical materials guidance resource that will help her design team and architects specify healthier materials across TNDC’s low-income multifamily project portfolio. Together, TNDC and HomeFree are exploring opportunities for making this resource available to the HomeFree user community.