States, Nonprofits Jockey for 'Weatherizing' Funds

By LESLIE EATON
HOUSTON -- President Barack Obama wants to make a million houses a year more energy efficient as part of his goal to create thousands of "green" jobs and reduce U.S. carbon emissions.
But the administration's push to expand an obscure antipoverty program into a centerpiece of that initiative is stirring debate over the best way to use a flash flood of federal stimulus dollars.
A Flood for Weather-Proofing Programs

City contractors measure windows for screens that block sunlight and prevent it from heating up the room.
Texas is slated to get $327 million over the next two years to help cut poor families' utility bills by "weatherizing" their homes. Nonprofit groups affiliated with the federal Weatherization Assistance Program are set to get a big funding boost and say they are up to the task.
But Texas and some other states don't want simply to supersize existing programs and are also proposing what they say are more efficient ways to use the stimulus money. Indiana and Missouri are asking nonprofit groups to compete for some or all of the funds; Wisconsin plans to use some of its allocation to tackle low-income apartment buildings and is hoping to dedicate $10 million toward replacing appliances.
Texas, for its part, plans to give $94 million directly to cities so they can start their own programs, like a neighborhood-based one the city of Houston now runs. Started in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit energy producers and sent electricity costs soaring, the program picks a low-income neighborhood of old houses and tries to sign up as many homeowners as possible.
Workers then move from house to house, doing a quick evaluation and using measures that can be completed in hours. Issa Dadoush, director of the city's general-services department, said the typical homeowner's energy use drops by as much as 20% in the steamy summer months, helping to save, on average, $335 over six months; with the stimulus money, the city says it can weatherize 10,000 homes a year.
"The assembly-line approach gives us more bang for the buck," Mr. Dadoush said. Houston would get $23.4 million of Texas's stimulus funds for this program, which is now run by money from taxes and a local utility.

By comparison, Sheltering Arms Senior Services, a Houston charity, would get $22.2 million over two years, way above its funding of $350,000 last year. The charity says it could weatherize as many as 3,500 houses a year, 10 times the current number, under new rules that allow it to spend as much as $6,500 on each house, up from about $3,000.
Sheltering Arms typically performs an "energy audit" that figures out which improvements are the most cost-effective ways to cut energy use. But like other traditional weatherizing groups, it often combines such efforts with major home repairs, using money from a variety of sources such as United Way donations.
So it might repair a damaged roof or foundation in addition to caulking windows and replacing a refrigerator, in a process that can take days and require repeated visits. Customers' energy savings after such repairs are difficult to quantify, state officials said; customers save an average estimated $413 a year, nationally, after traditional weatherization.
Watchdog groups are warning the flood of stimulus money into weatherization programs could lead to money being lost, wasted, siphoned off or simply left unused. "It's a prescription for absolute disaster," said Leslie K. Paige, media director for Citizens Against Government Waste, an antitax group in Washington.

Community agencies say the money will be well-spent. "Everything is at stake in this," said David Bradley, executive director of the National Community Action Foundation in Washington, which advocates for these groups and for the more-comprehensive weatherization approach.
The U.S. Department of Energy says it is willing to consider nontraditional programs; Gil Sperling, who manages the federal weatherization program, plans to visit Houston soon to see how they city's effort stacks up.
The benefits -- and limitations -- of the city's method could be seen one hot May morning at the home of Alex and Carolina Cisneros in the Kashmere Gardens neighborhood. The little white house leaked about twice as much air as it should have, said Joseph DeLeon, a contractor for the city program. After testing the house, he pinpointed the main source of the problem -- cracks between the walls and ceiling in the bathroom.
In less than two hours, he and a colleague weather-sealed doors, caulked around windows and plumbing fixtures and replaced light bulbs. But they couldn't install insulation; the ceilings weren't strong enough.
Unlike the nonprofit, which might have tackled a costly ceiling repair, the city program moved on to the next house.
That was good enough for Mr. Cisneros. "It's cooler already," he said.
Write to Leslie Eaton at leslie.eaton@wsj.com