Passive home project in north Minneapolis aims to provide buyers affordable, environmentally friendly living

Azad Lassiter patted the foot-thick walls at a home he’s building on Queen Avenue in north Minneapolis.

The walls will provide thermal insulation, a key principle of passive house construction, Lassiter said. A builder with 17 years of experience, he serves as the real estate project manager at Urban Homeworks, a Minneapolis nonprofit that focuses on housing justice.

Passive homes are built to specific standards to lower their carbon footprint while ensuring maximum energy efficiency and comfort. The North Side homes — completed with heat pumps, electric-powered appliances and topped with solar panels — are designed to be light on the planet and, over time, the pocketbook.

“Theoretically, you should have no energy bill,” Lassiter said of how the environmentally friendly features save homeowners money.

The Queen Avenue house is one of five passive homes Urban Homeworks is building in north Minneapolis. The homes are the result of a partnership between Urban Homeworks and the city of Minneapolis to grow the stock of affordable housing.

The passive house project is using benefits from the city’s to help pay for energy efficiency and solar panelsGreen Cost Share Program, said Isaac Evans, a sustainability program coordinator with the city. Urban Homeworks received $275,000 in city funding for the project, which is expected to result in 170,000 kilowatt hours of energy savings, enough to power about 18 average American homes for a year.

“Urban Homeworks are really pushing the model,” Evans said.

Minnesota is aiming to reduce emissions from residential and commercial buildings, a stubborn source where pollution is growing. Emissions from buildings are up 14% from 2005 levels, the year the state uses as a benchmark, according to a 2023 report.

Homeowners with the fewest resources are often stuck with the largest utility bills. Lower-income residents, disproportionately people of color in Minnesota, are more likely to live in old, drafty housing that burns through energy and rack up hefty power bills.

Passive homes apply five construction principles to maximize build quality and energy efficiency: thermal insulation from thick walls, air-tight assembly, thermal-bridge reduction that eliminates drafts, highly rated triple-pane windows and quality ventilation.

Thick walls wrapped in breathable materials prevent moisture that can lead to rotting wood and integrity problems down the line. That means fewer warranty issues for builders in the long run and reduced maintenance costs for homeowners.

The air in most homes changes over multiple times an hour, and even new construction meeting Minnesota’s latest building codes will experience three air changes per hour. Passive homes have 0.6 air changes per hour. Fresh air is acclimatized, cleaned and spread throughout the home using an energy recovery ventilation system. That creates a consistent temperature throughout the structure.

Passive house principles can help residents save $200 to $300 on energy bills every month compared to an average home, Lassiter said. In the summer, the solar panels will likely generate more power than the home uses, giving future residents potential earnings on their energy bill.

Urban Homeworks focused on remodeling projects until about 2017, said Anne Ketz, the nonprofit’s real estate development director. After the economic crash and mortgage crisis in the late 2000s, the group could buy homes in north Minneapolis for $1, she said. But when the housing market rebounded, the group began focusing on new construction.

Urban Homeworks always tried to incorporate energy efficiency into its projects, including working with the University of Minnesota to construct net-zero homes, which use solar energy but have less stringent energy-efficiency standards than passive homes.

In 2021, Minneapolis solicited bids for the passive home project. Urban Homeworks jumped at the opportunity. Passive homes cost about 20% more to build than standard new housing, Ketz said, so city funding provided a chance for the organization to try it.

The nonprofit sells directly to buyers, and markets its homes towards residents of color who live in north Minneapolis. But the homes are available to anyone meeting income criteria. The first five passive homes are eligible to buyers who earn up to 80% of the area median income; that’s $97,800 for a family of four in Hennepin County.

Urban Homeworks recently received an offer on its first completed home and a second home is currently listed for $235,000.

The homes range from about 1,400 to 1,600 square feet, and have four bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Urban Homeworks received $5 million in funding from the Minnesota Legislature, and is using some of that money to fund the construction of four more passive homes that will be priced under $200,000.

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