In the United States, Habitat for Humanity is at the forefront of the providing affordable housing to low income homeowners. Because of this work, Habit for Humanity is one of the leading homebuilders in the United States. A recent development in the assessment of home building is an increased emphasis on the use of technology and methods that reduce the impact of housing construction and occupation on the world’s environment. Numerous methods exist to assess this impact, a major one in the United States is the LEED system developed by the US Green Building Council. Two problems exist with the LEED system, one being cost and the time of preparation of the necessary paperwork. Other research work exists on these implementation problems for the broader community, but this study looks at the specific impact and impediments to obtaining LEED certification for Habit for Humanity housing, specifically in Texas. This study assesses Habit for Humanity affiliate’s involvement with LEED and sustainable building. This is accomplished in two parts, a survey and an analysis of LEED scorecards. To gauge the current state of sustainable building in Habitat for Humanity affiliates of Texas a survey was conducted. There were 15 participants out of 84 affiliates. The survey looked in to the current sustainable practices and barriers for the affiliates to participate in the LEED program. Then LEED score cards were obtained and analyzed, eleven scorecards total were obtained. Six scorecards were from homes built by Habitat for Humanity affiliates across the United States, and the other five scorecards came from a production home builder in Texas. The scorecards were then compared by determining the mean of points for each question. From this case study, the survey shows cost and knowledge to be the largest barriers to LEED certification. The data from the LEED scorecards showed Water Efficiency and Indoor Environmental Quality to be the two weakest categories for the HFH affiliates compared to the production homes. These barriers can potentially be overcome by the availability of grants for sustainable building and by educating the affiliates on LEED and sustainable building. The fact that HFH is a leader in affordable housing means if HFH affiliates can build to LEED standard so can other affordable builders.

O aumento da produção de habitações de interesse social traz consigo a problemática da qualidade de unidades habitacionais construídas a baixo custo e em um curto espaço de tempo. Aliadas a essas preocupações de caráter qualitativo e quantitativo, surgem também as exigências de caráter ambiental para edifícios, as quais deram origem à criação de dezenas de sistemas de certificação de desempenho ambiental de edifícios, de caráter internacional, que vêm sendo usadas no cenário brasileiro, indiferentemente às suas especificidades e carências. Com isso, o objetivo deste trabalho foi promover uma análise comparativa desses sistemas de certificação, realizando uma discussão de suas inadequações ao contexto brasileiro. A partir da análise comparativa e balizamento de itens avaliativos das certificações estudadas pelos critérios preestabelecidos neste trabalho, pudemos notar que as ferramentas estudadas demonstram uma série de itens avaliativos plenamente aplicáveis a edifícios residenciais situados no cenário brasileiro e outros que ainda necessitam de adaptações. Portanto, esta análise deverá servir como embasamento para um trabalho futuro de criação de diretrizes para o desenvolvimento de um sistema de certificação ambiental de edificações habitacionais brasileiras. / The increased production of social housing brings the issue of the quality of housing units built at low cost. Combined to these concerns, those are qualitative and quantitative, are also the character of environmental requirements for buildings which led to the creation of dozens of buildings environmental performance certification systems, with international character, which have been used in the Brazilian scene, regardless of their specificities and needs. Therefore, the objective of this work is to promote an analysis of these certification systems and conducting a discussion of their inadequacies to the Brazilian context. From the comparative analysis and marking of the certification evaluation items by the established criteria studied in this work, we noted that the studied tools show several evaluative items fully applicable to residential buildings located in Brazil and others ones that still need to be adapted. Therefore, this analysis should serve as a basis for a future work to establish guidelines for the development of an environmental certification system for residential buildings in Brazil.

O aumento da produção de habitações de interesse social traz consigo a problemática da qualidade de unidades habitacionais construídas a baixo custo e em um curto espaço de tempo. Aliadas a essas preocupações de caráter qualitativo e quantitativo, surgem também as exigências de caráter ambiental para edifícios, as quais deram origem à criação de dezenas de sistemas de certificação de desempenho ambiental de edifícios, de caráter internacional, que vêm sendo usadas no cenário brasileiro, indiferentemente às suas especificidades e carências. Com isso, o objetivo deste trabalho foi promover uma análise comparativa desses sistemas de certificação, realizando uma discussão de suas inadequações ao contexto brasileiro. A partir da análise comparativa e balizamento de itens avaliativos das certificações estudadas pelos critérios preestabelecidos neste trabalho, pudemos notar que as ferramentas estudadas demonstram uma série de itens avaliativos plenamente aplicáveis a edifícios residenciais situados no cenário brasileiro e outros que ainda necessitam de adaptações. Portanto, esta análise deverá servir como embasamento para um trabalho futuro de criação de diretrizes para o desenvolvimento de um sistema de certificação ambiental de edificações habitacionais brasileiras. / The increased production of social housing brings the issue of the quality of housing units built at low cost. Combined to these concerns, those are qualitative and quantitative, are also the character of environmental requirements for buildings which led to the creation of dozens of buildings environmental performance certification systems, with international character, which have been used in the Brazilian scene, regardless of their specificities and needs. Therefore, the objective of this work is to promote an analysis of these certification systems and conducting a discussion of their inadequacies to the Brazilian context. From the comparative analysis and marking of the certification evaluation items by the established criteria studied in this work, we noted that the studied tools show several evaluative items fully applicable to residential buildings located in Brazil and others ones that still need to be adapted. Therefore, this analysis should serve as a basis for a future work to establish guidelines for the development of an environmental certification system for residential buildings in Brazil.