My friend lives in an old triple-decker in Somerville. Faced with high heating bills due to her outdated electric baseboard heating system, she called for a free Mass Save Energy Assessment. The friendly worker stuck a camera in the wall and discovered that, like many rentals in Somerville, her home was uninsulated. He explained that as far as heating was concerned, she might as well have been living in a tent.
The worker told her that she qualified to have her home insulated for free. This would save her and her roommates hundreds of dollars on heating bills, with no cost to her or the landlord. The catch? The landlord had to agree. Of course, this is a dead end. A landlord would sooner cut off their own nose than do something that wasn’t for their own benefit. Don’t believe me? Landlords are asked this question all the time, and as shown in the linked post, find the prospect of improving their own home confusing. As a fellow landlord pointed out, if he provided the home with insulation, next he’d be “waxing and washing” his tenant’s cars.
So even though we do not benefit directly from this program, my roommates and I – like all renters in the state – pay for it. And dearly, with upward of 10 percent of our monthly heating bills (which are hundreds of dollars in winter) going to the program…