Health & Wellness + Climate & Resilience
Working session, June 16, 2026. Notes prepared by the Multifamily Impact Council.
What We Discussed
This was week three of a four week working session to refine Framework 4.0 ahead of its rollout, this time covering the health and wellness and climate and resilience principles. Rachel walked the working group through the current draft definitions and thresholds, then opened the floor line by line: indoor air quality standards, the 7 out of 10 subcomponent threshold for properties without a formal health certification, green building certifications like LEED, BREEAM, Green Globes, and Enterprise Green, and utility cost disclosure and green leasing practices. Adam Wellen from GBI, the Green Building Initiative, and Laura Humphrey joined specifically for the climate and resilience portion to weigh in as outside experts, alongside member feedback from Amber (Nuveen), Shayna (Texas Housing Conservancy), and Katie (GreenGen).
Why It Matters
The most useful pushback of the day came from Amber, who asked a question the framework doesn’t currently answer: how many properties actually meet these thresholds today, and are all ten health and wellness subcomponents equally hard to achieve? Rachel’s own answer was candid: most properties already clear 7 of 10 without much effort, since practices like integrated pest management and mold prevention are already standard. Adam’s outside perspective added a wrinkle worth tracking too: many owners pursue a lighter weight health and wellness badge instead of a full certification, worth roughly 40 percent of a full certification’s points, a distinction the framework doesn’t currently draw. The sharpest thread of the day, though, came later, when Laura Humphrey pointed out that heat risk doesn’t fit neatly into either principle. It gets treated as a climate and resiliency issue because that’s what insurers watch closely, but it’s just as much a health and wellness issue, since it’s residents who can’t afford to keep their units cool who bear the actual risk. Jackie Hoffman and Lindsay Robbins both agreed it belongs in both sections, serving different functions in each: corporate risk decisions on one side, resident experience and safety on the other.
Where We Go From Here
Heat risk is going in as a new, explicitly named item, likely split into two pieces per Lindsay’s suggestion: whether residents can afford to keep their units cool, and whether the property has backup power or partnerships in place if the grid goes down during a heat event. Rachel is planning to bring in outside expertise, specifically Adam’s team at GBI and contacts at Fitwell, to help build a broader prioritization into the health and wellness section over the course of the year. On climate and resilience, waste reduction and diversion tracking is moving out of the core framework and into the impact guidance, and the group added passive house certification to the recognized standards list at Shayna’s suggestion. Members were also asked to flag real heat risk or disaster response examples they’re proud of for the case study library, and to submit any remaining edits through the survey link before next week’s final session, which wraps the series with the good business principle and the rollout plan for Framework 4.0.
Key Takeaway
“I can't think of any area of the US right now that's not at risk of extreme heat. And that is very tied to health and well-being.”
Laura Humphrey, MIC Framework Enhancement Initiative