Reducing Emissions, One House at a Time

The Pocket, a neighbourhood in Toronto’s East End just south of Danforth Avenue, feels much like other residential sections of the city — leafy streets lined with a mixture of semi and detached homes, and smiling neighbours who nod to one another. But if you look closer, you may start to notice green lawn signs propped outside certain houses.

These signs read: “We have reduced our home’s carbon footprint.” A QR code near the bottom leads to the website of the Pocket Change Project, a community-led organization empowering neighbours to sustainably retrofit their homes.

Hemmed in on two sides by a TTC yard and railroad tracks, The Pocket is a tight-knit community. And it has a mission: this amicable group of neighbours is working together to help Toronto reach its net-zero climate goals. The Pocket Change Project started in 2017, after local resident David Langille heard how much homes were contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Cars, planes, and other forms of transportation are usually pegged as the guilty culprits, but buildings, including homes, that use fossil fuels are the city’s single largest greenhouse gas emitters, producing fifty-eight percent of the city’s emissions.

Bowled over by this statistic, Langille reached out to sustainable architect Paul Dowsett to see what the community could do. Initially, Dowsett worked one-on-one with homeowners, walking them through how to sustainably retrofit their homes. But as more neighbours became interested, Dowsett’s time grew stretched. So, in 2021, the community started its Changemakers program, the largest initiative of what would become the Pocket Change Project.

Rather than having homeowners work one-on-one with Dowsett, the Pocket Change Project suggests they contact a qualified energy advisor who performs an audit of their home, with some providing them with a retrofit roadmap.  

“The roadmap is pretty key, because those energy audits can be very hard to understand. A lot of homeowners tell us that they would have just given up if they didn't have any further assistance,” says Julia Morgan, the Pocket Change Project’s communications lead. “By getting the roadmap from a registered energy advisor, you get a comprehensive report that outlines what the advisor learned about the home, what your own needs are, and what your budget is. It then shows you step-by-step how you go about the retrofit.”

To help homeowners get started with the retrofit process, the Pocket Change Project pairs them with a volunteer from the neighbourhood who’s already gone through the process. This person checks in on the homeowner and answers any questions they may have, offering advice This person checks in on the homeowner and answers any questions they may have, offering advice where needed. The group also organizes regular social events where homeowners can mingle and discuss their retrofits. 

“It's an opportunity where they can learn from each other, share tips, and just enjoy the camaraderie of being together with people doing the same thing with the same goal of reducing the emissions from their homes,” Morgan says.

Retrofits can include anything from insulating and air sealing the home to trading the furnace for a heat pump. Some homeowners go as far as installing solar panels and electric induction cooktops.

Thus far, 30 residents have joined the Changemakers program — 28 of them have their retrofit road maps in hand. Not bad for a neighbourhood of 1,100 homes.

The cost of a retrofit does fall squarely on the homeowner, but there are several grants to help out. Through the Canada Greener Home Initiative and Enbridge Gas, homeowners can get up to $10,000 off an eligible retrofit and qualify for an interest-free loan of up to $40,000. With help from some grants, Morgan says that several low-income homeowners in the neighbourhood have also joined the Pocket Change program.

“It's been amazing seeing what they've been able to accomplish through their own tenacity,” Morgan says.

Homeowners undergoing a retrofit receive a green lawn sign that reads: “We are reducing our home’s carbon footprint.” And once the job’s done, they get upgraded to the “We have reduced our home’s carbon footprint” sign.

And the Pocket Change Project doesn’t stop at home retrofits. The community is currently improving its biking infrastructure and has planted a small forest on a nearby public green space with help from the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. Plus, the Pocket Change Project has proved so popular that a city-wide non-profit called Toronto Home Retrofits has grown out of it. It takes the Pocket Change Project’s blueprint and applies it to other communities around the city, providing training, support, and resources all from a centralized location.

“People are getting a lot more engaged and active,” Morgan says. “We got emails about the Pocket Change Project from people all over Canada and some outside of Canada, asking for help or asking questions about how they can do something similar in their communities. So, there's a lot of interest out there.”