Home owners have enough difficulty fixing up their homes to be more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient. Now it may be even more challenging.  An article written by Nick Timiraos from the Wall Street Journal talked about the Property Assessed Clean Energy Program (PACE).

This is a program supported by the White House that enables homeowners to pay for the costs of doing renovations such as solar panels or installing economical furnaces. According to the article, in some instances of foreclosure the PACE loans would be paid before the mortgage loans. To counteract PACE’s risk to mortgage lenders, the article explains that oddly enough,  the Federal Housing Finance Agency is encouraging lenders to not get involved in the program or make it harder for people to get the loans.

In the past we’ve seen other government programs that are ease to execute. The challenge is to get Americans eager to change their behaviors. In the mid-70s when gas prices were high, more and more people were taking advantage of the easily-available tax credits. Nearly 2 million more people re-insulated their houses. Now that there is PACE, there could be increased impetus for people to improve their homes. When the government makes borrowing money and pursuing programs like PACE more difficult, the harder it will be for people to make their homes more efficient. Efforts to make our environment more sustainable will ultimately suffer.