Results of AMLI’s 2024 Sustainable Living Index

If you’re a resident at one of our AMLI Residential communities, then you may have seen a survey floating around your email earlier this year. In fact, you may have seen one a couple of years ago, too!

That survey was our biennial Sustainability Survey, a study which dives into all things green here at AMLI. It’s our way of understanding our residents’ green views and habits and what they think of their AMLI community’s features and, in turn, what we can do in the future. 

The 2024 Sustainable Living Index included 14 questions pertaining to our residents’ experience with the green features at their AMLI communities, as well as their opinions on topics like public transportation, fresh air, recycling, energy-efficient designs and more. Over 2,600 residents participated in our survey (!), and we used each and every one of the responses to find out more about our AMLI community as a whole. 

The survey released this year is our fifth iteration, and the results are in!

Here’s what our AMLI residents told us

First off, we’d like to give a big “thank you” to all our residents who participated in the survey, as they offered us valuable insight into their values, priorities and concerns regarding sustainable living. 

If you were one of them, thank you — your time and insight is much appreciated!

Here’s what everyone told us in our 2024 Sustainable Living Index survey.

Sustainability factored into where residents chose to live

Of the 2,600+ AMLI residents who responded to our survey, a whopping 78.9% said that living in a sustainably built apartment is beneficial to their health. That’s well over three-quarters of our residents who have given our environmentally friendly apartments their stamp of approval! 

Around 45.7% of our residents also said that AMLI’s green features factored into their decision to rent at one of our communities — features that include our fresh-air initiatives, energy-efficient appliances, recycling programs, electric car charging stations and low-VOC-emitting materials. That number is impressive enough on its own, but it’s also a whole 2.5% increase from our last Sustainable Living index in 2022. 

Climate change is a concern for many of our residents

When asked about climate change, 85.8% of our survey participants said that they were concerned about the effects of climate change. Two-thirds of our residents also felt that the need for solutions to environmental issues has increased within the last five years. 

“From our survey results over the last seven years, most AMLI residents have consistently expressed concern about climate change and want solutions,” said Phil Tague, AMLI Residential President. “AMLI will continue to ensure that our communities’ green features match our residents’ priorities.”

Of all our survey participants, our Millennial and Gen-Z residents reported the greatest concern over climate change, as well as a greater desire to find solutions to climate issues. 

Our green apartment features ranked very highly 

From the East Coast to the West Coast and everywhere in-between, our AMLI Residential communities all offer a host of sustainable apartment features that make residents’ lives a little greener and cleaner. 

These features can range from ENERGY STAR® appliances, LED lighting and premium air filters in our apartments to convenient access to public transit, bike storage, composting and pollinator gardens in our community spaces. Each region and community is different, so  you can find out more information on each region’s green initiatives at the bottom of our Sustainability page here!

Speaking of our green apartment features, AMLI’s fresh air initiatives was one of the highest ranking green features for our surveyed residents. Things like operable windows, kitchen ventilation and premium air filters ranked as the most important green feature for 92.6% of residents, with our smoke-free community initiatives making an appearance on the scoreboard, too.  

Here’s how residents ranked some of our other green features!

• Financial Savings from Energy Efficient Features – 87.31% 
• Recycling, Composting & Other Waste Diversion – 82.97% 
• Smoke-Free Community – 80.93% 
• Green Transit – 77.67% 
• Healthy Building Materials – 73.3% 

Electric vehicles were a big talking point

Electric vehicles are a hot-button topic in the sustainability world, so we asked our residents what they thought about EVs. 

Around 7.8% of our residents already drive electric vehicles — a number just a little higher than the overall U.S. market, which hovers around 7.6%! The interest in EVs is pretty high, too, with 36.8% of our residents planning on driving an electric or hybrid plug-in vehicle in the next five years. 

“AMLI is committed to expanding EV charging for our residents and we are working through a multi-year initiative to ensure we are prepared,” commented Erin Hatcher, VP-ESG & Sustainability.

Of all our survey participants across the country, Millennial and Gen-X residents in Seattle and Southern California expressed the highest level of interest in electric vehicles.

Why we care about these results

AMLI Residential is built around sustainability, and we are committed to developing and managing environmentally responsible apartment communities.

A big part of moving forward to meet our sustainability goals is understanding what matters to our residents and what they value, which allows us to improve our green initiatives and better meet our communities’ needs. We use the results of these surveys to plan for the future and to make our sustainability programs more effective which, in turn, helps us work toward a more sustainable future for everyone.  

"What we are seeing, year after year, is that sustainability is consistently important to our residents,” said Hatcher, commenting on this year’s survey results.

It’s thanks to surveys like this and our steadfast commitment to sustainability that AMLI Residential has been honored with the 2024 ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year Award — for the sixth year in a row! We’re also proud to have been named the 2023 LEED® Homes Awards Outstanding Developer and as a 2023 LEED® Homes Power Builder (for the eighth year in a row!) by the U.S. Green Building Council.

With approximately 26,000 apartment homes spread across 78 apartment communities in 8 major cities across the United States — and more on the way — maintaining such a standard for excellence across-the-board isn’t easy, but with surveys like this helping us hear from our residents, we’re certainly proud to be heading in the right direction! 

For more information about our sustainability programs, check out our Sustainability page for facts, stats and FAQs. If you’re a resident, keep an eye out for posters at our AMLI communities detailing some of these statistics from the survey you contributed to!

Thanks again!

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