For Bonnie Collum of Waterford and LaToya Hopkins of Pontiac, the Oakland SAVES initiative—funded with $5 million in ARPA dollars—brought each of them an unexpected energy-efficient upgrade to their homes.

Bonnie was dealing with a 60-year-old furnace that was on its last legs, but she couldn’t afford to buy a modern one because the need for a new roof stretched her fixed income to its limits. So, she kept her heat hovering at a chilly 50 degrees during the winter, hoping to get another year or two out of her aging furnace.

When she heard about Oakland SAVES in January, she was one of the first to apply and get approved for a grant, which allowed her to get a new furnace. By early March, her house was nice and toasty again and her heating bills saw an immediate decline.

For LaToya, a home audit by the Oakland County Housing and Neighborhood Development department to identify the cause of a leaky basement, led to the discovery of another problem. A sliding glass door and window in her kitchen was causing extreme heat in the summer and frigid breezes in the winter.

The replacement was on the list of must- dos for the Hopkins, but likely not for a few years. The housing department let the Hopkins know about the Oakland SAVES program and suggested that replacement windows could qualify for a $5,000 grant.

By mid-June, the new energy-efficient, double-paned sliding glass door and kitchen window were installed and the family began to enjoy cooking again without broiling in the summer and freezing in the winter.

“This program is amazing,” LaToya said. “A job this big is not at the top of the list. We maybe would have gotten to it in the next three to five years.”

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