We spend 10 times more on utility bills for affordable housing than we do on government investments in energy efficiency. Looking at that statistic, it’s not surprising that our public housing uses 38% more energy than privately owned housing for the same floor space. Investment in energy efficiency has the potential to lower this bill in the short run and hedge against future rises in energy prices in the long run. Moreover, investing in energy efficiency measures typically provides a beneficial return on investment (usually higher than that of renewable energy production, thus cost-effective efficiency should be implemented first). Fortunately, over the past several decades many affordable housing providers have been making progress overcoming these hurdles to integrate increased energy efficiency into affordable housing projects. Several of these case studies have been cited throughout the Solutions section of this paper to highlight the potential for leveraging particular strategies to integrate energy efficiency. These projects provide informative examples of how energy efficiency can be effectively and profitably integrated into our affordable housing stock. The first section of this paper is an explanation of the hurdles that were identified by the interviewed affordable housing providers (AHPs). While not all of the hurdles apply to every owner, each is a major obstacle to increased energy efficiency listed by several of the interviewees. Where possible, direct quotes from the interviews have been added (while preserving the anonymity of the interviewees). The second section includes solutions based on programs that have been used by AHPs, as well as researched solutions from other sectors that could be applied to affordable housing. This section is a great resource for AHPs who are looking to overcome hurdles they have faced integrating energy efficiency into their building stock. Note that the solutions recommended in this paper are based on long-term incentive programs; transient incentives, such as funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and other short term incentive programs, have been excluded from this paper.