When Jossie Leon is in her housing unit at the Franklin Field Apartments, the air quality is so bad it causes her to cough more inside than she does outside. In the winter months, snow sometimes comes through the porous windows.

It is a common problem for many living in the public housing development adjacent to Blue Hill Avenue.

The indoor living environment, Leon said during a press conference Wednesday outside the complex, needs investment. And officials — from federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan, US Sen. Ed Markey to Gov. Maura Healey and Mayor Michelle Wu — were there to tout just that kind of funding, with money from the federal Inflation Reduction Act for improving windows, roofs, and heating/air conditioning units in seven of the development’s buildings, with more than 500 units.

“I would like the children I raised and the children I teach to grow up in safe and healthy housing,” said Leon, who is the leader of the 50-year-old Estrellas Tropicales dance troupe. “Today a lot of the discussion is about building, but this occasion is about more than that. It’s about us, the residents of Franklin Field and our homes…We need better air quality in Franklin Field.”

“Every level of government should invest in public housing first and not last,” she added.

Officials said that is what they are doing with the $21 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund passed in the federal Inflation Reduction Act. Applications are now available for funds to help communities – particularly low-income communities and public housing developments – improve air quality and heating/cooling efficiency.

Kenzie Bok, the new Boston Housing Authority administrator, and the BHA’s Joel Wool said they hope to use funding from the federal monies to pilot innovations at Franklin Field and the Mildred Hailey Apartments in Jamaica Plain.

“We’re in front of seven buildings connected by a central boiler plant,” said Wool, noting it used to be oil-burning, but was converted to gas in 2002.

Added Bok: “Our plan was to replace this gas boiler and we decided instead to go fossil fuel free. We’re trying to do that before 2030. The best way of going fossil fuel free is not to add more fossil fuel infrastructure.”

She and Wool said they are looking at replacing windows, roofs, and updating heating/cooling infrastructure. That could include all new heat pumps (providing heating and cooling), or it could be a new network of geothermal technology on site.
“We’re excited about looking into that (geothermal) opportunity here,” said Wool.

For Sen. Markey, the event marked the culmination of decades of advocacy for a funding source called a “Climate Bank.” He shared that as a congressman, he got it passed in the House of Representatives in 2009, only to have it cut out in the Senate. His advocacy has continued over the years, but it wasn’t until the Inflation Act that he was able to get everyone on board. Now, that funding mechanism he dreamed about to help elevate climate and resiliency solutions is building projects in places like Franklin Field, he said.

“A vision without funding is a hallucination,” he said. “After years of Republican climate denial and diminishing, we are here to celebrate $21 billion in funding…that has turned this vision into reality.”

Gov. Healey was on hand to tell everyone that the state has already taken measures, such as with its recently formed Community Climate Bank that focuses on affordable housing, to be ready for the new $21 billion available from the federal government.

“Our Climate Bank makes us eligible for the new funding at the federal level and our affordable housing focus gives us an advantage,” she said. “This is a powerful example of if we go all in and work together how we’ll see unprecedented returns.”

She said she pledged to make sure Massachusetts was first in line for all these federal dollars and would be using her newly formed Office of Federal Funds to seek out every dollar the state can get.

Mayor Wu said she felt it was the right investment at the right time – and would make sure every dollar was stretched to the limit. “We’ve been sounding the alarm for so many years on climate and racial disparities and calling people to be at the forefront of the biggest issues,” she said.

“This is an investment unlike any other,” she continued.

Regan, the federal EPA administrator, congratulated Franklin Field, Boston, and Massachusetts for being ready and quick to jump on these funding opportunities that will also reduce climate impacts. “We’re taking local and state stories here and turning them into a national story,” he said. “We know solutions don’t start at the top; they come from the ground level up."

Union leaders like Dorchester’s Brian Doherty, of the Boston Building and Construction Trade Council, and Darlene Lombos, executive secretary-treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council (GBLC), were also on hand to advocate and celebrate the use of union labor within the upcoming projects funded by the Climate Bank.

The national clean financing network, which is based on Markey’s Climate Bank idea, is intended to mobilize private capital into clean technology projects to create good-paying jobs and lower energy costs for American families, especially in low-income and disadvantaged communities, while cutting harmful pollution to protect people’s health and tackle the climate crisis.