I came across an interesting story on the Web site of the National Association of Realtors this morning. The site ran a short feature about homeless people moving into foreclosed properties. You can read it here.

According to the story, originally written by Thomas Sheeran for the Associated Press, police arrested one homeless man on a code violation for living in a foreclosed home without water in Manteca, Calif. Police arrested another man in Cape Coral, Fla., according to the story, who had been living in a foreclosed home since helping his friend move out of the same residence several weeks earlier.

These are sad stories, on both ends: Sad that someone lost their homes to foreclosure, sad that anyone would find living in a home without water or electricity a step up from their current conditions.

This current housing crisis is creating a lot of new victims, people who’ve lost their homes — some due to their own greed, of course, but many, too, because of unforeseen financial hardships or corrupt mortgage lenders — and others who are barely able to make their mortgage payments. But we can’t forget that the so-called American dream of homeownership has always been out of reach for a large segment of the U.S. population. For many, even renting is out of reach.

Green buiding — building homes and commercial buildings so as to have as little impact as possible on the environment — is more and more becoming part of the mainstream. Contractors are routinely relying on double-pane windows, Energy Star-rated appliances and paints with low-VOC counts. They’re hauling less waste to the dump every day, and relying more often on locally produced products when building their homes and retail centers.

But a new building in Oakland shows the true purpose of green construction: It’s not only good for the Earth, but for the residents inside the building, too.

You can read about Crossroads, which is perhaps the nation’s first green homeless shelter built from scratch, here, in a story by the New York Times’ Carol Pogash. Crossroads, which can house 125 residents, features a solar-paneled roof, nontoxic paint, desks and bureaus made from pressed wheat and hydronic heating systems.

The hero of this story is Wendy Jackson, executive director of the East Oakland Community Project. She spent 10 years raising money and drumming up support to build Crossroads, an $11-million facility. Her theory: Green building, and all its benefits, shouldn’t be out of reach to the homeless. They, too, deserved to live in a state-of-the-art, healthy building.

I only hope this is a new trend. Green building is growing in popularity not just because it’s a “hot” thing to do, but because it makes sense. Green-built homes are of high quality, and promote healthy living. Why shouldn’t the homeless deserve these same benefits?