Sometimes a real estate project makes so much sense, it makes you forget all the mortgage-fraud cases, foreclosure-rescue schemes and shady mortgage brokers. So it is with the efforts of an Oakland affordable-housing developer to provide 20 residential units at one of its apartment buildings to teens who have aged out of the foster-care system.

When teens turn 18, they age out of the foster-care system, whether they’ve found new families to live with or not. Often, these teens have nowhere to go.

Affordable Housing Associates today announced that it has made available for these teens 20 apartment units in its Madison & 14th Street Apartments in Oakland. And not only is Affordable Housing Associates providing shelter, the group, through a partnership with First Place for Youth, will provide teens who have aged out of the foster-care system with counseling, job-hunting assistance, economic counseling and physical and mental health workshops.

Unfortunately, this will only help a small percentage of the teens who do age out of the foster-care system in the Oakland area. More than 600 Bay area teens are discharged from the foster-care system each year once they hit 18.

Perhaps more agencies with step up to help these often forgotten members of society.

For more information about Affordable Housing Associates, click here.

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?