LTC Properties this year intends to build on the environmental, social and governance initiatives it launched last year, the Westlake Village, CA-based real estate investment trust announced Thursday as it released its first report on the topic.
The agenda includes:
- Measuring and reporting on energy and water usage as well as waste management across select operator portfolios.
- Building out the REIT’s use of ClimateCheck, which provides climate risk data for individual properties and portfolios and assesses exposure to extreme weather events.
- Enhancing its Sustainability Accounting Standards Board reporting and initiating a task force on climate-related financial disclosures reporting.
- Collecting, analyzing, and reporting environmental data for select properties in its portfolio.
- Conducting another employee survey.
- Enhancing employee engagement programs.
- Updating disclosures.
- Enhancing stakeholder communication via proxy, the RET’s website and investor presentations.
“We learned so much through our development of this report, allowing us to put into practice policies and procedures to further align the execution of our business strategy with ESG principles that are most relevant to our industry,” Cornelia Cheng, an LTC board member and chair of the REIT’s ESG Committee, stated in a press release issued in conjunction with the release of the report. “In the coming year, we look forward to building on that which we have already achieved to measure and advance our commitment to people, planet and purpose,” she added.
LTC beefed up its ESG initiative last year by encouraging the operators in its portfolios to do some introspection and possibly make some changes.
“We are working with our operators to help them understand how they can achieve successes by addressing ESG issues in their operations,” Chairman and CEO Wendy Simpson said during the REIT’s first-quarter 2022 earnings call.
On the environmental front, last year the REIT adopted a sustainability policy that lays out, among other things, financial incentives to operators for upgrade initiatives deemed to be environmentally sound and mutually beneficial to both operators and LTC.
Additionally, according to the report, LTC began “greening” new and amended operator leases and enhanced underwriting criteria to include ESG; implemented third-party tools to analyze, track and report environmental data; and purchased carbon offsets for employee travel and actions at the corporate headquarters.
Social initiatives, the report noted, included adopting and publishing a human and labor rights policy and a human capital policy, conducting employee engagement surveys to solicit input on a range of workplace topics and adopting select United Nations sustainable development goals.
Regarding governance, LTC established a board-level ESG committee and an internal ESG working group; augmented its proxy disclosure to highlight ESG initiatives and enhanced its cybersecurity monitoring, disclosure and training policy.
