Improve Public Health, the Environment and Racial Equity All at Once: Upgrade Low-Income Housing
During a presidential election debate on Oct. 22, 2020, former President Donald Trump railed against Democratic proposals to retrofit homes. “They want to take buildings down because they want to make bigger windows into smaller windows,” he said. “As far as they’re concerned, if you had no window, it would be a lovely thing.”
What a difference five months makes. While replacing your big windows with small ones is not on the Biden-Harris administration’s agenda, increasing home energy efficiency is. Addressing these and other housing issues is critical for three of the new administration’s immediate priorities: ending the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing climate change and tackling racial and economic inequality.
As an environmental health researcher, I have studied ways in which inadequate housing influences health and disproportionately affects low-income families and communities of color. In my view, retrofitting low-income housing, in particular, is a high-leverage way to tackle some of our nation’s most pressing health, social and environmental challenges.
Housing shapes everything
The pandemic has spotlighted how directly housing affects people’s health. It’s intuitively clear that physical distancing is hard if your family lives in a few rooms. And studies have shown that crowded indoor environments, including houses and apartments, are high-risk settings for contracting COVID-19.
Housing also is a substantial contributor to climate change. About 20% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from residential energy use. Large homes generally use more energy, but lower-income homes are often less energy-efficient, which makes them costly to heat and cool.
One recent survey found that between spring 2019 and spring 2020, 25% of low-income American households were unable to pay an energy bill. Families may be forced to cut necessities such as food or medicine to pay energy bills, or endure unhealthy temperatures. As changing climate lengthens summer, and there are more scorching hot days, those who lack air conditioning or can’t afford it are in danger.
Read more: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/to-improve-public-health-the-environment-and-racial-equity-all-at-once-upgr
The Oakland Ecoblock is a project to retrofit a low- to middle-income neighborhood in Oakland, California, moving it from high energy and water consumption to low.
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The long-term benefits from this project could be enormous.
Thanks for posting, Rhiannon. 
This could change the lives of so many Americans for the better. 
