Climate Change and Health Seminar: Disconnected - Understanding chronic and acute energy insecurity, health impacts and policy options for energy justice

November 23, 2021

Information

Dr. Hernández joined YCCCH for this monthly seminar series to discuss her work on energy insecurity and energy justice.

November 8, 2021

ID7201

To CiteDCA Citation Guide

00:03<v ->So, hi everyone,</v>
00:04thank you for coming in person
00:06and also thank you for our online audiences.
00:09So today, it's my great honor
00:12to have Dr. Diana Hernandez joining us.
00:17Dr. Hernandez is currently Associate Professor
00:20of Social Medical Sciences
00:24in the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
00:27Her work examines the impacts of policy
00:30and place-based interventions on the health
00:33and well-being on social economic (mumbles)
00:38She has an advanced look at the concept
00:40which (mumbles) today,
00:42energy insecurity to reflect the changes
00:46associated with meeting basic household energies
00:49and its links to house.
00:52And Dr. Hernandez is currently a (mumbles) scholar
00:55at the Russell Sage Foundation
00:57where she is currently writing a book,
01:00"Energy Insecurity in The US."
01:02So while we're very much looking forward
01:04to her forthcoming book,
01:06we're very fortunate today
01:07to have a pre-overview over her work.
01:10So without further ado, Dr. Hernandez.
01:17<v ->Of course, I'm muted.</v>
01:18Hi, thank you so much for the introduction.
01:20I'm really excited to be here today
01:24to share some of this kind of ongoing work
01:28on energy insecurity as you stated, Kai.
01:31I'm going to share my screen again
01:34and get started.
01:35I will warn you that I am a New Yorker
01:39and I speak fast.
01:40I'm also planning on covering quite a bit of material,
01:44but also want to leave time for questions and answers
01:49later on in the session.
01:50So by all means,
01:52and I'm a little shy on Twitter,
01:55but please do,
01:58you know, tag me on Twitter @DrDianaHernandz
02:04without the E, the second E.
02:06So I'm gonna tell you a little bit
02:08about my academic interests.
02:10I'll kind of give you a sense
02:11of the four pillars of housing,
02:14talk about what energy insecurity is,
02:16as well as housing and policy interventions
02:19to address this issue.
02:22Let me just kind of say that
02:24I've been doing work on
02:26at the intersection of energy equity, housing and health
02:29for over a decade now.
02:32And there was a time
02:34when the social determinants of health
02:37and environmental determinants of health
02:38were kind of separate entities.
02:41And there are some of us that are kind of working
02:44on bringing these two fields together,
02:48because of course, they kind of intersect.
02:52In addition to doing that,
02:54I've been working on, you know,
02:55kind of these joint concepts of energy insecurity
02:58and energy justice,
03:00thinking about housing and robust ways
03:02poverty and community-engaged research,
03:05as well as social and public health entrepreneurship.
03:11The bulk of my work has actually been
03:13about looking at interventions.
03:16I've been fortunate to do
03:18kind of real life-based research projects related to legals,
03:25the kind of provision of legal services
03:28to address housing problems, energy efficiency,
03:33and clean heat interventions,
03:36the privatization or the repositioning of public housing,
03:39thinking about climate change and emergency preparedness,
03:43housing-based social and health interventions.
03:47So basically, the provision of these kinds of services
03:51within housing spheres
03:52and also smoke-free housing and social impact real estate.
03:56I will cover a lot of those in my talk today,
04:00but I always like to kind of share this image
04:02because in some ways,
04:04the real essence of the work that I've been doing
04:06is about expanding the notion of sick buildings,
04:10and vulnerable occupants,
04:12along with intervention strategies.
04:14Kind of realizing that our housing
04:17or the people that live in housing,
04:20especially those that are kind of more vulnerable,
04:23need to continue to experience that disadvantage
04:29and the kind of health risks they're in.
04:32So I want to really start.
04:34You know this conversation will be about household energy,
04:39but I'd be remiss not to kind of put household energy
04:44within the context of a nuanced appreciation
04:49of what housing actually represents.
04:53And thinking about housing
04:56as having kind of more than one pillar,
04:59so it is in some ways a physical entity.
05:03It's a social entity.
05:05But it is really about these kind of four areas;
05:11costs, conditions, consistency and context.
05:16And what I have found over the years is that,
05:20many people make trade-offs at these intersections
05:24between, let's say, cost and conditions.
05:28So the poor,
05:30for instance, might be relegated
05:31to some of the kind of poorest quality housing.
05:36They are also much more likely to experience displacement,
05:45sometimes from climate change,
05:47sometimes from economic forces.
05:49So the consistency of their housing is at risk.
05:53And then also,
05:54we know so much about the interplay between kind of,
05:58or neighborhood effects, essentially.
06:00But there's an interplay between housing effects
06:02and neighborhood effects.
06:04So that what's happening in the outer core
06:07if we're thinking about it
06:08from a social-ecological perspective,
06:11also has implications for what's happening
06:13inside people's homes, and vice versa.
06:16So, part of my work has been about just laying out
06:21what the nuances of housing are,
06:23situating it in the kind of historical policies
06:27and practices that have made housing distribution
06:34quite different and segregated and separate,
06:38but not equal in the same ways
06:41that education has historically kind of unfolded.
06:45And so this is just kind of a heuristic
06:49to appreciate the various policies
06:52from Native American displacements to reservations,
06:57to public housing, redlining, exclusionary zoning
07:02as formal policies,
07:04but also the kind of discriminatory practices
07:08that were materialized through (mumbles)
07:11Sorry, racial residential covenants, predatory lending,
07:15and more recently, gentrification.
07:18And the impacts of this have everything to do with health.
07:22And health, in its physical forms
07:25and also in its mental forms,
07:27the kind of idea around wellbeing.
07:29These pillars of housing that I just described,
07:33really kind of reflect larger structures and mechanisms
07:38through which housing is impacted.
07:41And then also how kind of independently and together,
07:46they ultimately kind of impact overall health,
07:50chronic disease, infectious disease,
07:54injury, maternal health, and other dimensions of health.
07:58And so with that,
08:01I will say that,
08:02in some ways, my understanding of housing
08:08and how nuanced it is,
08:09and also how segregated neighborhoods basically
08:13have implications for life chances came for certain
08:18in my training as a sociologist,
08:21but also in my lived experience as a New Yorker
08:24and someone who grew up in a disadvantaged neighborhood
08:26in subsidized housing in the Bronx.
08:30And so I always like to start my talks
08:32just kind of positioning myself
08:34on what I understand locally.
08:37So this is Manhattan.
08:40Some of you may be familiar,
08:41this is Central Park,
08:42which is obviously a,
08:43you know, kind of a huge organizing green space
08:48in this city.
08:49This is Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx,
08:53that makes up the five boroughs of New York City.
08:55And as you can tell,
08:57just by the kind of deep blue,
08:59that the Bronx is pretty poor.
09:03And that that poverty is pretty concentrated
09:07at the borough level,
09:08and also in other pockets of the city.
09:11And that actually doesn't just stop at the level of poverty.
09:17It also has implications for things like rent burden.
09:21So how much people pay for housing relative to their income.
09:27So that in the same places
09:28that are kind of most impoverished,
09:31they also tend to have the highest rent burdens
09:36in New York City.
09:38So Bronx residents are more rent burdened,
09:41for instance, than others.
09:44This is kind of going.
09:45It has a mind of its own.
09:46I don't know what's going on, but anyway.
09:48So with rent burden,
09:50you know, kind of a consequence of rent burden
09:53might be evictions.
09:55And now mind you, obviously in the pandemic,
09:58we've had city, state and federal level policies
10:04kind of banning evictions.
10:07But prior to that,
10:08in 2018, the Bronx, an impoverished area,
10:13an area that's highly rent burdened,
10:15was also probably not surprisingly
10:17most impacted by evictions.
10:20So, of the 20,000 or so evictions that happened in 2018,
10:26the bulk of them were happening in the Bronx.
10:30And this is important
10:31because there have been interesting interventions,
10:34including the provision of legal services
10:37for tenants in housing court
10:40to kind of better balance the relationship
10:42between landlords and tenants in court,
10:46and give tenants a fighting chance around the evictions.
10:52But it doesn't stop there.
10:54So just, you know, we talked about,
10:58the different dimensions of housing rent.
11:01So poverty kind of fits within that context bucket.
11:05The cost fits within obviously the rent burden,
11:10the consistency of housing is reflected in the evictions.
11:15And then there's homes,
11:17access to healthy homes, essentially.
11:20And what you see in this map,
11:26is essentially that people that live in the Bronx
11:30have the least access to healthy housing,
11:33and the most access is happening in areas that are kind of,
11:38that are higher (mumbles)
11:39of people that live,
11:41you know, have higher socio-economic positions.
11:44And that's also true around heat complaints.
11:48So that residents of the Bronx are much more likely
11:52to call in to the city's 311 line
11:57to report having no heat or hot water.
12:02So these are reflections of conditions.
12:07And it's not just in the wintertime when people have issues,
12:12it's also in the summertime.
12:14So that the AC penetration rate,
12:17meaning how many air conditioners exists,
12:21is lowest in the Bronx.
12:23So you have almost a third or so of residents in the Bronx
12:28that do not have access to an air conditioner.
12:34What I've learned in the time since,
12:39kind of thinking about these pillars of housing,
12:42which I just described,
12:43is that home-based infrastructure actually is public health.
12:49And my insights on this issue,
12:53in some ways stem from the book called "Heat Wave"
12:58by Eric Klinenberg.
13:00So in that book,
13:01obviously, he talks about social resilience,
13:04and the fact that African-Americans
13:07were disproportionately impacted by hospitalizations,
13:11and really by deaths during the 1995 Heatwave.
13:15He's a sociologist.
13:17And that insight was incredibly important for thinking about
13:22who would be on the front lines of climate change.
13:25And in some ways,
13:27he was really kind of early in his observations
13:32about this changing climate
13:34and who would be most vulnerable.
13:37And he talked a lot about the fact
13:39that people were dying alone in their homes.
13:42I'm a sociologist too.
13:45But I actually think about the kind of technical aspects
13:51that contributed to the disproportionate deaths
13:55among African-Americans in Chicago.
13:59And basically, the idea is that,
14:01you know, there were many closed windows,
14:03there were some fans,
14:05but there were also very few air conditioners.
14:08And mind you, this is in 1995.
14:10So it's not surprising
14:11that the kind of energy infrastructure might have been,
14:17kind of, that ACs might have been less available.
14:19But I just showed you more recent data from New York City
14:22that shows that in poor neighborhoods
14:24people are less likely to have air conditioning.
14:27And public housing in New York City,
14:30it was up until very recently,
14:31only one in two households
14:33that lived in public housing actually had access
14:36to an air conditioner.
14:38I was listening to NPR one day,
14:41and I heard a story about Maricopa County.
14:44Maricopa County had been
14:46one of the first Departments of Health
14:48to actually measure excess heat deaths.
14:51And that's not surprising because this is in Arizona
14:53where you know, I remember going in an Uber,
14:57and the Uber driver said we have three seasons;
15:01pre-infernal, inferno and post-infernal.
15:04And so really important
15:06for Maricopa County Department of Health
15:09and others on the ground
15:11to understand not only the prevalence of excess heat deaths,
15:15but also what was at the root.
15:17And it was their study about what was at the root
15:19that to me was really interesting
15:21and actually has spurred a further collaboration.
15:24But I just want to walk us through.
15:26So of the people that basically died in their homes,
15:33almost all of them basically died
15:35in a non-cooled indoor environment.
15:39For some of them,
15:42you know, kind of a minority of them,
15:44they had no AC at all.
15:46For others, so 92% actually had an AC,
15:50but the majority of the people that died at home
15:53had no working AC.
15:56They also had the AC in the off position,
16:00or their utilities were shut off.
16:03So this really goes to show that there's something
16:06other than the fact that they live alone,
16:09kind of contributing to their demise, essentially.
16:13And one of the things
16:14that I've been doing over the course of my career,
16:17especially more recently,
16:19is engaging in the public debate
16:21around how public health essentially,
16:26is linked to public policy.
16:29And of course,
16:29my kind of public policy of reference primarily
16:36is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP.
16:40And just this past summer,
16:42I wrote along with a former student of mine,
16:46Sonal Jessel, who's now working at WE ACT,
16:51a piece in City & State in New York,
16:54which is basically read by policymakers
16:56about the need to kind of revisit LIHEAP
17:00in some ways, because in many states,
17:03but especially in New York,
17:07only AC distribution is available.
17:11So actually acquiring an air conditioning unit.
17:15But the cost of running the electricity
17:18isn't covered by Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program,
17:22because it's primarily a heating subsidy.
17:30So basically, we're asking,
17:31you know, kind of policymakers
17:33to revisit what the kind of stipulations
17:37for receipt of LIHEAP might look like for households.
17:40In fact, to kind of preserve health,
17:43but also to prevent deaths.
17:46And then more recently,
17:49I wrote a piece in USA Today,
17:53that talks on the one hand about heating, home heating.
17:58And the fact that,
18:00the cost of heating will actually increase significantly
18:04this heating season, as in like right now.
18:08And that that will force people
18:11to make what to me are really inhumane,
18:16and unnecessary trade-offs between other basic needs,
18:20like food, and or medicine.
18:25It obviously has implications for not just thermal comfort,
18:30but like I said, a healthy and safe indoor temperature.
18:37Interestingly enough, the heating costs
18:41that are increasing the most are actually also fossil fuels.
18:45So it's natural gas, heating oil, propane.
18:49And those are also the kind of heating sources
18:53used primarily by lower income groups.
18:58You know, there's obviously the connection
18:59to energy efficiency, to health,
19:02not just for the elderly,
19:04but really across the life force,
19:06including the very young and prenatally.
19:09This obviously, I have driven,
19:11I think the point that this is a matter of survival,
19:14but also a matter of environmental justice.
19:17And so with that,
19:19I'd like to get into
19:20well, what is energy insecurity?
19:22Because at some point,
19:25you know, all of this backdrop
19:27is important information to know,
19:30but ultimately, kind of naming the phenomenon
19:33was pretty critical.
19:35And I can't take credit for coining the term
19:37but I certainly (mumbles)
19:39You know, I'm the scholar that kind of operationalized
19:44the concept of energy insecurity
19:46and has basically defined
19:49like what the dimensions of this phenomenon happen to be.
19:56And it sits as a,
19:59again, I'm not sure why this is kind of going back on me.
20:01But anyway, it sits as a kind of a basic necessity of life.
20:06So Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs would place household energy
20:10really as a kind of a base
20:13in the pyramid of physiological needs,
20:16that are warmth or cooling depending on the season.
20:20The World Health Organization a while ago talked
20:23about energy being essential to meeting basic needs,
20:27a prerequisite for health,
20:29but something also that's ignored.
20:31And I'm really happy to say that that's no longer the case.
20:36I don't think that people are ignoring the issue as much.
20:39They may or may not be kind of paying
20:41as much attention as it merits.
20:43But it certainly has received more attention
20:46in the decade or so,
20:47since I've been working in this space.
20:49One of the pieces
20:50that I think is really kind of important to recognize
20:53is that, you know, well, let's just define this.
20:57So it's an inability
20:58to adequately meet basic household energy needs.
21:01It has three dimensions.
21:03So there's an economic dimension which,
21:06like rent burden is really about
21:08how much of household income is distributed
21:12or allocated to energy expenses.
21:16There's a physical component,
21:17which is about the inefficiencies
21:23in the actual, like performance,
21:25the energy performance of buildings, or homes,
21:29as well as the kind of availability
21:32and performance of appliances
21:35and other energy infrastructure.
21:37Plus the fact that people are doing things
21:39and they're managing as best they can
21:43under different circumstances.
21:45Another kind of way in which I've understood this phenomenon
21:49is that there are acute forms of energy insecurity.
21:53So power outages are really kind of a prime example, right?
21:57So you know, power outages as a result of the wildfires
22:00in California, for instance,
22:03or the hurricane in Puerto Rico.
22:07Also shut offs.
22:10When people are unable to pay their utility bills
22:13and they're shut off,
22:14that kind of represents an acute form of energy insecurity.
22:18Fuel shortages, in this case,
22:20you know, kind of price increases that are pretty shocking,
22:25might represent an acute form of energy insecurity.
22:28And one of the things that I kind of like to say,
22:31as a distinguishing factor between acute and chronic,
22:34is that acute can actually have a wider spread impact
22:39across socio-economic position.
22:42Whereas chronic energy insecurity has a lot more
22:45to do with people that might face these challenges
22:48as a result of being poor,
22:50or as a result of living in a certain housing type.
22:53For instance, a mobile home or,
22:57you know, sometimes in public or subsidized housing
23:01that hasn't necessarily been kind of upgraded
23:05to meet today's energy performance standards.
23:09You know, kind of situating those three dimensions
23:12so that the financial or economic components,
23:17the housing conditions component,
23:20and the behavioral piece,
23:22it's also really important to be thinking
23:24about kind of energy access,
23:27like the acute kind of form of energy insecurity,
23:31climate threats, including extreme weather, cold heat, etc,
23:38and the just transition.
23:39So there's a lot of discussion.
23:41In fact, you know, COP26 is happening right now.
23:44People are in Glasgow at the moment
23:48discussing what happens in terms of clean heat,
23:51or clean energy transitions,
23:53and how do we reduce our carbon footprint.
23:56And a big part of that is also of importance,
23:59particularly for people
24:00who are relying on fossil fuels at the moment
24:04and are probably least able to make the transition
24:09on their own.
24:10So that's the kind of broader context
24:13I wish to understand these dynamics.
24:16So this is now dated.
24:19And I want to say that,
24:20there are going to be
24:22well, first of all,
24:23there's a new residential energy consumption survey
24:26that was distributed,
24:29and the data was collected in 2019 2020.
24:32And I was really happy to support that effort
24:36as an advisor on some of the questions
24:37around energy insecurity.
24:39But back in 2018,
24:42the Energy Information Administration released a report
24:46based on their 2015 RECS data that showed
24:49that one in three households in The United States
24:52are actually energy insecure.
24:54And by their kind of definition,
24:56at that point, they were thinking about it
24:58in terms of those trade-offs
24:59that I've already described,
25:01the heat or eat.
25:02Like the, you know,
25:04kind of forgoing medicine,
25:06sometimes transportation, other things, other basic needs
25:09in order to meet their energy kind of cost obligations,
25:15receiving a disconnection notice
25:17or keeping the home at an unhealthy temperature.
25:19So, for some households,
25:21this is happening chronically right?
25:23The dark blue really kind of suggests
25:25that this is happening almost every month.
25:28And then the lighter blue is conditional.
25:30So it's happening kind of some months out of the year.
25:35But we also know that energy insecurity is patterned
25:38by social vulnerabilities.
25:41So that low-income households are more likely
25:44to be energy insecure.
25:45Households with children,
25:47people living in older homes,
25:49African-American and Latinx populations are much more likely
25:53to be energy insecure.
25:55I'm going to put a pin on the elderly
25:57because I think it's something that we'll come back to.
25:59But based on this information,
26:00you wouldn't think that the elderly are energy insecure,
26:03but they are.
26:04We actually use that same data
26:06to measure the national prevalence rate
26:09of disconnection notices,
26:11and disconnections.
26:13And what we found is that 3% of the population
26:16in The United States has actually received a disconnection.
26:20And just like the other forms of energy insecurity
26:24that were highlighted before,
26:26this is also patterned.
26:28So that low-income households, Black and Latinx households,
26:33but especially Black households.
26:35Households with a head of household
26:37that has a lower educational attainment rate,
26:42households with children,
26:45and also just adult households.
26:48So not the elderly.
26:50People living in mobile homes,
26:52and also single detached homes,
26:55people reporting inadequate insulation,
26:58and living in older homes, renters,
27:00people living in rural areas,
27:03and those living in the South and the Northeast
27:05were much more likely
27:06to have actually received a disconnection.
27:11Now, what do people do?
27:12So we talked a lot about coping strategies.
27:15And on the one hand there's the trade-off strategy,
27:19there's also the strategy around thermal discomfort,
27:22and then there's a strategy around energy assistance.
27:26And what we found is that,
27:27for households that receive no notice,
27:30most of them aren't doing anything really to cope.
27:33And that makes a lot of sense,
27:34because they may not see the threat as imminent.
27:38Now, once they've received the disconnection notice,
27:41many more families are actually turning to trade-offs,
27:47like foregoing their basic necessities,
27:50or doing that in combination
27:52with keeping the home at an unhealthy temperature,
27:55or seeking and receiving energy assistance.
28:01When they've actually experienced a disconnection,
28:04many more of them are turning to a lot of strategies
28:10to get by, essentially.
28:12And the kind of prevalence of these coping strategies
28:16just increases substantially.
28:18So that more people are keeping their homes
28:20at an unhealthy temperature foregoing,
28:22and also receiving assistance,
28:25but not as much as you would imagine,
28:27given the kind of crisis at hand with a disconnection.
28:33So obviously, we're kind of a public health crowd
28:39and we care about what this actually means
28:44in terms of health outcomes.
28:46So earlier, I shared a kind of a pathway or heuristic
28:49around the links between the different
28:52kind of components of housing
28:54and various health outcomes.
28:58And actually the same is true around energy.
29:03But energy is kind of situated.
29:04The three dimensions of energy
29:06are kind of situated within those larger processes
29:09of kind of housing and ratio residential segregation,
29:14and some of the other kind of factors
29:16that are happening at the neighborhood level,
29:19but also that kind of reflects
29:21the kind of discriminatory policies and practices
29:24that I mentioned before.
29:26And then in terms of outcomes,
29:27there's a whole host of them,
29:29some of them like really representing direct pathways
29:33to adverse health outcomes,
29:36as respiratory health, for instance, mental health.
29:40But also the ones that are kind of in route
29:43to these health outcomes,
29:44like environmental consequences and social consequences
29:47that might impact ultimately,
29:50some of the physical and mental health consequences
29:52that are kind of listed here.
29:54And we wanted to kind of understand this.
29:56All of these insights really came
29:58from doing qualitative work,
30:00asking people about their lives
30:02and about their circumstances.
30:04And ultimately, we did a study in Washington Heights,
30:09which is across the bridge from the Bronx.
30:11It's in upper Manhattan.
30:12It's also where the School of Public Health at Columbia is.
30:16And the local hospital
30:19as a result of changes in Medicaid,
30:26and the need to kind of reduce acute care visits,
30:29and better understand and serve the community
30:32asked us in the school of public health,
30:34to kind of better understand different pieces.
30:36And because I was on the team,
30:37I added some questions about energy insecurity.
30:40These are the questions that were asked,
30:42and it's based on Cook at al 2008 paper
30:49where they kind of have a brief indicator
30:51of energy insecurity,
30:53based on having received a letter using the stove to heat,
30:57not having heat,
30:58and also having received a shutoff.
31:02And what we found in that study is that,
31:0327% of residents in Washington Heights
31:07were considered moderately
31:08or severely energy insecure about half and half
31:12as seen here.
31:14And you know, the social patterning exists.
31:17We know that households with children
31:20of Black and Latinx in low-income households
31:24were all more likely to be energy insecure,
31:27moderately or severely so.
31:29We also thought it was really interesting
31:31that one in two households that were energy insecure
31:35were also food insecure.
31:37But that those that received food-related aid,
31:41so those that received
31:43Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program benefits, SNAP,
31:46and or Women, Infants and Children, WIC benefits
31:49were much more likely to be secure.
31:52Some earlier work had actually shown by Cook et al
31:59at BMC, at Boston Medical Center,
32:02that the receipt
32:03of Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP
32:06actually created opportunities,
32:09or was associated with more food security
32:13as well as kind of developmental markers for children
32:18in the affirmative.
32:20And that was hopeful
32:22because these are corresponding uncomplimentary findings.
32:27Essentially, we also found
32:28that energy insecurity was associated
32:31with respiratory health, asthma and pneumonia,
32:34as well as self reported anxiety, depression,
32:39and diagnose depressive disorder,
32:42as well as sleep quality.
32:44And all of those things kind of make sense,
32:46also makes sense that it wasn't associated with diabetes,
32:50for instance, hypertension, or accidental falls.
32:53Although I would say,
32:55chronic conditions, and energy insecurity
32:59are probably adversely linked.
33:02So these days,
33:04I'm writing a book.
33:05And I'm writing a book called,
33:06"Powerless: The People's Struggle for Energy in America."
33:10And my goal in this book is to humanize energy,
33:13in some ways,
33:14because we haven't really thought enough about this issue
33:17and we certainly haven't really thought
33:18about how energy is necessarily
33:21like affecting our day to day lives.
33:24And I'm going to test out a few of my stories.
33:27This is a story about Edith.
33:29This is the chapter,
33:29my second chapter in the book
33:31and the one that I'm currently working on.
33:34And it's about a woman who basically dedicated herself
33:39to taking care of her dying father,
33:42in a house in Detroit that they bought, and lived in,
33:48you know, basically,
33:50during the kind of great migration of African-Americans
33:54from the South to Northern cities for opportunities,
33:57for economic opportunities,
33:59and for upward social mobility.
34:01And this house kind of represented so much of that.
34:05It also represented the decline of the city.
34:09In fact, not only did her father die in this house,
34:15this house also was dying by itself.
34:19And its major organs,
34:21which I consider to be the heating infrastructure
34:27and the other kind of energy infrastructure
34:30were the first signs of its demise.
34:35And so, Edith, basically,
34:38at some point the boiler gave up.
34:40It was decades old.
34:43She had lights that were basically powered by natural gas.
34:49If you can imagine a time when the lights in our homes
34:52were not powered by electricity.
34:55Her son became (indistinct)
34:56You know, like he started to kind of work on addressing
35:01the light that had gone out,
35:03not realizing that it was powered by natural gas.
35:07And eventually, that caused a gas leak.
35:12She called the local energy provider.
35:14The energy provider,
35:16this was during the winter time,
35:19basically, her heat had already stopped working
35:23because the boiler, the furnace gave way.
35:28When the representative
35:31from the local utility company came by
35:33he's like, "listen, I can't do much for you,
35:35I actually have to turn off your gas."
35:38So the gas stove that she was using for heat
35:40was no longer an option.
35:42And at that point,
35:43she was kind of resorting to using a kerosene heater,
35:49which cost her about $40 to fill every three or four days.
35:55And she could only warm her actual bedroom.
36:01In that process,
36:02she was not only introducing the risk of fire, for instance,
36:06but also freezing pipes.
36:08So at some point,
36:09she also didn't have running water.
36:12And it was just a cascading effect,
36:14a really bad kind of circumstances in this home.
36:19And these pictures are actually from Zillow,
36:22because she couldn't stay in that house anymore.
36:26And it was actually the person that had recommended that she
36:33well, the HVAC guy,
36:36the heating, ventilation and air conditioning person
36:38that came in to diagnose her dying furnace
36:44told her like, maybe you should actually just move.
36:47The people from her church
36:50that had provided the kerosene heater
36:52kind of suggested the same thing.
36:54A month after I interviewed her,
36:56she did put the house on the market.
36:58Again, you know, those kind of four pillars of housing
37:01with consistency being important,
37:04she wasn't able to stay in a home
37:06that not only had kind of important memories for her family
37:12and represented so much about their upward mobility.
37:15But she had to basically kind of evacuate
37:19because the conditions were no longer tenable
37:22for her to live in.
37:23And this is not so unique,
37:26in the experience of many people living in different homes
37:30that are inherited,
37:32and that have conditions issues
37:34that make it kind of impossible
37:36for people to actually live in.
37:38I won't get into these stories with as much depth,
37:41but this is a woman that I met in Alabama,
37:43who wrote a letter to her utility provider,
37:46and is like, listen, I know I don't use as much energy
37:50but I've never seen bills that were this high.
37:56But the challenge, of course,
37:58is that she couldn't finish the,
38:01she couldn't tell her story
38:02because she couldn't finish the letter.
38:05And that has everything to do with literacy,
38:08not just energy literacy,
38:10but just basic literacy,
38:12in terms of people's ability
38:13to really advocate for themselves,
38:15using the tools of writing a letter.
38:20And while I was with her,
38:21I actually finished writing that letter for her
38:24so that she could submit it.
38:25And another woman that I met here in New York City,
38:28who basically was praying to God,
38:31because she was so worried about her bills,
38:33she kept her oil tank, you know.
38:38She monitors so closely how much energy she used,
38:42that ultimately, she was always cold in the home.
38:46And she basically says, "I suffer."
38:49This is really kind of the private form of suffering
38:53that makes people not just worry at night
38:57but also kind of be sick
38:59and ultimately sometimes perish in their own homes.
39:02So let's talk about housing interventions.
39:03And I'm gonna go through this quickly.
39:05I want to shout out Daniel Cajon,
39:08who will be joining your faculty and your center
39:13next academic year.
39:14He has been a wonderful colleague,
39:17and first friend and mentee, now colleague,
39:21and we worked on a lot of these
39:23energy equity issues together.
39:26But he was also a very important partner
39:31in thinking through the clean heat transitions
39:35here in New York City.
39:37You know, things have gotten a lot better.
39:39I'm going to go through this very quickly,
39:41because I want to leave time for questions.
39:43But back in, about 2015,
39:47they had phased out the use of the dirtiest oil number six.
39:51And you can see just by its picture,
39:53it's super heavy.
39:57And basically the incomplete combustion
40:00of not just number six,
40:03but it's kind of corresponding more diluted version,
40:08but still dirty version of oil number four,
40:12basically pollute the air.
40:14So second to vehicular emissions are residential buildings
40:19and other buildings responsible for air conditioning.
40:24I'm sorry, for air pollution.
40:25And in this process, probably not surprisingly,
40:32there were many buildings that were burning dirty fuels,
40:36because, you know, New York City is a relatively old city,
40:42with buildings that were kind of turn of the last century,
40:46and also relying on those kind of energy technologies
40:50of yesteryear.
40:52Now, you know, this kind of phasing out of dirty fuels
40:57was an opportunity essentially,
41:00to kind of clean up the air.
41:03And this was during the Bloomberg administration.
41:06And, you know, efficient as they were,
41:08they were like, oh, well, you should also maybe consider
41:10other energy efficiency upgrades,
41:12and many buildings actually did.
41:17So there was kind of almost a complete phase out
41:19of the number six oil by the end of this.
41:24And many actually,
41:25about, over half had actually transitioned to clean fuels.
41:30But as Daniels kind of work suggests,
41:35this actually was not evenly distributed.
41:38So some of the kind of dirtiest fuels continued to be burned
41:45in the lowest income communities in Northern Manhattan,
41:49and the Bronx primarily.
41:51So these are kind of environmental justice communities
41:54based on their racial composition,
41:56and the percent of poverty in the neighborhood.
41:59And they can little afford,
42:02still burning the dirtiest the fuels
42:05and yet, that's actually what is still happening
42:09since number four oil is not to be phased out until 2030.
42:14And so that's kind of one cautionary tale
42:19about yes, the kind of large picture
42:22around transitioning to cleaner fuels,
42:25but also who might be left behind in doing so.
42:29Another area of intervention that I've looked at
42:32is the repositioning of public housing,
42:36known as the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program.
42:40So some of you may remember moving to Opportunity,
42:44or HOPE VI.
42:45Those were large housing interventions.
42:49What has happened as a result of,
42:51in some ways, the insights from like
42:53you can't just move people out of communities
42:55that they have known and belong to
42:58and feel connected to.
43:00Also, that decreasing the number of public housing units,
43:05does more in the way of
43:07actually dispossessing people of their homes,
43:10and of those beloved communities.
43:13But that conditions issues are significant
43:15in public housing.
43:17In fact, there are billions of dollars
43:20of capital backlogs in public housing
43:24that really cripple the opportunity
43:26for people living in public housing
43:28to enjoy truly habitable homes.
43:33And I basically looked at this transition
43:39in the first ever RAD site in The United States,
43:43which was in Fresno, California,
43:45as well as the second one in New York City,
43:47which was in Betances Houses in the South Bronx.
43:51And these are some before pictures of the conditions
43:58at Betances.
44:00And just to kind of give you a sense,
44:03I mean, you know, this is outside of the units
44:06and the kind of common stairwells inside of the units
44:11and a bathroom.
44:12Mold obviously being a huge issue,
44:15water leaks, etc.
44:17At Betances they had, like redone the kitchens,
44:20the bathrooms, the floors,
44:22upgraded the windows to energy efficient ones,
44:25included safety measures, like cameras
44:28and adjusting doors so that they actually shut
44:33and doing a number of kind of upgrades.
44:35But a big part of it was around the heating
44:38and ventilation systems.
44:40When we did this work in Fresno, California,
44:44there they had actually upgraded to mini splits.
44:47So to heat pumps,
44:49which we know are pretty efficient.
44:51In a place like Fresno
44:52where heating and cooling are both important,
44:55it was critical.
44:57And basically what we found,
44:58again, kind of consistent with that,
45:01the four pillars of housing kind of framework
45:04is that these heating and cooling systems were upgraded.
45:08People had reported increased thermal comfort
45:11and temperature control.
45:13You know, having access to appliances
45:17that were newer and more efficient.
45:21Also, the kind of, just the aesthetics
45:26and the layout were better.
45:28People felt better about where they were living,
45:32that they had actively done mold abatement, etc.
45:36People felt an increase in pride of place,
45:40and the fact that they lived in places
45:42that had been upgraded.
45:43And for any of you who have done even minor upgrades
45:47to your living space, like painting,
45:49you realize just how important
45:52a refreshed space actually feels.
45:54But that didn't necessarily address
45:56all of the problems in public housing.
45:58I mean, obviously,
45:59when you have a complex system of providing housing
46:04with oftentimes, that external context,
46:08like the neighborhood conditions not being optimal,
46:11it continues to be felt among residents,
46:14and that we actually found in our work.
46:18At Betances, there was an interesting other component,
46:21which was about providing opportunities
46:24for people to come together.
46:25For them to come together to talk to actually like,
46:28you know, basically engage in very, very local forms
46:33of governance and democracy.
46:35This is a woman who was basically at Catholic Charities,
46:41Paula Martinez, who was ushering the tenant.
46:45She was a community,
46:46like basically a resident organizer.
46:48And the whole point was to basically empower residents
46:53to come together to talk about a number of things,
46:55not the least of which was a smoke free housing project
46:58that we were working with them to implement.
47:03And then in the two minutes that (mumbles)
47:07I want to kind of end in two minutes.
47:08So basically, it's not just housing level interventions
47:13that are important.
47:14Obviously, energy interventions are also important.
47:17Some of that is about framing.
47:20I wrote a paper a while ago
47:21that basically linked energy sacrifice zones,
47:25to communities that are essentially sacrificing
47:30on a day to day basis,
47:32and provided ways of thinking about energy justice
47:37as a rights-based framework.
47:39Sorry, this is really annoying.
47:41So the right to healthy, sustainable energy,
47:45the right to the best available energy infrastructure,
47:48the right to affordable energy,
47:49and the right to uninterrupted energy service.
47:53This is Cecil Corbin-Mark,
47:55who we lost last year, really sadly.
47:58So he was a pioneer and a visionary
48:01in thinking about ways of providing access
48:05to clean energy and renewable energy
48:09in communities like Harlem,
48:13and upper Manhattan.
48:15And we need more of that, right?
48:17That's part of what energy justice is about.
48:20As well as thinking about,
48:22is it really actually necessary for us
48:24to be shutting people off
48:25as a way of kind of collecting on payments?
48:31In California, they've actually passed
48:33the Disconnection Reform Act
48:35to reduce the number of disconnections
48:38and enroll more people in medical baseline programs
48:43and other shutoff protection services
48:46so that less households are impacted by disconnections.
48:51And then there's a LIHEAP piece.
48:54You know, in New York State,
48:57there's only protections around the holiday season,
49:02and also for people that are of a certain age
49:06and have medical conditions.
49:11But deferred payments,
49:12so like a payment plan is actually the usual,
49:16sorry, I don't know what's going on.
49:19The usual kind of way in which people try
49:22to manage whatever outstanding bills they have
49:26with their utility companies,
49:27but oftentimes, these are promises that can't be kept.
49:32And so I'm gonna (mumbles)
49:34This is a kind of a rundown of energy justice solutions,
49:39rethinking energy utility rate structures,
49:44the shut off moratoriums,
49:46not just seasonally,
49:47but obviously COVID opened up the idea
49:50that maybe we don't have to turn people off,
49:52and we should find other ways of ensuring
49:56that people have access to energy assistance benefits,
49:59like the ones that I've mentioned before,
50:00kind of improving housing codes
50:02and energy standards and buildings,
50:04and also kind of clean energy policies that are inclusive,
50:09and that are intentional about ensuring
50:11that people of color and low-income folks
50:14are able to do their part.
50:17And this is this little story about me
50:19and basically, the fact that I do this kind of thing called
50:23social impact real estate
50:24where I have totally rehab buildings,
50:28and in the South Bronx where I grew up.
50:30And incorporated solar, for instance,
50:33and energy efficiency
50:35has been a really kind of interesting proof of concept,
50:39opportunity to think about reinvesting
50:42in low-income communities from within.
50:45And so with that, I will stop sharing,
50:48and invite all of you to ask questions.
50:51Sorry that I didn't need more time.
50:54It was maybe more than I could do in 40 minutes.
51:00And I also wanna just (mumbles)
51:02So Danya Keene, I know,
51:05I'm here with our Arline Geronimus
51:06at the Russell Sage Foundation,
51:08and I'm a big fan of your work,
51:10and I'm happy to see that you're here.
51:13<v ->Thank you Diana.</v>
51:14I think this is very fascinating.
51:17(indistinct)
51:20I'm sure the students are enjoying
51:21this real world examples and experiences.
51:24And actually, we have gathered a lot of questions for you
51:27from students already.
51:29And I just want to remind you
51:30that although we only have seven minutes left
51:33but for our own audience online,
51:35if you do have a question,
51:37please post them in the chat box.
51:40The first question is actually related to your,
51:43showing the examples
51:44and also you mentioned a very interesting perspective
51:48of increasing the energy standard.
51:53Several students have been interested in like,
51:58how feasible or beneficial with policies
52:01focused on the energy efficiency
52:04that can be used to protect the low-income
52:07and people of color families
52:10from the energy security.
52:14<v ->I mean, I think that from the energy performance</v>
52:19and building standard perspective,
52:23as it intersects with those that are living
52:27in subsidized housing,
52:29or in rent-stabilized housing,
52:33there's always the kind of need to,
52:35of course, provide access to the kind of best performance.
52:42I mean, a lot of the 311 no heat complaints
52:45are actually coming from people
52:49that are living in those very same buildings.
52:52But we also need to couple that with tenant protections.
52:57And that was a recognition
52:58that really came as a result of the clean heat work.
53:04So before they started to do
53:07the kind of grading system for buildings,
53:11in New York City, first commercially,
53:13and now, increasingly, in residential buildings,
53:18it was so clear that some landlords were using that
53:21as an opportunity, essentially,
53:23to kick long-term tenants out.
53:25The ones that were living in gentrifying neighborhoods,
53:29where they could command more rents.
53:32And they use these kinds of capital improvement,
53:36of course, I'm just using a New York City example.
53:37But they use the capital improvement assessments,
53:41essentially, to make it almost impossible
53:43for those long-term residents to stay
53:46and to afford to be able to stay.
53:49And what I have concluded in,
53:53kind of assessing what this ultimately looks like,
53:55is that there has to be a much more kind of concerted effort
54:00to support those landlords
54:03and even possibly subsidizing,
54:07or kind of completely providing grants to those landlords
54:16in exchange for allowing people to stay in those buildings.
54:19Because it doesn't do much for people to actually like,
54:26(mumbles)
54:27for the physical conditions of the buildings to improve
54:31if the people that have been living there forever
54:33and sometimes suffering in significant ways
54:36to not be able to benefit essentially.
54:38So I think this is,
54:41it's an area for kind of more consideration,
54:45but it's not going to be,
54:47it won't go away,
54:48especially as we think
54:49about the electrification of buildings,
54:53both in the introduction of kind of clean cooking options
54:58as well as clean eating options and cooling,
55:01absolutely, we have to think
55:03about the tenant protection aspects.
55:05And I don't know that we have it all figured out,
55:07but it's definitely something
55:09that I think has to be more front of mind for policymakers.
55:13<v ->Thank you Diana.</v>
55:14We're having some background noise.
55:16Sorry about that.
55:17But we do have a question from actually Susie Row.
55:21She's wondering like,
55:22do you think that HHS selection of the (mumbles)
55:27to Justice40 Initiative pilots
55:31will provide an opportunity for policy reforms?
55:36<v ->Yeah, I mean, so Justice40 is definitely an opportunity</v>
55:43to essentially do what we did in public health, right?
55:49Health in all policies.
55:51You know, in this case,
55:52it's basically thinking about, you know,
55:57low-income people of color,
56:02the need to transition
56:04and have kind of climate considerations,
56:09be front of mind together.
56:11I do think it has a huge,
56:16it presents a huge opportunity.
56:19I think the implementation of this is yet to be seen.
56:25Dr. Tony Reames, who used to be at University of Michigan,
56:29and is now basically heading up Justice40 at the DOE
56:35will basically (mumbles)
56:36I believe that he kind of has all of those intentions
56:40and will do his best.
56:43But I think the policy situation in Congress right now
56:47is challenging,
56:49and it's a little hard to predict,
56:51essentially what will be coming.
56:56So, I think in its spirit,
56:58it's right in its implementation.
57:02It's yet to be seen,
57:03but I think that in the same way that we made big strides
57:06in thinking about health in all policies,
57:08the Justice40 piece,
57:09and supporting environmental justice organizations,
57:13community-based organizations,
57:14all of those kind of elements of Justice40
57:18will hopefully make it successful
57:20in addressing many of these challenges.
57:25<v ->Thank you Diana.</v>
57:26I think that,
57:27although there are many questions students would ask,
57:31but we are running out of time.
57:32And it's a great pleasure to have you here,
57:35and thank you so much for this amazing
57:38and fantastic talk.
57:40<v ->Thank you.</v>
57:41Thank you so much for the invitation.
57:42I wish you all the best.