Climate Justice Starts at Home: Building Resilient Housing to Reduce Disparate Impacts From Climate Change in Residential Settings

Housing is a quintessential element in the race against climate change. The home environment is also where climate impacts are intimately experienced. People are increasingly reliant on residential settings to keep them safe from more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as storms, heat waves, flooding, and droughts.¹ These conditions not only overload home-based infrastructure but they also strain inhabitants socially and economically. From a justice perspective, communities of color, low-income groups, the elderly, and the medically vulnerable are disproportionately affected by housing-related climate impacts and face significant barriers to prevent, respond to, or mitigate adverse outcomes.

The residential sector has long been implicated in contributing to harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are the main culprits of climate change. A recent study estimated that residential energy use accounts for 20% of all GHG emissions in the United States.² The authors warn that continued reliance on fossil fuels in newer homes and delays in decarbonizing the residential sector will hamper efforts to eliminate housing-related GHG emissions.² While this comprehensive analysis answers a critical question about the extent to which housing contributes to climate change via GHGs, the existing literature generally ignores the other ways in which housing and climate change are interlaced.

This editorial centers housing as the venue in which less predictable and more intense climate conditions are experienced while pointing to the inherent inequalities therein. It uses a housing and environmental justice lens to understand disparities in climate change impacts while proposing a resilient housing framework to be integrated in climate action plans and just transition policies.

HOUSING AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Swope and Hernández identified the four pillars of housing as cost, conditions, consistency, and context, referring to housing affordability, indoor environmental quality, residential stability, and neighborhood risks and assets, respectively.³ Climate change is effectively compromising the capacity and stability of each of these pillars in unique ways:

• 1.The cost of housing in flood-prone areas has increased because of higher insurance rates; meanwhile, housing operating costs have swelled with more maintenance and repair needs in the aftermath of extreme weather.
• 2.The conditions of housing are also more precarious as a result of moisture and mold stemming from flooding, storm-related power outages, and greater air conditioning demands from heat waves.
• 3.The ability to remain in one’s home or ensure its structural integrity is jeopardized by drought-induced wildfires, hurricanes, and storms that have caused billions of dollars in property damage and forced families to temporarily relocate or be permanently displaced.
• 4.Given the patterning of homes and the often uneven allocation of resources, those most affected by these extreme weather events are also often the least able to rebound, not just on an individual household level but also at the community scale.

Using the four pillars of housing framework, below I describe in greater detail the ways in which housing and vulnerable inhabitants face unprecedented risk in the context of climate change.

Costs

Over the past two decades, the price of housing in the United States has increased exponentially for renters and owners across the United States, with low-income households more likely to shoulder the greatest cost burdens.⁴ Homes are not only more expensive to live in but they also vary drastically by energy performance.

Ironically, higher-income households pay less for utilities despite consuming more energy per capita and square foot because they enjoy greater energy efficiency, which drives down costs and delivers enhanced comfort. On the other hand, low-income households often go to extreme measures to conserve energy yet experience higher energy use intensity because of housing conditions that cause heating and cooling losses or because of barriers to upgrading to more efficient energy infrastructure including appliances and heating and cooling systems.⁵ Black households, including those with higher incomes, are also more likely to live in less-efficient homes, demonstrating the legacy problems of housing segregation, redlining, and lack of equitable access to financing. These additional energy costs affect housing costs overall and, in turn, influence energy, housing, and dual economic burdens.^6,7 Moreover, Black and low-income households are at acute risk of being underinsured or completely lacking homeowners’ or renters’ insurance because of high costs.⁸ These groups are thus more vulnerable to significant losses and protracted recovery from disasters.

Conditions

Climate change is straining housing infrastructure because of excess heat and cold, storm-related power and telecommunications outages, and added moisture from flooding following heavy precipitation. Rising temperatures have contributed to record heat and extreme weather across the globe. On the housing front, this means that heating and cooling demands are higher, which adds pressure to the existing energy infrastructure for thermal conditioning.⁹ Some homes lack the necessary equipment, while vulnerable householders may deny themselves comfort to reduce utility costs. This trade-off can increase the risk of heat- and cold-stress‒related illness and induce other forms of hardship such as food insecurity as people decide between heating and eating. Extreme temperatures can also be deadly.¹⁰

Furthermore, power, water, and telecommunications outages are more commonplace as a result of extreme weather. Living without electricity, clean water, or access to Internet and cell phones can complicate daily life and compromise health, especially for the medically vulnerable. Excess dampness and moisture in homes is known to instigate the presence of mold. Mold is a known concomitant of respiratory conditions such as asthma and acute respiratory illness in adults and children. With greater precipitation and flooding from storms, there are more opportunities for mold to fester.¹¹

Consistency

The immediacy of climate-related threats often translates into the need to evacuate homes and leave personal belongings behind to seek personal safety. Drought-induced wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other storms have claimed homes, leveling structures and the memories, hopes, investments, and residential stability contained therein. While at times the displacement is temporary, such that affected householders return to their homes to repair and clean out damage, in some instances the dislocation is permanent. The emotional toll and economic devastation can represent long-term setbacks; these trajectories are not evenly distributed. For example, during Hurricane Katrina, more than a million Gulf Coast residents were displaced. Almost a quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, residents never returned. Many of the involuntarily dispossessed, most of whom were Black and low-income, experienced worse health, economic, and housing outcomes following the storm.¹²

Context

Neighborhood factors such as school quality, access to green space, crime rates, and the absence of environmental hazards have traditionally affected property values. Increasingly, the imperative to live in climate-safe regions with protective features, such as higher elevation, have affected housing markets. The ensuing “climate gentrification” has driven disadvantaged residents out of desirable communities and into riskier environments.¹³ Existing evidence shows a clear pattern of climate gentrification in several US cities following storms (e.g., post-Katrina New Orleans) and in areas facing flood risks (e.g., Miami, Florida). These factors have compounded the economic tensions already at play in lower-income, racially minoritized, and immigrant communities that have forced longtime residents out of gentrifying or gentrified communities, thereby presenting new pressure points in the context of climate change.¹⁴

RESILIENT HOUSING IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Expectations that disproportionately affected populations be more resilient in the face of climate change are misguided.¹⁵ Instead, we should focus on fostering resilient physical and social structures to ensure that those facing disproportionate risks can better prepare, prevent, respond to, and recover from extreme weather and disasters. As both a material good and social institution, housing represents an important focal point for advancing climate justice. Informed by the four pillars of housing framework,³ “resilient housing” entails (1) a reinforced physical infrastructure, (2) economic supports, and (3) social connectedness with a particular emphasis on protecting low-income persons, aged individuals, and communities of color from climate harms:

• 1.Homes should be better equipped with clean and efficient energy technologies, weatherization, and flood-proofing measures to decrease operating costs, improve thermal control, reduce excess GHGs, and shield against property damage.
• 2.Energy assistance benefits and home insurance coverage need to be more robust, easier to acquire, and fairly distributed to ensure that people have the means to maintain comfort, reduce financial trade-offs, and rebuild after storms.
• 3.Protections against climate gentrification and long-term displacement will help ensure that community members can count on neighbors that they know and trust and shield against the formation of “climate ghettos,” where those with the lowest means will face the greatest environmental threats. Moreover, coming back home and remaining rooted in one’s community should not be a matter of privilege but a choice that is protected.

CONCLUSION

Homes act as a crucial vector through which climate change is proximally experienced. People’s residences provide shelter and protection from the elements and enable social connectedness. People of color, low-income persons, the elderly, and the medically vulnerable not only face disproportionate climate risks but they also face various forms of housing insecurity. Resilient housing can uphold the principles of climate justice by ensuring that all populations have a structurally and socially sound platform by which to withstand the impacts of climate change.