Climate Adaptation Resources related to Low-income Communities
This tab includes resources that address the disproportionate impacts of climate change for low-income communities.
Resources are automatically presented by date. Apply additional filters to narrow the list by resource category, organization type of resource author, impact, jurisdictional focus, state, or region.
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Resource
July 25, 2020
The Florida Keys Community Land Trust (CLT) demonstrates how land trusts can deliver resilient affordable housing options in disaster-affected areas. The Florida Keys, a 125-mile long chain of islands off the southern tip of Florida in Monroe County, were devastated in 2017 by Hurricane Irma. Irma made landfall at Cudjoe Key as a Category 4 hurricane and its sustained winds of 132 mph and 8-foot storm surge devastated homes, businesses, and infrastructure in the Lower and Middle Keys. Twenty-five percent of the homes in the Florida Keys were damaged or destroyed by the storm, with disproportionate impacts on manufactured homes that made up the bulk of affordable housing in the County.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts is one of the first examples of a city-land trust partnership designed to address a range of community challenges including housing affordability, and racial and economic inequality. In the 1980s, DSNI created the community land trust, Dudley Neighbors, Inc. (DNI) to combat blight in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood, which as a result of disinvestment had numerous vacant properties and became a frequent site for dumping and arson. The goal of the land trust was to facilitate redevelopment of the neighborhood without displacing existing residents and to empower community control over future development. DNI acquired 60 acres of land and currently stewards 225 units of affordable housing, an urban farm, a greenhouse, a charter school, parks, and a town common. The DSNI is also notable because of the unique partnership with the City of Boston. The City granted the land trust eminent domain authority to condemn lands in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood and provided the land trust significant financial resources to support the development of affordable housing and other community projects in the neighborhood. DSNI’s work has helped to enhance the resilience of the community by preventing displacement in the face of rapid gentrification in the city, enhancing food security for residents, creating and stewarding green space that help to reduce urban heat islands, and by increasing social cohesion in the neighborhood through community activities and a community-led governing Board. DSNI shows how innovative public-partnerships between land trusts and cities can be fostered to address climate resilience and other community stressors, such as the lack of affordable housing, blight, and disinvestment.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
2017
The City of Philadelphia created the Tiered Assistance Program (TAP) in 2017 in order to address water affordability for low income communities. In Philadelphia, water affordability is an issue that affects a large number of families - between April 2012 and January 2018, 40% of households either had unpaid bills or some other sort of water debt. To address this issue, the Philadelphia Water Department implemented TAP, a program that allows customers to pay water bills at a percent of their income - this payment is capped at 3%. Through this program’s fixed rates, Philadelphians who are struggling to pay their water bill can budget more accurately and access more affordable water, which is predicted to result in increased payment rates and reduced water debts.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
April 23, 2020
The Greenlining Institute (GLI) is a nonprofit organization founded to advance economic opportunity and community empowerment through policy, research, organizing, and leadership throughout California. The Environmental Equity team works to address climate change, pollution, and poverty while ensuring that any investments or adjustments made as a result of their projects take into consideration community input in decision making and anti-displacement strategies. GLI and the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) co-sponsored Assembly Bill 2722, which created the Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) program.
Author or Affiliated User: Kathryn Braddock
Resource Category: Planning
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Resource
January 2020
According to the Energy Democracy Scorecard and Flipbook from the Emerald Cities Collaborative, “Energy Democracy” is defined as an ideal scenario where a frontline community “shifts completely away from an extractive economy, energy, and governance system to one that is regenerative, provides reparations, transforms the power structures, and creates new governance and ownership practices. ” The Energy Democracy Flipbook is designed to help frontline communities, such as low-income people of color, who are vulnerable to climate change to self-evaluate their communities’ energy economy condition.
Authors or Affiliated Users: Anthony Giancatarino, Donna House
Resource Category: Education and Outreach
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The Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project (SERCAP) was established through funding from the U.S. Government’s Office of Economic Opportunity in the 1960s. The Project helps low-income rural communities in the mid-Atlantic and the Southeastern U.S. obtain water and wastewater infrastructure for running water, indoor plumbing, and wastewater treatment. Water utilities in these rural areas often lack funding to provide such infrastructure. Households that are not supplied with drinking water tend to rely on wells and septic tanks, which can get contaminated by pollution from agricultural activity and the lack of suitable wastewater treatment. SERCAP assists both individuals and municipalities, and its services include installing infrastructure, providing financing and loans, and offering technical support. In addition to providing services related to water, SERCAP also provides support on housing issues.
Resource Category: Organizations
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Resource
2019
The Jade Greening Initiatives refer to two concurrent initiatives to plan and implement targeted tree planting and greening in the underserved Jade District of outer southeast Portland, Oregon. Residents in the district experience significant economic and health disparities due to historic public disinvestment, its location surrounded by major transportation corridors on all sides, and lack of tree canopy and accessible green space. With assistance from community-based organizations, community members and businesses worked together to set priorities for neighborhood development and greening. Collaboration, planning, and design of new greenspace were supported through the EPA's Greening America's Communities Program and the Oregon Solutions Program.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
July 2019
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has evaluated how climate change will contribute to increasing incidence of dangerous high heat days across the U. S. This includes an analysis of the growing number of high heat days across various regions of the country, described under three climate change scenarios. The report also details the public health consequences of extreme heat and the populations that are particularly vulnerable to these threats. Policy recommendations are offered with adaptation measures that can be implemented at all levels of government to address rising temperatures.
Authors or Affiliated Users: Kristina Dahl, Erika Spanger-Siegfried, Rachel Licker, Astrid Caldas, John Abatzoglou, Nicholas Mailloux, Rachel Cleetus, Shana Udvardy, Juan Declet-Barreto, Pamela Worth
Resource Category: Assessments
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Resource
June 26, 2019
An Equitable Water Future: Louisville focuses on building equity in the infrastructure workforce, primarily the water sector, in Louisville, Kentucky. Local factors that influence water equity are described, including concentrated vulnerable communities that are disproportionality experiencing aging infrastructure, flooding and climate impacts, and barriers to participating in the local infrastructure workforce. The report outlines recommendations to address these issues that Louisville and other municipalities can take to advance sustainable and equitable utility management.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
June 2019
The City of Seattle, Washington is establishing five new facilities that will provide clean air for its most at-risk residents during hazardous conditions brought on by wildfires. As the climate warms, Seattle is experiencing a major uptick in the number of wildfires, and consequently more days with unhealthy air quality from particulate matter. This issue is especially significant for Seattle, as the majority of the city’s residents do not have air conditioning, and mostly open windows to circulate air from outside to cool homes.
Resource Category: Solutions
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