In 2019, 20.4 million renter households in the U.S. spent more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing. This is unsustainable combined with the holistic rise of the cost of living. Economic pressure from the pandemic and the already declining number of available and reasonably-priced living spaces makes it necessary to seek government or private help for low-income or affordable housing.
Communities across the U.S. are seeing rezoning of residential areas to commercial and an increase in luxury housing developments. This decreases the availability for affordable housing and increases living costs, particularly in urban areas susceptible to gentrification.
Dorchester, a neighborhood outside of Boston, MA, is one area grappling with an affordable housing crisis. Census tract data shows an increase of white residents in the neighborhood with home prices in the area rising 76 percent over the last five years. Dorchester is diverse, as much of its population is composed of families and multigenerational households of color and immigrants. They are either pushed out of their living arrangements or remain stuck in housing that is environmentally unsafe.
Affordable housing is necessary to alleviate crowding in residential areas, free household resources to improve holistic health outcomes, and support resident mental health by limiting financial stressors. The environmental safety of affordable housing and reducing threats from climate change are overlooked even though it is instrumental in ensuring the physical, financial, and mental well-being of occupants. Because of this, the affordable housing crisis is also a major issue of environmental and climate justice.
Patterns of Environmental Risk
Neighborhood and community composition in the U.S. has historically been susceptible to systematic alteration by policies like racial segregation, gerrymandering, boundary-drawing around resources, disinvestment, and redlining. These aim to disenfranchise communities of color politically and economically, inhibiting equitable housing choice.
While low-income and affordable housing is a step in ensuring housing security, there is significantly increased prevalence and clustering of harmful environmental conditions in these options. This relationship between environmental and climate hazards leads to a lack of fair housing choice particularly for marginalized communities.
Immediate Environmental Risks
Clusters of environmental hazards in low-income housing sites reflect physical attributes of housing units and their maintenance. Mold, household pests, pesticides, and chemicals like lead-based paint, radon, and asbestos are commonly reported hazards. They can be compounded with poor building structure or upkeep like inadequate ventilation.
Broader environmental issues can also include access to safe and clean drinking water, soil contamination, excessive air pollution, and combustion by-products. These are more likely to result from resource boundary-drawing and redlining, which restricts residents of color or those with a lower socio-economic status to less-desirable areas. For example, in Dorchester, soil is tainted by lead and heavy metals because of factories that once released toxins into the air and ground.
Health endpoints of these onsite environmental issues include respiratory irritation, asthma development and exacerbation, and cancer.
Climatic Risks
A risk less commonly noted is the heightened vulnerability of low-income households to climate change and a lack of resources to respond to climatic shifts. Dorchester is a particularly vulnerable area, already experiencing extreme weather events such as prolonged heat waves, hurricanes, stormwater flooding, and winter weather. Residents restricted to undesirable areas without the financial ability to move to more stable locations are forced to deal with these outcomes.
Additionally, one of the main housing costs for renters is home energy. One in three U.S. households are energy insecure, facing challenges in paying utility bills to maintain proper heating and cooling in their home. With more severe fluctuations in weather and temperature, this will increase the incidence of extreme heat or cold-related health conditions.
Addressing Affordable Housing and Environmental Justice
With knowledge of the affordable housing crisis and the statistic that energy used by residential buildings accounts for nearly 40 percent of the total U.S. energy consumption, a comprehensive solution to affordable housing and its environmental vulnerabilities can involve green building techniques. This might involve tighter building envelopes that can keep out pollutants, pests, toxins, and moisture. Energy efficiency and environmental sustainability of new or renovated affordable housing is increased, cutting carbon emissions and local occurrence of pollution, smog, or acid rain.
The Green and Healthy Homes Initiative is one example of a public-private partnership that financially supports retrofitting initiatives for low-income households across the country. They not only address in-site environmental burdens like lead exposure and asthma-causing pollution but support weatherization of homes in response to the high utility-cost burdens exacerbated by severe weather.
There is a push to make Dorchester greener by reworking the auto-centric design of the area and adding green space. While this is ideal for residents, it increases the threat of gentrification. Boston as a whole has taken steps to increase affordable housing units, and there is also promise in working with federal partners that are more likely to prioritize affordable housing than in years prior.
Alongside advocacy for equitable housing policy, community gardening is used in Dorchester to increase neighborhood resilience. Not only are bonds formed between neighbors, increasing community food security, it also removes heat and pollution from the air, regenerates polluted soil, and reduces stormwater runoff.
A main tenet of environmental justice is that no group of people should suffer disproportionately from negative impacts of the government’s environmental choices. Instead of expecting households to spend a third of their income on residences that may not be free from environmental hazards, we should aim to make safe, affordable housing guaranteed for all.
