Why I want to help a community to be better prepared for extreme weather through postcards
Extreme heat kills poor people inside their homes in NYC. This is how I want to help them to build a network in which they can help themselves and know how they can improve their places.
During my final semester at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, I will be sharing parts of what I found through my process of listening and understanding the communities affected by energy insecurity by diving deeper into aspects of the problematic and also of the project that I am trying to develop. This is the third chapter in a series of journal entries for my practicum course.
Kevin Arroyo is a 26 year-old who lives inside a NYCHA housing unit in Hunts Point, South Bronx. To cool their place during the last August 17´s heatwave, he bought a faulty, used AC unit that spreads a cold, bad smelling air. “Do you imagine someone living without this during the summer?,” he asked me last summer, when I went to his place. Euline Williams lived inside a senior citizens house in Harlem without an AC unit inside her room. She couldn´t get one for her room, so instead she had to go to a tenants air-conditioned room. She couldn´t get a unit for her private room. Patricia Gary is a retired social worker who lives inside an apartment and prefers not to have an AC unit. “It affects my bones and I can endure it”, she told me during the boiling morning of a heatwave that went through New York City last August.
These are only three cases related in some sort of way to “energy insecurity” (if you are a reader in Europe, you probably have seen it called “fuel poverty”), something that I´ve studied since the beginning of the year. Why I got into this? Because I think that journalism works at its best when it identifies and makes visible issues that are not in the public discussion. Energy insecurity, which basically affects people unable to adequate their home to endure extreme weather seasons (either winter or summer) is, in a way, a hidden hardship that people suffer when their economic situation worsens. It could be that you cannot pay your utility bills, it can be your landlord replacing your building´s boiler in the middle of the winter or the fact that you don´t have money or permission to put an AC unit on a window of your house.
It´s not even close to be a top issue in any agenda because many people don´t even know which is the problem they are facing. Nevertheless, with climate change doing its part, we are going to be more and more at a crossroads in terms of this, with urban heat islands overheating more and more and ourselves thinking how to solve these problems in a way that does not affect the climate further.
As I spent this whole year contacting researchers in the field, local journalists and community organizations, the issue seemed blurry. In a city like New York, providing heating during the winter is mandatory by law. About AC units? Last numbers say that 92% of the city has at least one unit inside their buildings.
What happens is what you see inside these numbers. Let´s take cooling issues as an example: at least 100.000 don´t have one at their homes. And in certain neighborhoods considered “heat pockets” because of how they absorb and retain the heat during the summer, kids under 5 years old live in poverty, which can directly be linked to the fact that they probably don´t have that AC unit. South Bronx and Harlem are two of the most notorious neighborhoods inside the city with that denomination. These are the two most at-risk populations in terms of an issue that, given the current temperature trends, is going to become worse: 140 people die every year in the city because of overheating issues. Also, the amount of emergency calls and hospitalization situations because of extreme heat is going to skyrocket in the next decades.
92% of New York City has AC units, but what about the remaining 8% who doesn´t?
“There´s definitely an information issue with this”, Daphnany Sanchez, a New York City worker inside the NYC RetroFit office told me some months ago. As I said, extreme heat is still not perceived as a big issue inside the very communities that face it. People in danger of suffering this make a diffuse community, and also one with not so much self awareness about their situation. The lack of information about the resources available is a common concern both inside the community organizations where I went to ask for input about the issue and also inside the public administration.
Resiliency is a very common concept these days. With the past hurricane season, the press adopted it in its more known denomination. Articles conclude that cities should be built to be resilient to extreme weather events. But also, that will not happen if communities don´t become resilient to extreme weather events like a heat wave, or a hurricane. If a heat wave happens and all the neighborhood knows that one of them does not live inside a cool environment, they can be the first line of defense to help them. Yes, the city has cooling centers when heat waves hit, but will these people be able to travel to these places? Will they want to do it?
But how can we make them be more aware of the need for this? How can I make someone like Patricia to understand that no matter how she endures extreme heat, there will be a time when her body will say “enough”?
Obviously, issues like “energy insecurity” are not among the ones that can be solved just by raising awareness through the press. While the ultimate goal should be to have an effect in policy, what can we do with the people affected and the ones who can give a hand to them right now? And then, do these tenants know that the city wants to help them to insulate their places through Weatherization to make them more resistant to the action of extreme heat or cold?
How can I make someone like Patricia to understand that no matter how she endures extreme heat, there will be a time when her body will say “enough”?
What I came to learn to New York City was specifically how could someone like me repurpose his few journalistic skills to contribute to a certain community. For Social Journalists, the process is never complete when we publish a story on an outlet, no matter how their distribution channels might be.
So, how this information might reach them in a more effective way?, I asked myself day after day since I´ve started my Startup Sprint course this Fall. I knew that in this case, technology might become a gap, not a bridge to the solution. During a session, I remembered “Welcome to Donetsk”, one of my favorite journalism projects. Anastasia Taylor-Lind, the journalist that designed and executed it, used it to raise awareness in a more intimate way about the atrocities of the war in that ukrainian city. This year, Jorge Caraballo developed East Boston, nuestra casa: a project designed -in Jorge´s words- “seeks to mitigate the anxiety caused by the housing crisis with useful information for the affected community.” On that neighborhood, a gentrification wave is kicking out historical dwellers from it, but he managed to offer them a direct and intimate way to inform them about their rights and what they could do to avoid that fate.
Suddenly, I wondered if I could apply Anastasia and Jorge´s playbook to my issue, since it is also a neighborhood issue and something that will be solved inside that network. To me, what he did is the ultimate iteration of what is called “solutions journalism.” We used to think that publishing a “solutions” article was the best we could do to help people with a certain problem. But what happens if people never read that story? Where does all these information go? Was it worth? How can you measure how effective that publication was?
We used to think that publishing a “solutions” article was the best we could do to help people with a certain problem. But what happens if people never read that story? Where does all these information go? Was it worth?
After doing an internal analysis of what could I provide but mostly, which were the main problems that I have identified during these process, I concluded that I should focus on solving the information gap and doing what I can to foster a community of neighbors that can help each other. No magical app or web service will fix such a complicated issue. It has to be something that reaches them more directly.
This is how I thought about “Your hidden heat”, a series of postcard-guidelines whose aim is to show the dwellers what they can do about their situation: how they can ask for an AC unit for free, how can they improve their home to be more isolated both for extreme heat and cold, where they can complain about their situation or which organizations are willing to provide some sort of solution to them. Projects like The Harlem Heat are already trying to establish a network like these, and I think this can be a good contribution to it. So the plan is to distribute these postcards in the neighborhoods where less AC units are reported. You can receive it in your house, you can find it sticked next to a wall, or in between further correspondence inside a building´s lobby.
The aim of “Your hidden heat” is to make neighbors more aware of the things they can do to improve their apartment to endure extreme weather situations, through postcards.
Through these postcards, I think I also will have a good shot at gathering them inside a network that will allow these (hopefully) better informed neighbors to be in touch, discuss issues and react when the next heatwave occurs. Since prevention is key in these issues, having all of them together might help them to help others that are living close to them and in need. And the success of it will rely on how many people receive that postcard and how many of them decides to be a part of that neighbor-to-neighbor network.
As a Startup Sprint project, these are initiatives that have to be made having revenue in mind. That is how I thought about considering some of the associations that I´ve made through the year to look for some sort of collaboration that will allow to get these postcards printed and distributed through some of the affected neighborhoods. Since the community could be reached through an organization or a certain project, I think it will be possible to find synergies with some of the actors that are already playing in neighborhoods such as Harlem or South Bronx. Already some of them seemed to be open to the possibility of testing this idea when I have it ready to go, and also to present it as a joint project for funding through grants.
This is not going to happen without challenges: the first one will be to actually produce postcards that have an impact: which type of information should they include? How can we catch the attention of the people who will receive it? Then, it will be all about distribution: will I get enough channels of distribution to move these postcards the way it should? Will these postcards reach NYCHA housing and other areas sensible to indoor temperature issues? Will we be able through them to gather neighbors inside a community that eventually will consist of people helping each other? How can I be sure that this will have an impact inside the community?
Since our ability as journalists has always been to convey information, check it and deliver it on an efficient way, I think I´m not moving a little bit of what made me stay inside a newsroom for so many years. But now, I think it´s time for the people like me to actually consider how can we become more effective to alert people about their problems and help them solve them. To ultimately contribute in a different way. I hope this becomes a good way to prove that. But for now, I have to start designing and figuring out these postcards.
