🏡💚 Wildfires up north. Smoke in the Bay
September 22nd, 2023
If you live in the Bay Area, over the past few days you’ve probably shut all your windows, pulled the air purifiers out of the closet, and hunkered down indoors as winds blew smoke down from wildfires blazing farther north in California and Oregon. Earlier this week, PG&E shutoff power for thousands of residents in parts of northern California.
Yep, it’s fire season.
It says a lot about where we’ve been the past several years that so far this year the wildfire impacts have felt relatively mild. And yet, this year we’ve seen a huge range of different ways that increasingly frequent and intense climate impacts have been felt across every community in the state — through floods, extreme heat, hurricanes, or wildfires.
All of this has got me thinking about what it would really take to create climate-resilient homes for everyone, and to make sure homes stay affordable as we also make them healthier and more efficient.
It’s also a reminder about the need for community resilience, and I know a number of you all were a part of project applications for SGC’s first round of Community Resilience Center funding (best of luck!).
Each passing extreme weather event is a constant reminder of the ways we need to build resilience, in our homes and in our communities. What role might green social housing play in this?
Could we construct beautiful, permanently affordable housing units that are mixed-use and include community resilience centers with backup power, cooling, and air-filtration?
Could we make public investments to upgrade and retrofit our aging housing stock, while also attaching tenant and affordability protections to keep people rooted in their communities?
These are some of the many questions we’ll be answering through this campaign. For now, hope everyone is staying safe and cool.
Downtown Oakland seen through the haze of wildfire smoke on Sept 20 (from KQED)
WHAT WE’RE READING
What’s the cost to cool Los Angeles? City explores a cooling mandate for all rental units (LA Times) — from earlier this summer, reporting on LA’s study to look at the cost and feasibility of requiring cooling in all rental units in the city
As Arizona builds to solve a housing crisis, will its homes withstand future heat extremes? (AZ Central) — really interesting look at how Arizona is facing similar challenges on the frontlines of a housing crisis and the climate crisis
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We’ll be back with another newsletter next Friday morning. Please send any relevant topics, articles, reports, or intel to me at zach@apen4ej.org!
