What is a Resilient and Healthy Home?
This blog marks the beginning of a series that will delve into the various aspects of equitable building decarbonization. Stay tuned for our next post, which will explore how medical professionals can become involved in the fight for healthier homes.
Most of our daily lives are spent inside buildings, whether we're working, learning, or sleeping. The conditions of our homes, workplaces, schools, and community spaces profoundly impact our health and overall quality of life. However, the buildings we inhabit are also significant contributors to climate change. In Los Angeles, over 43% of greenhouse gas emissions come from building operations like space heating and cooling, water heating, cooking appliances, and electricity use for lighting and appliances. As we grapple with the urgent need to reduce harmful pollution and combat global warming, building decarbonization represents a critical solution.
While reducing greenhouse gas emissions is crucial for addressing inequities—since low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis—building decarbonization is also vital for protecting the health of California’s families. Various home hazards, such as improper ventilation, indoor air pollutants, and the threat of eviction, can lead to a range of adverse health effects, such as respiratory conditions, developmental disorders, cancer, heat-related illnesses, and mental health challenges.
Decarbonization efforts must address both the external and internal environments of the home. It's not enough to improve conditions outside or around the home; we must also focus on the health and safety of what’s inside. A healthy home goes beyond the absence of illness—it requires safety and comfort. The intersection of unhealthy homes and forms of systemic injustice highlights the pressing need for equitable building decarbonization, especially for low-income communities that have long been marginalized by systemic disinvestment. For building decarbonization to address both the climate and environmental justice crises effectively, it must be accessible to all.
The Key to Healthy Homes: Equitable Building Decarbonization
The traditional notion of building decarbonization refers to the process of reducing carbon emissions associated with buildings. This encompasses three primary strategies: enhancing energy efficiency through better insulation and design, electrifying appliances to replace fossil fuel combustion, and transitioning to renewable energy sources like wind and solar for electricity generation.
Equitable building decarbonization involves comprehensive investments that improve housing quality and resilience, especially for communities facing the greatest health and housing disparities. It goes beyond energy efficiency and involves taking a holistic view of the home to ensure homes are habitable and safe, remediating hazards like lead paint, asbestos, pest control, and structural issues that can prevent the installation of all-electric technologies. This means recognizing that solutions must be tailored to the unique needs of various communities, as a one-size-fits-all approach is inadequate.
The principles of equitable building decarbonization also address the risks of displacement, such as “renovictions,” where landlords use renovation upgrades as a pretext for raising rents and displacing tenants (we will be diving further into this Decarbonization and Housing Justice in a future blog).
Our goal is to tackle the climate crisis, improve public health, enhance energy resiliency, and combat housing injustice, all while centering the most vulnerable in our solutions. We cannot effectively address one of these issues without considering them collectively.
While many environmental groups agree that building decarbonization is a key solution to the climate crisis, PSR-LA believes that an equitable building decarbonization approach is not only necessary but also the right choice from both a justice and environmental perspective to achieve the outcomes we seek. It ensures that the benefits of decarbonization are distributed fairly, preventing further marginalization of vulnerable communities and ensuring that the fight for healthy homes reaches those who need it most.
The History of Unhealthy Homes
The landscape of building decarbonization is deeply intertwined with a long history of systemic racism and housing inequities. For decades, policies rooted in racism—such as redlining, residential segregation, and exclusionary zoning—have created significant barriers to homeownership for vulnerable communities. This has led to low-income communities and communities of color being disproportionately displaced and excluded from access to healthy housing.
Los Angeles Night Aerial 105 Freeway
Furthermore, factors such as income, homeownership status, and immigration status intersect with racial and ethnic disparities, exacerbating these inequities. These practices have compounded disparities, particularly through environmental hazards linked to proximity to oil and gas infrastructure, landfills, freeways, and industrial facilities, leading to worse health outcomes compared to their white counterparts.
As a result of living in close proximity to polluting industries and improper indoor appliances, communities face higher risks of asthma, heat-related illnesses, and cancer, alongside inadequate access to improvements such as induction stoves, adequate heating and cooling systems, and proper ventilation. The ongoing effects of disinvestment have left many neighborhoods with unsafe housing, further perpetuating cycles of poverty and poor health.
Unfortunately, many retrofit programs focus on middle- and high-income families, and financial barriers prevent lower-income households from upgrading their homes. These programs tend to prioritize home and building owners rather than tenants, leaving renters behind. This misalignment leaves the most vulnerable communities with few to no options for improvement, forcing them to breathe more harmful indoor pollutants—such as nitrogen dioxide—exacerbating their health risks. It also perpetuates the harmful cycle of financially supporting wealthier communities while keeping low-income communities in a state of disadvantage.
For these reasons, PSR-LA supports equitable building decarbonization, which can be a holistic approach that promotes housing, energy, and climate justice.
Moving Forward: Advocating for Equitable Building Decarbonization
For almost 45 years, PSR-LA has been a leading advocate for environmental health and justice, working alongside health professionals, allies, and impacted populations to build transformative movements for environmental justice and nuclear abolition.
Today, with coalitions such as the Building Energy, Equity, and Power (BEEP) Coalition and Los Angeles for Resilient and Healthy Homes, we continue to ensure that federal, state, and local investments prioritize low-income households and communities of color. These efforts recognize the cumulative impacts of pollution, which disproportionately harm vulnerable populations, and aim to advance equitable solutions that address the unique challenges faced by communities often living in poorly ventilated, unsafe environments.
The push for equitable building decarbonization in California requires collective action from diverse stakeholders. By fostering collaboration among individuals, organizations, and policymakers, we can implement solutions that address climate change and promote health, equity, and resilience for all.
Moving forward, we must continue to advocate for holistic and equitable approaches to addressing the climate crisis. This includes advocating for comprehensive policies that support a holistic home approach to building improvements and prioritizing the health and safety of low-income residents and communities of color while holding polluters accountable for their role in perpetuating inequities.
The path toward a healthy home is intertwined with the need for equitable building decarbonization. By addressing the systemic injustices that have led to disparities in housing quality and health outcomes, we can pave the way for a sustainable, inclusive future. Decarbonization is not just about reducing emissions—it’s about creating healthier, safer homes and resilient communities for all.
