Environmental Hazard and Homelessness in the Green City--Sierra Chadwick, Angela
Enriquez, and Andrea Laureano
The drone of semi-trucks on the interstate above could penetrate the skull, but under this bridge, low enough to the ground, you can still hear the lapping of the water, watch the turtles spin, or play a coy game of am-I-looking-am-I-not with a local coot. There’s a tangled verdancy of flora against the water, a brightness to the runners and cyclists passing by - and the dull grey smoke from a fire of a nearby encampment. Overnight stays were banned here, due to the increasing risks of flash flooding, but some of these cars never leave. Austin is a renowned Green City, yes, but the environmental risks to her vulnerable populations might someday tarnish that crown.
A Shifting Environment
As of 2019, Austin became one of the top 10 cities nationally for increase in dangerously hot days. In addition, climate change will impact extreme precipitation, as co-director of NASA’s Center for Sciences, Joao Teixeira, notes (Buis 2020), which interacts with storms and may lead to increased flash flooding and extreme seasonality. Any of the above can become killers when coupled with a lack of housing or adaptive resources. Winter Storm Uri led to the deaths of at least six homeless persons, demonstrating that the effects of larger actions, in Uri’s case choices pertaining to Texas’ power grid, can violently impact our populations. Charles Loosen, from Austin Public Health, notes in the podcast that shifting and unsustainable land usage also impact flooding and health concerns.
A Shifting Environment
As of 2019, Austin became one of the top 10 cities nationally for increase in dangerously hot days. In addition, climate change will impact extreme precipitation, as co-director of NASA’s Center for Sciences, Joao Teixeira, notes (Buis 2020), which interacts with storms and may lead to increased flash flooding and extreme seasonality. Any of the above can become killers when coupled with a lack of housing or adaptive resources. Winter Storm Uri led to the deaths of at least six homeless persons, demonstrating that the effects of larger actions, in Uri’s case choices pertaining to Texas’ power grid, can violently impact our populations. Charles Loosen, from Austin Public Health, notes in the podcast that shifting and unsustainable land usage also impact flooding and health concerns.
The Roots
Austin has undergone shifts over the years in their perspectives of the experiences homeless people have. A study conducted by the Office of Innovation’s i-team worked to measure this shift, and found that despite a heightened interest, Austin’s responses and actions to homelessness appear intermittent and unsustained across the historical record. As such, since the early 1980s new efforts have developed every 5 to 10 years. And, perhaps even more importantly, these historical attempts often failed to address the context in which homelessness occurs.
Systemic causes such as race or wealth inequality and individual factors like job loss and mental health sustain homelessness as well. These populations are not always at fault for their homelessness. Austin’s lack of affordable housing is the leading factor to a growing unhoused population, according to the city of Austin’s webpage, “Learn About Homelessness”, “National Consultants put our homeless population at about 10,000 out of the million Travis County residents, so roughly 1 percent”. Thus with limited housing and shelter space, they often do not have safe spaces to reside, and are getting impacted the most by environmental hazards.
The Other Side of a Tarnished Coin
Unfortunately, the negative environmental impacts are not one-sided - many encampments are located in watershed areas or protected parks. As Loosen notes in the podcast interview, human waste is also a significant concern. Outside of modern processing facilities, such concerns can lead to disease outbreaks. Plastics and pollutants from camps have an easy entrance to Austin’s watershed and ecosystems, potentially impacting the seven endangered and twenty-eight conserved species of the city. Camp cleanups have been made necessary for continued clean water access, another impetus for the legislation barring unhoused persons from environmentally sensitive areas.
Futures
Austin’s future of tackling climate change and looking at its intersection with homelessness is gradual and seems promising. Austin’s climate equity plan includes goals to reach “net-zero community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2040”, green job creation, and supporting local community-led organizations. Another example of what Austin’s future holds in tackling homelessness is the recent and ongoing HEAL initiative. The initiative targets environmentally hazardous encampments, relocating the inhabitants, and provides them with resources to put them on a path to permanent housing.
The seemingly conflicting impacts of protecting green spaces and protecting the rights of unhoused persons to exist in those green spaces are perhaps merely symptoms of a more wide-ranging issue. Instead of penalizing people for existing in green spaces, solutions must be sought, and Austin’s pristine Green label, though a veneer, still seems to be sincere. We can all walk, even if slowly, in the right direction as we attempt to heal our populations and our planet.
References
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