“Social housing tenants need reassurance on decarbonising homes.” That’s a headline that is revisited below in this post.
These days, it’s also the punch line, as in “. . . while waiting for the punch to land.”
Of course it’s important for all of us to know if we live in poorly insulated and ventilated homes with microclimates controlled by carbon-releasing, climate-threatening fossil fuels.
But while vested interests are talking down these ‘important’ facts down to the vulnerable, how about letting them or their representatives talk up to the down-talkers? Because there’s a not-very-well hidden agenda here, isn’t there?
Right, troops. You’ll lead the charge out of the trenches (a.k.a. your homes)! Inevitably, 1 or 2 of you, perhaps even 8 or 10, will be shot dead. It’s the price we all (well, mostly you) have to pay to defeat the dastardly enemy, climate change.
What might be talked-up to these order-giving classes? Well, for one thing, it’s well known, in geriatric care circles at least, that changing homes can be life threatening. It’s not the least bit efficient for retirement homes and nursing homes to encourage new tenants to bring pieces of furniture and cherished decorations with them. And yet that is often the case: bring something, anything, to soften the blow.
The not-very-well hidden agenda behind teaching social housing tenants the facts of climate change: in order to do your bit to defeat this scourge, some or all of you ‘must’ move out to. . . somewhere, for . . . some indefinite period of time while your homes are properly battle-hardened.
(The order-giving-classes may later gather together and chortle over drinks that perhaps as few as one person in five, for a variety of reasons, will actually ever return to their former homes or facsimile thereof, but that’s another story1.)
What we seem to have here is a clash between technological imperatives, which supposedly demand that ‘tenants must sacrifice’, on one hand. On the other hand, there are ill-informed residents who, with a little education, will hopefully grow enough backbone to take one on the chin to prevent global warming.
But with social housing in growing need, and the carbon costs of tearing down and building anew losing out to refurbishing, is all this a question of competing facts, or competing attitudes?
First, let’s consider some of the facts about the need for modifying homes to help slow climate change. Read more in the environmental journal: Social housing tenants need reassurance on decarbonising homes
And then, consider the potential of changing attitudes to this climate challenge for social housing. Take the attitude of the Windsor Essex Community Housing Corporation (CHC) in Windsor, Ontario. It’s been balancing the needs of the fresidents (the building is fully occupied) to an EnerPHit2 refurbishment of their highrise tower.
CHC’s decision? Resident welfare comes first. Tenants will stay in place. Refurbishers will work around them. Read more in a lengthy, detailed exploration about the challenge this entails to create a modern, energy-efficient high rise tower out of old cloth, all without threatening the well-being of tenants, in PASSIVE HOUSE ACCELERATOR: Stepwise Tower Retrofit
Footnotes
- Try: Government Broken Relocation Promises: Death Warrants? and The Life And Death Cabrini-Green Public Housing Projects, 25 Years On
- Read more about EnerPHit at the Passive House Institute: EnerPHit Certification
