Beating the Heat in Hunting Park

Hunting Park is an example of the growing dangers of extreme heat that is very close to home.  A citywide heat survey conducted in 2017 found a number of Philadelphia neighborhoods to be a full 22 F hotter than cooler parts of the city during summer heat waves.  (This blew my mind when I first heard it.)  Not only this, but other factors such as age, income, language spoken, race, ethnicity, and health all contributed to the existing heat challenges to form a more robust evaluation we now call the “heat vulnerability index.”  Extreme heat is dangerous enough as it is – but someone who has the finances to install rooftop solar and a heat pump system for their home can shelter inside and stay cool even if the heat wave causes the power grid to go down.  Someone who can’t pay their energy bills, has a home that is falling into disrepair, and can only afford to run a fan is in a much more dangerous situation during a heat wave than that other person.  The heat vulnerability index combines localized heat dangers with other local social, environmental, and economic factors to indicate just how vulnerable different communities are to the increasing length and intensity of heat waves associated with the progression of the climate crisis. 

Taking all these factors into account, the study found the 5 worst heat vulnerability neighborhoods in Philadelphia to be Cobbs Creek, Point Breeze, Strawberry Mansion, and Hunting Park.   And as heat vulnerability maps from this study began to be produced, people started to notice some shocking similarities between them and the 1930s redlining maps drawn up by the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC).  These maps were notorious for declaring black and brown communities to be “hazardous” and blocking people in these communities systemically from access to loans.  The impact of this practice was generational, trapping whole communities in cycles of poverty, poor educational and vocational opportunities, and leading many homes and businesses to fall into disrepair.  These factors, it turns out, also lead communities to actually become physically hotter.

How does historic disenfranchisement make a community hotter over time?  Disinvestment leads to a lack of investment in education, public green spaces, and other infrastructure.  Local economic depression leaves people just trying to survive, leaving very little money left over to repair or improve properties. Hunting Park, for example, has a great deal of concrete, a major lack of street trees, and far too many homes with old black roofs.  All of this makes the neighborhood absorb heat and bake in the sun.  And other heat vulnerable neighborhoods have similar stories.

But this is not the end of the story.  In 2018, the Philadelphia Office of Sustainability started a program called Beat the Heat.  The goal of this initiative was to set up a network of cooling centers that would get activated in a heat emergency so people would have a cool place to go if things got dangerous.  This initiative has itself had limited success (in terms of the setting up of cooling centers), but it has sparked a great deal of other climate-oriented energy and organizing in the Hunting Park neighborhood.  In 2022, a big Go Fund Me campaign raised the funds to donate a ton of air conditioners to people who needed them.  Esperanza, Inc has launched and developed a very active chapter of the PHS Tree Tenders program, which plants street trees twice a year and trains people to take care of them so they survive and start to build a real canopy in the neighborhood.  I have noticed the change, particularly over the last few years, of more and more trees starting to pop up on the streets of HP, bringing shade, beauty, and cooling and filtering the air.  The Hunting Park Community Solar Initiative (which I direct) started as a spin off of the Beat the Heat meeting – and we have been building a steadily growing solar installation vocational training program in the neighborhood, as well as doing public education around climate change and connecting people with existing programs (such as Built to Last) to repair, weatherize, and solarize their homes.  In the future, we also hope to start a cool roof installation training program.  The PA DEP has been funding HPCSI’s work.  A new community climate resilience grant from the EPA has found its way to a collaboration of different HP non-profits doing climate work, much of which is specifically related to heat vulnerability.  Neighbors are giving their time and energy and the word is spreading.

And so in the face of a significant heat threat to Hunting Park, the community has organized and is doing multi-faceted work to make the neighborhood cooler, healthier, and more resilient in the face of the growing heat waves we are experiencing.  And many Christians from the community are involved in this work. 

All of this gives me hope.  In the face of a growing climate threat, made much more dangerous by a history of racist policies and disinvestment, the community of Hunting Park has been rising up in quiet, unflashy, but determined ways to chart a different path for their community.  I feel very grateful to be able to offer whatever I can to the work in this neighborhood – and I know there are communities like Hunting Park all over the world who are pulling together to get the job done.  I continue to serve with hope that God will be with this work and cause it to bear more fruit that we imagine. 

There is so much to do – and so much going on.  What can you get involved in where you are?

RESOURCES:

The video focused on heat from the 6-part documentary we produced “This is Hunting Park”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KagMyDT8pQs&t=138s 

An excellent and very user-friendly story map of a heat vulnerability study in Philadelphia:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/61c934b59b2248899b00bf90c6b30ac0  

A documentary produced about 6 HP homeowners who got their homes repaired, weatherized, solarized, and installed with heat pumps through a publicly funded program called Built to Last:

Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eFkwq8vn8w

Built to Last site: https://philaenergy.org/programs-initiatives/built-to-last/

HERE4CJ website – HERE4CJ is a coalition I work with.  We are focused on advocating for climate-oriented housing justice solutions. Heat is a huge issue we are working on – and we recently applied a pressure campaign on City Council that won $5 million in new funding for an expansion of the Built to Last program in the new fiscal year.

www.here4climatejustice.org

Preparing to be a Refuge in the Heat

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the US.  The number of heat deaths can be hard to nail down, but according to a study done out of Texas A&M University (by Dessler and Lee), the death count for the US in 2023 was likely around 11,000 – and the numbers have been going up each year. 

This is already bad and getting worse, but what climate scientists and policy makers are most worried about is the growing possibility of lasting heatwaves that reach dangerous levels on a combined temperature/humidity index called “wet bulb.”  Wet bulb 95 F is the upper limit of human survivability and can be experienced at numerous temperature/humidity combinations – 95 F at 100% humidity, 105 F at 75% humidity, or 115 F at 50% are all wet bulb 95 F.  Being exposed to this humidity-temperature for 6 hours or more generally leads to death because a human body simply can’t cool itself enough in this environment to function.  One of the great and growing dangers with the climate crisis is that an extreme heat dome could settle over a populated area long enough and hot enough that all the AC usage maxes out the power grid and leaves people to bake in the heat without any way to get cool.  And extreme heat waves typically last days – not hours. 

Kim Stanley Robinson’s (amazing) novel, “The Ministry for the Future,” begins with a massive heatwave in the relatively near future in India which overloads and blacks out the electric grid, killing several hundred thousand people over the course of a day.  This scenario is a very real possibility – and to add to this, the heaviest death tolls are most likely to play out in poorer communities or nations because they (a) live in historically disinvested and/or deforested neighborhoods, (b) don’t have widespread access to air conditioning or public cooling centers, or (c) live in areas with shaky power grids and no localized power like solar.  And to bring this very close to home, Hunting Park (along with several other neighborhoods in Philadelphia) recently underwent a heat study and were found to be a full 22 F hotter than cooler parts of the city during extreme heatwaves.  How could this dramatic difference exist within a single city?  Hunting Park is much hotter because historic disinvestment, redlining, and poverty have resulted in deforestation of the neighborhood, less in the way of green public spaces, and an excessive amount of concrete surfaces and old heat-absorbing black roofs.  Poverty makes spaces hotter and less resilient.

So what does all of this mean for us as Christians?  In Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, he essentially sums up his final judgment according to how people show hospitality.   Verses 34-36 say, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”  The layers of this passage as they pertain to the Christian response to the human impacts of climate change are many.  But through the lens of extreme heat we can read it the following way: People will become thirsty as their bodies sweat excessively to try and cool them down – will we give them something to drink?  They will need to be brought in out of the heat and into a cool space – will we welcome them in?  They will need to be clothed not with warm clothes to keep out the cold, but with a cool environment to keep out the heat – will we provide this?  Heat stroke makes people sick – often leading to nausea, vomiting, and fainting – will we nurse them back to health or get them to a hospital?  And those who are more likely to have these needs will be those who have the least resources to begin with – will our homes be open to neighbors who have less than us?

So for us, the question is – will we be a Matthew 25 neighbor to the suffering around us.  And there are two parts to this question that impact how we will answer it.  First, will we have the capacity to provide a space for our neighbors to cool down?  And second, if we do will we welcome them in their time of need?  A positive answer to the first question requires planning.  A positive answer to the second requires embracing the way of Christ and offering what we have. 

To address the first question, how can you be a person who has a cool space if an extreme heatwave settles over your neighborhood and blacks out the power grid?  The only way to do this right now is to have a white roof coating, solar on your roof and a way to cool your house electrically.  The white roof coating reflects heat.  Rooftop solar provides power that can run your electricity even if the grid goes down.  As for cooling your home electrically, if you can afford heat pumps, they are much more efficient than AC window units and can both cool and heat your home.  But if not, AC units will do – and I’ve even heard that there are low cost heat pump window units starting to become available.  In addition to all of this, it is important to have a home energy efficiency upgrade – so that all the power and cooling doesn’t just bleed out your windows and walls.  If these things are in place, your home can become a refuge in the heat.

I will get into more of the practicalities for how to do this in later posts, but for now I will say that there are many ways to get leased solar panels on your home at zero cost, to get solar ownership at no cost through public programs like Built to Last, or to purchase panels on your own.  But however we do it, here is the point: we as the body of Christ should be preparing our homes to have the capability to be a cool refuge during a heatwave black out – and we should be preparing our hearts to welcome in the heat-oppressed during their time of need.  Imagine Hunting Park – and any other neighborhood – with a growing network of solar powered homes that can stay cool and become a refuge for neighbors in times of extreme heat.  This is what the Kingdom of God is all about – we’re here to breathe God’s cooling wind into a parched and suffering world, and give it more and more of a taste of the shalom Jesus will one day complete here.

RESOURCES:

Get a free home energy efficiency upgrade and a 20-year fixed rate rooftop solar lease with Posigen (a great company), and support the Hunting Park Community Solar Initiative at no cost to yourself:  bit.ly/posigen-hpcsi-lead 

Get a low-cost and energy efficient white roof coating with Be Cool Roof Coatings: Contact Allen Drew at AllenCWP12@gmail.com and he will connect you.

Get low-cost heat pump units for your home with New Spirit HVAC at www.newspirithvac.com 

Restoring the Urban Forest and our Connection with Creation through Tree Planting and Community Gardens

A reminder of our monthly pattern for these posts: in week 1 we focus on a spiritual concept, week 2 presents a related story, week three invites us to an individual action, and week 4 offers a collective action.  For this month’s series, the focus has been on creation restoration as a spiritual practice.  We offered the spiritual and Biblical grounding for this, looked at a story of creation restoration in China and Jordan, and invited individuals to plant native species on their property and join Homegrown National Park. 

Today, our week 4 collective action invitation will focus on community gardens and tree planting.

As human beings develop spaces (i.e. build homes and businesses, roads, and other elements of infrastructure), the local ecosystem is almost inevitably deforested and damaged.  Trees are removed, forest ecosystems are eliminated, corridors for animals to move about are blocked, and the living system that was once there becomes far less robust.  Furthermore, as human beings develop areas, they surround themselves with a new kind of environment – one made by people, rather than God.  As a result, people who grow up in increasingly developed areas (particularly cities) can become less and less connected with the living system that sustains us all – and therefore less aware of the local expression of the world that their way of life has pushed out.

It's a sad irony that as human beings develop areas, they simultaneously damage creation and become less aware of the creation they are damaging. 

So what can we do about this together?  We cannot unbuild the cities we live in, but what we can do is work to restore the local forest and reconnect the human residents with the creation our city has been built in.  These two practices work together. The more engaged people are with creation, the more they will want to see it around them.  And the more creation is planted around them, the more engaged they will become with it.  This is a positive feedback loop that helps God’s image bearers who are living in highly developed areas to return to their calling to be caretakers of God’s creation and work to restore it.

So what are some concrete ways we can do this together here in Philadelphia?  We can plant street trees and we can join a community garden.

Street tree planting is important as a collective activity for the collective good because it is done in public spaces that are shared by all, and not just the homeowner.  The difference between a treeless city block and one lined with mature trees would be hard to overstate.  A strong tree canopy provides beauty, shade, cooling (through both shade and evapotranspiration), filtering of the air, habitat, and food for native animal species.  Trees also increase property values, reduce crime, and improve mental and physical health.  As more trees are planted throughout neighborhoods, the urban forest grows and the health of the local ecosystem can start to return around the city that was planted there. 

There is a street tree planting program run by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) called Tree Tenders.  Tree Tenders has chapters all around the city of Philadelphia, and trains people how to both plant street trees and care for them until they are established. The caretaking element is crucial because when trees are planted in urban environments and not cared for, they often die.  When card for intentionally, however, they have much higher rates of survival and can grow up to become important members of the local ecosystem.  There is a chapter in Hunting Park based out of Esperanza, Inc and coordinated by Ivana Gonzalez, who can be reached at igonzalez@esperanza.us

Community gardens are a critical way for community members to come together and reconnect with creation as a group.  I’ve been gardening for a while now, and growing fruit and vegetables is wonderful – anyone who has done this will tell you how much better everything tastes when it comes straight from your own garden.  However, the greatest fruit I’ve experienced by far has been found in the way the practice of gardening has shaped my heart, mind, and connection with creation.  When you buy a tomato from a store, you often get it in a package, with a label, as a product.  When you pick a tomato off your tomato plant, you can only do this after having tended it for a whole season, watering it carefully, giving it healthy soil and plenty of light.  It takes a long time to grow a single tomato – it’s a mysterious and beautiful process requiring a great deal of care and waiting.  A tomato is not a commodity, but part of a living plant – and gardening helps us to reconnect with that reality.  All of our food comes from living plants and animals (and fungi for all you mushroom lovers) that have needed care and tending for a long time in order to bear fruit.  Gardening together through a community garden helps to build a collective awareness of this reality and helps us to see the wonder and value of God’s creation more clearly through the haze of consumerism and commodification that defines our time.

There is a wonderful community garden in Hunting Park – the aptly named Hunting Park Community Garden.  It is located right in the park itself and if you are interested in joining it, you can contact its director, Mike Wilcox, at huntingparkgarden@gmail.com  If you are closer to the Upper Darby area, there is a lovely community garden run by the Bywood Community Association and located on the property of the Upper Darby Prayer Chapel.  You can learn more at www.bywoodcommunity.org  Finally, the Climate Witness Project, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and the Bywood Community Association are working together to try to get grant money to build a community garden next to the Garden of Prayer Church in Hunting Park at the corner of N 6th St and W Annsbury St.  We’ll keep you posted.  There are other community gardens all over the city as well.  See the resources below for a helpful link.

I encourage you to get involved with Tree Tenders as well as a community garden.  Together we can rebuild our connection with God’s creation, partner to restore the forest around us, and re-shape what it feels like to live in a city. 

RESOURCES: 

Tree Tenders (PHS): https://phsonline.org/programs/tree-programs

            HP Tree Tenders – contact Ivana Gonzalez at igonzalez@esperanza.us

HP Community Garden – Contact Mike Wilcox at huntingparkgarden@gmail.com 

Bywood Community Garden – Go to www.bywoodcommunity.org to learn more

Site with list of community gardens in Philadelphia, as well as a number of other community garden resources: https://www.farmingphilly.com/community-gardens-in-philadelphia/