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