HOUSTON — Doris Brown was about to fall asleep when a neighbor knocked on her door and asked her to look outside. “There were no lights anywhere,” Brown said, recalling the power outage that summer night in 2023. “And I didn’t even know it.”
Brown’s solar panels and battery system kept the power running. I was prepared for a night like this. “Call everyone,” she told the neighbors.
Soon, about 15 “neighbors and neighbors” were inside Brown’s three-bedroom, 1-1/2-bathroom home in northeast Houston. They charged phones, cooked, and showered before work and school. Some fell asleep.
“There were people sleeping everywhere,” Brown, 75, said. She was happy to be a “vent in a storm,” despite one downside: “They ate all my snacks.”
The Brown house is a “central house,” one of seven in a pilot program in northeast Houston that aims to create safe havens in emergency situations — not in shelters or community centers, but inside neighbors’ homes.
The idea has been a popular response for decades Societal negligence and negligence Which got neighbors talking about what they can do to prepare for severe weather and power failure.
“We help,” Brown said.
The project was scheduled to reach 30 more homes, until the EPA arrived in August Canceling the $7 billion Solar for All program Which would finance its expansion. Harris County, which includes Houston, is now a plaintiff in one of the cases Multiple lawsuits On cancellation.
People involved in the program acknowledge that central homes are unconventional – requiring trust and community cooperation and affecting fewer people than larger resilience centres.
But they also say they are effective in creating pockets of preparedness in communities that face more extreme weather but lack the resources to do more.
“It was a way to increase resilience in these neighborhoods that are often forgotten,” said Sam Celerio, Texas program director for Solar United Neighbors, one of the nonprofits participating in the pilot program. Also sue for discounts.
The idea of pivot houses started after that Winter Storm Uri in 2021when freezing temperatures paralyzed the Texas power grid for five days and It resulted in 246 storm-related deathsaccording to the Texas Department of Health Services.
Power outages contributed to many deaths, as people with health conditions were unable to refrigerate medications or operate life-sustaining medical devices. Nineteen people died from carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of improper use of generators and grills for heating.
“We were saying, ‘A power grid failure is a serious thing that we’re not prepared for,’” said Becky Seeley, associate director of disaster preparedness, organization and operations at West Street Recovery, a northeast Houston nonprofit founded after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
WSR purchased some generators for residents who wanted to share resources. Brown, who nearly froze to death in Uri, stepped up.
WSR added more supplies to the centers, such as life jackets and kayaks for flood evacuations, and held preparedness training for members.
When the D.C.-based nonprofit Solar United Neighbors approached them with a special grant from the Hive Fund to add free solar panels and batteries to several homes, WSR knew exactly where to install them.
The pilot had its challenges, as some roofs had to be repaired before they could carry solar panels, and station leaders had to learn how to manage their batteries so they wouldn’t exhaust them.
Success also requires good neighborly communication that is often lacking in modern societies.
“You have to build that trust,” said David Espinoza, senior center leader and co-director of community organizing and language access at West Street Recovery. The 34-year-old went door to door in his apartment building, introducing himself to wary neighbors at times. “I got to know my neighborhood better,” he said.
About a dozen people are signed up to Espinoza’s “list,” but he said the center is available to anyone in need, with priority given to older neighbors and those with children or medical conditions.
There are other positive aspects, too: The solar and battery system reduces greenhouse gas emissions and cuts Espinoza’s utility bill in half.
Espinoza, who is bilingual, said that for neighborhoods like his with mixed status, Spanish-speaking and medically fragile families, central homes are helpful even with other shelters nearby.
“They can get to me a little easier,” he said.
Efforts to strengthen local resilience have increased in recent years Severe weatherpower outages, and Electricity prices Burdened communities.
Average annual power outage hours across the United States have jumped in the past decade, largely due to extreme weather, according to Sarah Kotois, a senior fellow at the clean energy nonprofit RMI.
“Communities need to think more strategically about resilience,” Kotois said.
This readiness starts with connections between neighbors, said Renae Hanfin, CEO and founder of Resilient Ready and an expert on “social capital” or “connections, trust and cooperation between people.”
“It’s the missing link in the disaster resilience ecosystem,” Hanfin said. “Ultimately, the first thing you need (in an emergency) to help you is someone.”
As disasters get worse, first responders simply can’t help everyone at once, so neighbors must think of themselves as “non-responders,” she said.
Many communities have also turned to “resilience centers,” or locally trusted institutions such as community centers or churches equipped with backup power, emergency supplies, and even year-round social services.
Ideally, resiliency investments are not an either-or decision, said Dori Wolfe, SUN senior fellow at Texas. “The hub homes are one piece of the Internet, and there has to be a resilience center at the center of each of those nodes,” she said. “We need all of that.”
Solar United Neighbors and West Street Recovery plan to expand the program this fall as part of a $54 million grant awarded to Harris County by the Environmental Protection Agency.
They intended to increase the number of hub homes to 30, and add more batteries to existing homes to better operate heating and air conditioning during power outages. These funds would have also funded a local resilience centre.
In August, E.P.A. Administrator Lee Zeldin The EPA eliminated the Solar for All program, which aimed to subsidize residential solar power for more than 900,000 low-income households. Zeldin said the “boondoggle” program’s authority had been eliminated under Trump’s tax and spending bill.
“It’s a huge disappointment,” Celerio said. Solar United Neighbors and Harris County each sued the EPA in separate lawsuits this month over the cuts, as did more than a dozen state attorneys general.
The termination “pulls the rug out of the people the federal government should be protecting,” Harris County District Attorney Jesse Dickerman said in a statement to The Associated Press.
West Street Recovery isn’t giving up on more pivotal homes. The nonprofit intends to fundraise through the community and seek other grants.
“These programs have been a huge help to the community,” Espinoza said. “It would be much harder without the federal government money.”
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