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The sound of droplets hitting concrete goes on for months. I see many of the same unhoused people riding public transit all day. In the morning, one direction, and in the evening, the opposite – still in the same seat where I saw them hours earlier.
They sit out of the way, quiet. People around them pull cords, press buttons. All the while, they’re sleeping, existing, surviving. Sometimes, I find myself projecting my busy day onto them, often joking with some of them,“damn, you still here?!” But once the brief laughter subsides, I see them as the humans they are and understand: it’s warm and safe here. For some, the winter holidays are not about family and friends. Rather, it’s hours, days and months of survival.
Whenever I think of the unhoused people in Oregon and the rest of the country, I reflect that they are half a billion in number, and are emblematic of a broken affordable housing system. A history driven by discrimination and racism, bloated state housing institutions and a lack of understanding of what equitable housing looks like has shaped the inhospitable landscape of affordable housing in the U.S. The most marginalized are pitted against each other fighting for shelter in underfunded, unhealthy and dilapidated developments with the promise of a better future. A solution may exist, but America will need to look outside itself and ask the deeper questions: who builds affordable homes, how they are built, where they are placed, and what is their end goal? And answering them will require a radical solution.
Manufacturing the affordable housing crisis
A NYC housing protest in 2016.
Credit: Informed Images/flickr
To understand how we got to this bleak landscape, we need to examine the history of affordable housing in the U.S. The first affordable housing efforts came in 1937, when the federal government created the United Housing Act, which greenlit loans to public housing groups that were focused on low-rent housing construction. World War II railroaded early public housing developments in cities due to the need for immediate single-family veteran housing. The 1940s saw an influx of affluent suburban residents who had the financial flexibility to move out of the city. This diffusion of people quickly became more than just the relocation of peoples, but ultimately the redistribution of wealth, race and adequate housing.
This essay is also available in Spanish
At the end of the 1940s segregationist policies took root. Congress passed the Housing Act of 1949, which aimed at developing affordable housing in cities. But things didn’t go as planned. Mostly Black Americans moved into the low-income housing, staunchly different from the white-picket-fence homes of white people in suburbia. Black Americans found themselves round up like cattle with few choices to improve their housing situation – they could only move to similarly crumbling neighborhoods.
In 1973, President Nixon placed an 18-month moratorium on public housing spending. This decision prevented progress of urban affordable projects, effectively stopping development projects, which led to the proliferation of what we know today as the derogatory phrase “housing projects.” When no longer supported federally, various states soon followed Nixon’s steps; city communities soon faltered, trapping low-income Black Americans in decaying, underfunded buildings.
Many Black Americans in low-income urban housing developments had mounting housing needs — such as building maintenance and toxic material removal.
And to see how this still manifests today, look no further than the largest housing authority in the U.S.
Bloated state institutions
James Weldon Johnson Houses in East Harlem, NYC.
Credit: Zach Korb/flickr
Disinvestment affects even the largest public housing authority in the U.S., the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). NYCHA serves just more than half a million residents, yet the U.S. and New York state have steadily moved away from funding NYCHA since 1998, according to the agency’s 2022 fact sheet. The result is more than $40 billion – yes with a “b” – in major pending damages and only about 12,500 NYCHA employees supporting residents and maintaining the backlog of pending repairs.
The systemic disinvestment in the NYCHA prevents residents from prioritizing healthier materials for their homes. Moving away from toxic materials — such as lead-based paint and moldy building interiors — is mired in construction bureaucracy. Residents’ only option is often renovating their homes when NYCHA is planning to renovate a large number of apartments, “often as part of an even larger upgrade that includes building systems nearing the ends of their useful lives,” according to NYCHA’s most recent design guidelines. This means residents have no reassurance to timely upgrades to improve their health and well-being. Whether it’s mold, lead paint or rat infestations, affordable housing residents continue to get piecemeal solutions to unhealthy — sometimes toxic — problems in their homes.
To be clear: the people who make up the various state housing institutions are not solely to blame – it’s a system problem. A system that, among other unreasonable behaviors, encourages NYCHA superintendents to falsely record fixes. Continuing to operate in a system that does not have the consistent state or federal backing is a waste of time.
The situation is so dire that a solution might seem impossible. A part of me even feels disillusioned. I’m stubborn, though, and I searched for examples of possible solutions in Europe. I realized I might have found the radical solution I was looking for.
A radical affordable housing solution
In the 1980s, the city of Vienna, Austria, collaborated with private housing developers by buying land and enabling the housing developers to build on this government-owned property. Fast-forward, Vienna populated the nearly 200,000 units in its social housing market with primarily low-income residents. Opting to move away from owning residential developments (like what we see in the United States), Vienna is pushing that ownership to private developers, who have the financial muscle to repair, maintain and upgrade buildings.
Privatization does not mean that developers act with impunity. Vienna evaluates proposals based on architectural quality, environmental performance, social sustainability and cost. Additionally, private developers who choose to collaborate with the Viennese government must rent half of the new apartments to low-income residents (low income in Vienna is defined as paying no more than 20% to 25% of their household income for housing) in exchange for low-interest loans. Unlike the U.S., where affordable housing developments are stigmatized as “public housing,” Vienna uses the term “social housing,” which centers people and their community irrespective of how much money they make. The developments never become “that place where only poor people live.”
A great example: Vienna’s 12th district, Kabelwerk. Comprising about 1,000 or so subsidized residential units, the Kabelwerk community also has a local metro station and various communal shops – amenities that are a direct result in the country's investment in social housing communities, not away from them. Kabelwerk’s residential units also serve as an indirect intersection between various groups of people including homeowners, renters, refugees, students and individuals who may require assisted living. The intersection of these groups is designed to get people together of various backgrounds, dismantling barriers, in lieu of erecting them. Austria’s approach to social housing is a great example of how systematic investment into affordable housing contributes to positive living conditions for low-income residents.
As American state-led agencies like NYCHA and others look for answers within the same decrepit system, the need for a completely revamped affordable housing system becomes painfully evident. The way we as a nation approach affordable housing should begin with centering the people in the homes, staying away from social stigmas and empowering decision-makers to build healthy communities. We need projects that are completed, and are maintained during their lifespan.
A strong person, home or community begins with its foundation. It’s time to rebuild ours.
Nsilo Berry is a health impact researcher for the Healthy Building Network, where he works to research the health associated outcomes of building products in historically marginalized communities, as well as the environment. Connect with him on Linkedin.
This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.
If adopted, the proposed changes would represent the first modification to drinking water standards for new chemicals under the Safe Drinking Water Act since 1996.
PFAS, short for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of potentially harmful chemicals used in multiple products including nonstick pans, cosmetics, some clothing, food packaging and firefighting foams. They are linked to multiple negative health outcomes including some cancers, reproductive problems and birth defects, among others. The chemicals don’t break down readily in the environment, so are often called “forever chemicals.” The nonprofit Environmental Working Group has found PFAS contamination at more than 2,800 locations in all 50 states, including in many public and private drinking water systems.
Related: What are PFAS?
The proposed changes would regulate two chemicals that are no longer in use, PFOA and PFOS at 4 parts per trillion. Four other chemicals — PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS and GenX — would be regulated based on the hazard of the mixture of them. While the six chemicals in the proposal are common, there are an estimated more than 9,000 types of PFAS compounds.
If the regulations are adopted, water system operators would have to test for the chemicals. If they are found above the thresholds, they’d have to take action — by installing additional treatment, finding a new water source or other methods. Public water treatment systems would have about three years to comply.
EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement the proposal is “informed by the best available science, and would help provide states with the guidance they need to make decisions that best protect their communities.”
“This action has the potential to prevent tens of thousands of PFAS-related illnesses and marks a major step toward safeguarding all our communities from these dangerous contaminants,” he added.
Last year the EPA released lifetime health advisories for GenX, PFBS, PFOA and PFOS, and opened up $10 billion in grant funding — via the 2022 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act— to assist communities dealing with PFAS and other emerging contaminants.
Environmental groups seek PFAS phase-outs
Environmental groups lauded the new proposed changes — and urged a complete phase-out of PFAS in products.
“We applaud the Biden administration for following the lead of the states and stepping up to protect communities from these toxic ‘forever chemicals,’” said Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, in a statement. “We urge the federal government to continue to follow the lead of states and phase out the production and use of these chemicals in favor of safer solutions so that we stop adding PFAS to our already polluted water, land, and air.”
Ten states — Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin — have already established standards for individual PFAS in drinking water. Many retailers — most recently REI — are phasing out the chemicals as well.
Liz Hitchcock, federal policy program director for Toxic-Free Future, said in a statement that the regulations are an important stop but “to prevent further PFAS contamination, we must put an end to uses of PFAS chemicals in firefighting foams used by military and civilian firefighters and in consumer products like food packaging and textiles.”
The new proposed regulation will open for public comment, and then the agency will make a final decision — likely later this year.
Our civilization needs commercial chemicals to prosper and survive. But as a chemist, I long ago arrived at a conviction — our civilization can’t last long without making a clean getaway from the endocrine-disrupting chemicals that litter today’s chemical enterprise and are harming us as seriously as climate change.
This means we must have appropriately wired people to accomplish the great escape from chemicals that are disrupting our endocrine systems. Engager is my term for that wiring. Let’s explore why this disposition is key for European Union leadership in pursuing their new chemicals strategy for sustainability.
Engager
The engager sustainability disposition moves its bearers to positive action when scientific facts demand that injustice cannot be ignored. You can detect this in talking with them. They conduct their own scholarship rather than parrot rumors. They follow up where possible by acquainting and allying themselves with the sources of the information. They have fidelity to scientific data and justice, and can tune out the outside noise.
People with the engager disposition cannot ignore the social and environmental justice issues, especially the ability of endocrine-disrupting chemicals to adversely impact families for generations after an incumbent generation has been exposed.
But like all powerful organisms, the modern chemical enterprise possesses a healthy immune system and resists the efforts of engagers. Think of the previous sustainability dispositions I’ve written about and where their bearers turn up — the executives, PR spin doctors, faux experts, lobbyists and trade association operatives.
"But like all powerful organisms, the modern chemical enterprise possesses a healthy immune system and resists the efforts of engagers."
In academia, especially American academia, researchers are scared to lose research funding by embracing controversy — and this dread intimidates folks from adopting the engager disposition.
While great engager-bearing sustainability scholars can be found in many academic institutions, academic administrations are often sustainability incompetent. They measure their progress in the technical advances of their faculty and students, development gifts, constructions, and, admirably, social justice reforms. Too many academic administrators are sleepwalking through flattering trustee meetings and cheerful college functions while being largely unresponsive to the calls of sustainability. They ignore the most vital of all academic domains where human ingenuity can best honor the gift of life and build transgenerational justice that is the measure of a civilization’s sustainability competence.
In our unsustainable world, academia could instead adopt a collective engager disposition to better honor its duty to seek and act on the truth that might set our civilization free.
Engager influence grows
I have come wearily to this judgment with chemical sustainability matters; only engagers have the assets of disposition, character and intellect to matter. This typically also means that engagers have had to look outside the system they are hoping to change for support at every level.
In my experience with many engagers, they each possess remarkable intellectual and creative function, an open mind with advanced natural abilities that deftly process abstract thought while keeping political thought in perspective. Engager bearers are prepared to risk their professional and even personal security when the situation calls for it to reject the status quo when it makes no sense to them in science or in justice.
This places a heavy burden and responsibility upon the individuals with engager dispositions. But to borrow phrasing from Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of the chemical future bends toward their solutions.
Fortunately, engager bearer numbers are growing, as is their influence. The birthing of the EU’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, which explicitly incorporates both endocrinological science and the promise of funding for necessary innovations in safe and sustainable chemistry, is likely to accelerate those trends. As companies learn that their sustainability efforts are rewarded by the market for safer products, while their old, unsustainable chemicals are punished, the acceleration will be enhanced.
It’s depends on us, not the chemicals
In the end, whether we survive the threats of endocrine-disrupting chemicals or succumb to their perils depends on us, not on the chemicals. Escaping these chemicals owns the center of the ethical stage of the chemical enterprise. The more Europe’s leaders of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability actualization stay focused on their ethical duty to protect the future from the money-first present, the more successful the strategy and our civilization will be.
Engager bearers inspire me. The responsible engager heroes include not only spectacular scientists who are often Socratic visionaries, but an indubitable Gandalf (Pete Myers), journalists, authors, policy advocates, congresspeople and parliamentarians, students, institutional officials, and, occasionally, regulators.
The galvanized brilliance of engager researchers and communicators heartens me to believe that European civilization will indeed batter its weary way through the industrial endocrine-disrupting chemical defenses to a sustainable future.
Terrence J. Collins, Ph.D., is a Teresa Heinz professor of green chemistry, and director of the Institute for Green Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
The author thanks the Axios Fund, Korein-Tillery LLC and the Heinz Family Foundation for support of CMU's Institute for Green Science.