No matter the technological advances, we stand no threat against climate change without the complete eradication of homelessness and infrastructure to prevent climate-related displacement.
FEBRUARY 8, 2022 | MIQUÉLA THORNTON
When Octavia Butler imagined the decade of the 2020s, she imagined a world on fire, some natural and some started by pyromaniacs high off drugs of arson. They were global warming turned character in her 1993 work of science (and arguably climate) fiction, Parable of the Sower. What was supposed to be a trilogy was left unfinished after book two due to Butler’s unfortunate passing. However, upon the myriad of lessons present in both Parable books is this: a nation that allows for mass homelessness, among a plethora of other institutionalized inequalities, will allow for the deaths of a significant portion of its population. Their murderer will not be climate, but rather it will be the institution that left them at the hands of it.
I’ve always been perplexed by gated communities, questioning the purpose they serve in areas already privately owned by the rich as investments and less susceptible to poverty-induced crime. Iron-clad gates, nothing more than a token of status, might as well be lined with barbed prison wire to show the ways in which, most of the time, people are imprisoned in the class they are born into.
In Octavia’s dystopia, those who lived in gated communities are either vastly rich or are simply trying to stay alive by boarding their villages with tall walls to keep out the pyromaniacs. Once, the pyros got in, however they purged the already burning town of Robledo, California. The survivors were left homeless. They traveled armed and scared, not only of attack by robbers and rapers but of the pyromaniacs…of the fire.
Fire that, in our world, has already catalyzed displacement and homelessness, such as thousands ousted by one of California’s deadliest recent wildfires. Fire that is burning a future post the climate crisis.
In January 2020, prior to the start of the pandemic, 580,466 people were reported to be experiencing homelessness, according to the nationwide Part-In-Time Count. This number will only continue to rise as the factors that already catalyze homelessness are exacerbated by the changing climate and escalation of extreme weather events. Not only will this affect the existing homeless population, but it will also spiral their numbers, due to climate-related displacement generated by destructive floods, super hurricanes, and raging wildfires just to name a few possibilities. Obviously, people without adequate shelter are less likely to survive these events, but if they did, they are vulnerable to weather-related deaths and a range of diseases caused by shifts in weather and thus, extended insect breeding cycles, West Nile, Zika viruses, dengue fever, Lyme disease among them.
The climate crisis is already claiming the lives of the homeless. As of 2020, record-breaking heat waves have taken the lives of 146 people expericing homelessless in Arizona during the “hottest summer ever.”
It was Octavia who showed us the apocalypse will not be one cataclysmic event, but rather, will be a series of them with dominos falling over, splashing into an accumulation of preexisting problems, so much so that the catalysis becomes buried in the sea of history. As the dominos of climate change topple, they fall directly into the problem of homelessness.
It’s no secret that homelessness is not caused by laziness, a myth perpetuated by the capitalist. Lack of affordable housing, unemployment, poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, and related lack of needed services, are the top five causes of homelessness according to the National Law Center. If anything, the past three years of the pandemic has shown much of the American middle and lower class, that we are one incident, sickness, or bill away from a GoFundMe intended to return a roof over our heads. Homelessness is simply not a “sad fact of life,” it’s something everybody (except the rich) is in danger of falling into. And it's something that should be safeguarded from. Most empathetic people wouldn’t argue someone deserves to be homeless. Most empathetic people wouldn’t argue someone deserves to die in an extreme weather event because they are on the street. Most empathetic people wouldn’t argue someone’s climate displacement should revoke their right to safe housing. But most empathetic people wouldn’t give up their dream of excessive wealth to eradicate the growing crisis of current and impending mass homelessness.
As calculated by the government $600 is the absolute most a family living at the poverty line can afford to pay in rent, which is about 14% of Americans. Because of this, as cities build up (which historically and modernly is a synonym for gentrify) and affluent Americans flock to bustling metropolises like NYC and beautiful coastal cities bordering California and Florida, the price of housing increases. It’s no coincidence that these areas have the highest rates of homelessness in the U.S. With those rates, it’s no coincidence that these areas are most hit by extreme weather events exacerbated by the changing climate. In 2019, Florida’s Hurricane Michael left 1 in 10 residents homeless; a number that translates to 20,000 Bay County residents; a number that will only multiply with the next storm.
Concurrently, the population in these affluent areas decreases as those who can no longer afford the nicer neighborhoods are shoved out of the iron gates. However, the number of houses stays the same, and zoning policies snatch the dream of affordable (and stable) housing. Thus, housing in these areas is a profitable asset: empty and beautiful vessels, overlooking the beach. So what if they flood and are soon unlivable? The investment will simply move to a house a few blocks farther from the coast and the owners will escape to their other vacation home. It won’t matter that these investment mansions are powered by solar power or that they have two Teslas as opposed to gas cars in their garage or that they’re cooled by geothermal ACs or that the de-densified cities have “gone green” when those pushed out are endangered by the climate crisis we are trying to mitigate. It won’t matter because no matter how desired these cities are, they are still the most vulnerable to climate impacts. That vulnerability translates to their poorest citizens.
The notion of shelter as profit, as a commodity, naturally paints a contradiction to housing as a human right.
The answer of housing decommodification is far from novel or new. As housing operates on the supply and demand paradigm, that demand must be an actual need rather than the wants of investors, especially in regions most at risk. Housing as a human right will inevitably appear on political debate stages, again and again, however, while the answers have been here as long as the crisis itself, it will be imperative they evolve with the literal changing atmosphere. As shown in a review published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, this evolution can take on many forms, all of which boil down to including climate factors into urban planning, housing, and ad rem policy. The evolution can also take the forms of zoning reform, an increase in homeless assistance, and equitable disater plans that guaranetee safe housing without caveats. In the event this evolution doesn’t happen; in the event, housing is not restructured as a right, it says blatantly the climate-related deaths of the homeless are inevitable. It reminds us the poor are disposable. And ultimately, it confirms Octavia was right about American humanity, which she so desperately didn’t want to be. Often called a prophet, she once addressed this in remarks delivered at M.I.T. “This was a cautionary tale, although people have told me it was prophecy,” she said referring to Parable of the Talents, “All I have to say to that is: I certainly hope not.”