Nationwide, news stories have shared the highest COVID-19 affected communities are low income and communities of color. Within the Mystic River watershed, predominantly Black and Latinx communities within Chelsea, Boston, Everett and Revere have the highest rates of COVID-19 in Massachusetts. These vast disparities between Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and predominantly white communities are not unique to Greater Boston, but rather are consistent with a nationwide pattern in the United States. Past and current discriminatory policies and structural racism in housing, employment, education, healthcare and banking have all made BIPOC Americans less healthy and financially secure. Those same living conditions that make BIPOC residents and workers more susceptible to COVID also make them more vulnerable to summer heat waves. In July, the Boston Globe highlighted how communities of color are being hit the hardest by heat waves.
This summer, the Barr Foundation partnered with the Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) and Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) to distribute over $600,000 in emergency heat mitigation funding to communities heavily impacted by COVID-19. We are helping the Barr Foundation’s climate team direct funding to the seven municipalities most heavily burdened by COVID and heat in Massachusetts: Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, Lawrence, Lynn and Brockton. The awardees will implement a variety of heat solutions for priority populations, such as distribution of energy-efficient air conditioners, electricity bill assistance, public health education, water fountains, and wearable cooling kits for people experiencing homelessness. These strategies will serve as a pilot program to help determine more lasting solutions for healthy, vibrant BIPOC communities.
But what—you ask—does an environmental organization have to do with the pandemic and racial reckoning in the United States? Everything, we say.
As an environmental organization, our mission is to help establish a healthy and vibrant watershed for the benefit of all community members. We are increasingly focusing our limited resources on those people and places facing the greatest environmental challenges. For example, residents in densely developed Lower Mystic communities experience “urban heat islands,” which may be 10-20ºF hotter than more affluent shady cities and towns higher in our watershed. Communities in the lower Mystic also tend to host higher levels of concentrated pollution, leading to more asthma and other health effects. And, because of the high cost of housing in Greater Boston, disproportionately low-income BIPOC residents are concentrated in these “environmental justice” communities.
How did we get to a place where access to cleaner air, cooler air temperatures, and higher access to greenspace is segregated by race and socioeconomic class?
One answer lies in the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation “redlining” maps of the 1930’s, where banks, backed by the U.S. government, drew lines where ‘non-white” people lived - at that time Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants and Black citizens - and denied them home and business loans (Figure A). Three Boston-area neighborhoods deemed “hazardous” at the time were the West End, Brookline and Roxbury. The Italian-American West End was razed to the ground in a now-famous urban redevelopment fiasco. Brookline’s Jewish-American population overtime was seen as “white” and the neighborhood flourished. However, Roxbury’s Black community has continued to suffer from decades of public and private disinvestment. This pattern can still be seen today. There is a strong correlation between the Boston-area “hazardous” and “definitely declining” neighborhoods of the 1930s and the hottest urban heat islands today (Figure B).
Public policies and investments got us to where we are today. We need new policies and investments that ensure that all our residents and workers have the same protection from climate change-enhanced extreme weather and other public health risks. We are grateful for the opportunity to help close this gap in social resilience.
For more information, contact Melanie Gárate, Climate Resiliency Project Manager, at melanie.garate@mysticriver.org.
