Environmental (IN)justice in Sacramento
TL;DR: In our last post we discussed what defines environmental justice. This week we’re going to talk about environmental injustice and how it manifests. We’re looking into the impact of these injustices on our most marginalized community members, and more specifically, our unhoused neighbors.
Marginalized communities are the most impacted by, and suffer the most severe consequences from, climate change, environmental injustice, and environmental racism.
Urban heat islands, redlining, and community health
As a reminder, an “urban heat island” refers to the phenomenon where built environments in urban areas trap heat in their infrastructure, increasing the temperature of the area and decreasing its ability to cool down.
Densely populated urban areas experience the most significant temperature increases, as compared to surrounding areas, due to this effect. Green spaces and tree canopies can help counter the urban heat island effect - neighborhoods in cities with fewer green spaces and canopies have the most elevated temperatures. Communities most impacted by historic disadvantages, lack of investment, and discrimination are the most likely to exist in urban heat islands, and some of the least likely to have adequate green spaces & canopy cover.
Redlining, the racially discriminatory practice of refusing access to credit and financial services to neighborhoods based on peoples’ racial and/or ethnic identity, directly contributes to these neighborhoods & communities continuing to bear the disproportionate burden of urban heat islands. Race covenants served to enforce racial segregation between neighborhoods.
Race covenants are defined as:
Racial covenants served as legally-enforceable contracts. They stipulated that the property had to remain in the hands of White people and they ran with the land, which meant that it could be enforced in perpetuity
Quote and image from: “What is a Covenant?”
Redlining and race covenants are both policy decisions that create segregated marginalized, low-income communities that are not invested in - these communities do not have access to the infrastructure & supports that would help protect them against the impacts of extreme weather patterns. Instead, they are the most vulnerable to suffering from the consequences of climate change and environmental injustice, and have the most limited survival resources.
...[o]ne study found that across more than 100 US cities, land surface temperatures in previously redlined areas are approximately 2.6°C warmer than in non-redlined areas within the same city. This difference can, in part, be explained by formerly redlined areas having significantly less tree cover than other urban areas - Urban Heat Islands 101
Areas of Sacramento County directly impacted by redlining and race covenants include: North Highlands, Oak Park and South Sacramento. The use of race covenants was banned in 1948, but were still used by local developers until 1960. Even after these practices were officially banned, disparities and lack of investment continue to plague marginalized regions of Sacramento, particularly North and South Sac. One way the ongoing legacy of redlining and race covenants can be seen is in both the proliferation of urban heat islands, and the limited access to green spaces and canopy cover.
Tree canopy is also significantly associated with lower rates of asthma, and will encourage walking and cycling in the community, cutting down on pollution and harm from cars, especially in heavily trafficked areas. South Sacramento is rated among the highest 10% of asthma emergency visits in the state.
[s]tudies have found a noteworthy relationship between the location of redlined communities, their exposure to extreme heat, and the rate of hospital visits for asthma that is likely due to poorer air quality. The redlined neighborhoods were targeted for ‘urban renewal’ projects in the 1950s, which often meant a highway system would be built on top of it, or through it. Sacramento’s network of busy elevated freeways is now the conduit for ozone and particle pollution - Legacy Of Racist ‘redlining’ Lingers In Sacramento Neighborhoods. How This Costs The City
If you're curious to learn more, this video from Strong SacTown visually shows the destruction ("renewal") of redlined neighborhoods in Sacramento during the 50s & 60s, and the construction of freeways, parking lots, and offices on top of where communities used to exist.
We can see that policies like redlining and race covenants rip communities apart and leave lasting legacies of disinvestment and marginalization in their wake, but they also have (to name a few) lasting detrimental effects on the health, well being, and safety of the people most impacted them. From the examples named above, we can see how these policies impact the built environment and climate of neighborhoods, and how the consequences of climate change further exacerbate the inequities faced by folks living in them.
These marginalizations compound upon themselves, leaving communities that have historically experienced oppression and neglect to bear, not only those impacts, but also the disproportionate burden of climate change. They are the people most harmed by our government’s total lack of desire to meaningfully address climate change, and by government policies and decision-making that worsen the effects of both climate change and environmental injustice.
How climate change and environmental injustice impacts our unhoused neighbors
