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Climate Smart Missoula's Blog

Manufactured Home Rehab Project- a Fair, Design Charrette and more!

6/21/2018

5 Comments

 
​Last October, I started my 11 month journey as an AmeriCorps Energy Corps service member with Climate Smart Missoula. I was thrilled to get started on my primary project, developing a pilot weatherization program aimed at enhancing energy efficiency, health and safety of manufactured homes, with an emphasis on homes built before the 1976 federal building code. I was surprised to learn that there are 6,000 manufactured homes in Missoula, and about half of them were built before this time. An estimated 1200 of these homes could be lost by 2025 due to deteriorating conditions and issues with moving them. To address and help preserve community members' homes, Climate Smart has partnered with NeighborWorks Montana, the Human Resource Council,  and Home ReSource (full disclosure Climate Smart is in awe of our partner organizations). We're now a Team, and our Team has done a lot to set ourselves up for success: defining the scope of our efforts, building community awareness, engaging  stakeholders, and providing resources directly to residents. I’m proud of our accomplishments. 

I’ll share a few examples of the work we’ve done this year and upcoming efforts:
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Resource Fair
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This Spring, ​our Team hosted the first ever Manufactured Home Resource Fair. Our goal: provide resources for manufactured home residents around Home Repair, Weatherization, Financing, Legal Counseling and Health.
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Along with our Team,  a handful of local organizations joined. MUD co-hosted at their site.  The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) generously donated “light weatherization materials”. We gave away LED lights, weather-stripping, window insulation kits, and water pipe insulation. Climate Smart provided informational pamphlets on the energy savings associated with each. These materials can benefit manufactured homes in particular because upgrades are especially cost-effective, given rates of heat loss and wasted energy.  Participants were thrilled with what they received, and we have more left to give out!  We're planning mini “pop up” fairs in manufactured home communities in July and August to provide resources directly to residents.

​To assist with financial counseling, 
HomeWord provided materials on their financial education program that can help residents looking to save for improvements on their homes.  MoFi provided information on their small dollar loan program, a low interest loan specifically for manufactured home repairs. as did the Missoula Federal Credit Union.  Additionally, Montana Legal Services offered legal counseling resources. 

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For help with home repair, MUD offered discounts to their “Tool Library” where folks can access tools for home repair projects. Home ReSource provided coupons for their store which has a plethora of hardware, tools, and home repair materials.  Other groups shared assistance programs.

The goal of the Fair was to support residents as they work to improve the safety, health, energy efficiency, livability and longevity of their homes, and ultimately to preserve existing affordable housing. Manufactured housing, in fact, represents the largest supply of unsubsidized affordable housing in the country. I was grateful for the all the organizations that came out and for the opportunity to help coordinate this effort.  I'm hopeful for more of these Resource Fairs in the future! ​​

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Design Charette
We hosted a “design charrette” in February aimed at building community awareness, engaging key stakeholders and generating designs for our energy retrofit.  We invited local builders, architects, weatherization professionals and manufactured home residents to design models of skirting that fir our project goals: energy efficiency, health and comfort. We sought improvements that were long lasting, safe and affordable. We split into teams and, working together, successfully generated new and creative ideas for improvements in this sector which we're excited to implement. 
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​During the event, I interacted with homeowners who'd received weatherization services from the Human Resource Council (HRC) and gained a sense of the profound effect an energy retrofit can have on an individual's life. A mobile home resident commented that the weatherization work the HRC recently did allowed her to be comfortable and was so thankful that her house “wasn’t cold in the winter anymore”.  She also mentioned saving nearly $50/month on utility costs. Speaking to residents personally about the benefits of weatherization was really encouraging. The models created at the design charrette could improve many community members’ lives, making their homes more energy efficient, comfortable, ​ and healthy.  ​Bringing experts to the table was incredibly beneficial, and we plan to use the re-skirting ideas on manufactured homes in July and August. 

Re-skirting Five Manufactured Homes 
After all this good work, our Team is now poised to work on skirting replacements for 5 homes in the Missoula area and are in the process of creating a “design refine team”. This team will visit five homes and refine the "charrette" skirting designs based on the specifications of the home and wishes of the homeowner. If you have building, architecture or weatherization experience and are interested in helping with our skirting repair model, please reach out to me, Max.

Stay tuned, and check for updates on the Home Rehab section of our web page. 

​- Max Longo, 
Energy and Climate Coordinator

5 Comments

Being Proactive: Climate, Health, Nurses, and Us

6/8/2018

0 Comments

 
PictureThe amazing Beth Schenk at our meetup!
Late last August I eagerly packed my things while profusely sweating in the hot and humid climate of northern Indiana. I naively looked forward to the cooler, drier weather of my new home in Missoula where I would be attending graduate school. Instead I arrived to a hot, smoke filled valley. Looking out my window on one of my first morning I mistook the smoke for a beautiful morning fog.
​

Since then I have heard many horror stories of the impacts of wildfire smoke on physical and mental health. I had a professor who skyped in from Seattle because she was so sick she couldn’t be in Missoula. A parent told me their child could not play outside for nearly two months. While a sort of post-traumatic stress may keep wildfire smoke at the forefront of Missoulian minds, this is just one example of how climate change and community health are related.

At Thursday night’s monthly meetup covering the topic of health and climate, participants helped generate a list of what we knew about the possible global health consequences of climate change. Here are some of the things we came up with:
  • Heat related illness
  • Food insecurity
  • Outdoor occupational hazards
  • Air quality related illnesses due to smoke and worsened smog (related to ozone)
  • Changed disease vectors
  • Disease and sanitation issues due to overcrowding
  • Mental health consequences

A recurring theme throughout the night’s discussion centered on how we define vulnerable populations. In the context of climate and health, vulnerable populations have traditionally been defined as the young and elderly. Several participants called for outdoor workers to be included in this definition as they face numerous occupational hazards. Think local farmers and highway workers.

Let’s Be Proactive
Thankfully, as the meetup’s title “Healthy Community and Summer Smart” suggests, Thursday night’s discussion was not all doom and gloom. Nurse scientist, St. Patrick Hospital’s sustainability coordinator, and Climate Smart executive team member Beth Schenk spoke with us about some of the exciting efforts she, the hospital, and local health researchers are making to create a healthier community. Amy added to this proactive message by discussing some of Climate Smart’s “Summer Smart” work.

Nurses: The New Climate Messengers
Beth mentioned a few of the efforts she has been involved with both nationally and around Missoula:
  • Nurses Climate Challenge: A project of Health Care without Harm and the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, the goal of the Nurses Climate Challenge is to, “mobilize nurses across the country to educate a total of 5,000 of their colleagues about the impacts of climate change on human health.” To find out more or sign up to get involved visit their website. 
  • Nurses Climate Survey: Drawing on the long-term survey model of Yale’s Program on Climate Change and George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication (find more here), Dr. Schenk and colleagues have developed a similar survey to study the climate attitudes of nurses. Nurses are considered some of the most trusted voices in the United States and number over 4 million making them an important demographic. If you or someone you know is a nurse, the survey is ongoing and can be found  here. 
  • Anesthesia and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: An expert in anesthesia and greenhouse gas reduction will soon be visiting St. Patrick Hospital to meet with doctors about best practices for patient care, cost reduction, and greenhouse gas emissions. The gases used for anesthesia can be far more harmful than carbon dioxide emissions and account for an estimated 5% of the carbon footprint of our healthcare system. Keep your eyes out for a possible article in the Missoula Current about this issue, but for now, find this statistic and more information here. at . For more information about actions taken by St. Patrick Hospital check out Beth’s recent contribution to the Sustainable Missoula column.
  • Impacts of Long-Term, Chronic Smoke Exposure: Curtis Noonan, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Montana, received grant funding for new research into the long-term impacts of smoke exposure. We generally understand short-term impacts, but lack much needed science on long-term risks. 
  • Nurses for Healthy Environments Podcast: For this podcast Beth interviews fellow nursing and environmental health leaders about their inspirations and work. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Further description and a link to episodes can be found here. 

More local efforts
Check out our “Summer Smart” tab for information about some of our health and climate efforts. Here are a few highlights:
  • HEPA Air Filters: Check out our educational materials and consider supporting our Summer 2018 efforts to distribute free filters to vulnerable populations. 
  • Shade Shelters: In 2017 we built a shade shelter and have another in the works for this summer. 
  • Tree Cover: Climate Smart partners with Trees for Missoula to advance our goals of increasing tree cover to act as a carbon sink and natural cooling mechanism. Consider volunteering this summer as they conduct an extensive and needed tree inventory. 

Since August I have come a long way from mistaking smoke for fog. As a new member of the Climate Smart team, I am excited to continue learning about the local effects of climate change and what we can do here in our own community. I found the proactive message of Thursday’s discussion an inspirational launch point as I dive into the world of climate change work this summer.

- Mattie Lehman, Intern and UM Brainerd Fellow


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    Authors

    Abby Huseth
    ​Amy Cilimburg
    Caroline Lauer
    Mason Dow
    ​Kelli Littleton
    Hailey Jorgensen
    ​Terri Nichols
    ​Max Longo
    ​Mattie Lehman
    Anna Weinberg

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