Southwest climate-change initiative relies on critical source of energy — community

A federal initiative to update building energy codes throughout the United States to meet climate-change challenges is ripe for deep dives into topics of power, sustainability and resilience.

In the Southwest, and by design, the conversation about reducing greenhouse emissions and producing savings through the Resilient and Efficient Codes Implementation (RECI) program starts with and stays with a grassroots-informed understanding of community power-sharing, displacement and gentrification — which is a necessary, more comprehensive and inclusive view of power, sustainability and resilience.

LISC Phoenix is a core team member of the Resilient Southwest Building Code Collaborative project approved by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Arizona-New Mexico collaborative is one of 27 RECI projects funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The International Council of Codes and the city of Tucson round out the core project team.

The RECI proposal submitted by New Buildings Institute leverages LISC Phoenix’s legacy of community development work and “authentic community engagement and building capacity within local community-based organizations and tribal communities.” The goal is to advance resilient construction practices for new and existing housing that address affordability and living conditions unique to the region.

Climate change is threatening human health in the Southwest through drought, heatwaves, water shortage and wildfire. Effective adaptation to the impact of climate change requires flexible decision-making and the incorporation of technological innovation with indigenous and local knowledge. 

Because of historical and current structural disparities, climate change negatively impacts indigenous, Black, Latinx and low-income people at disproportionate rates. The collaborative’s equitable engagement strategy addresses these disparities and helps ensure that communities most impacted by climate change and typically overlooked in early stages of design and development are at the table in this effort.

LISC Phoenix will lead the collaborative’s equitable community engagement across Arizona and New Mexico to prioritize housing climate safety, specifically in historically marginalized communities and among vulnerable populations, including single-family households. 

“We believe this community power-building initiative goes beyond resilient and efficient building codes as climate change in Arizona will impact the communities we support in disproportionate ways,” said Terry Benelli, executive director of LISC Phoenix. “As property owners scramble to take advantage of new federal and private dollars to update building codes, historically vulnerable communities will suffer increased housing prices to offset ‘green’ improvements.”

LISC Phoenix’s key goals for the RECI program are to center the leadership and decision-making of historically marginalized communities in the climate change and building codes design; design culturally specific building codes that represent indigenous values and knowledge and provide safety against extended energy outages, fire and drought; prioritize housing and energy infrastructure rebuilds to communities of color who have been victimized by historical redlining discriminatory policies. 

David Longoria, program officer for equitable economic development and healthy communities, said LISC Phoenix and its partners will work to ensure information and knowledge flow in both directions between the technical partners and the community.

“Part of community engagement is not only empowering those communities that really need to know this stuff and take advantage of this stuff, but also educating our partners about how they need to be centered in this work,” Longoria said.

Along with community trust and respect, LISC Phoenix brings to the RECI project consultants with backgrounds and training as diverse as civic engagement and cultural citizenship through the arts, community capacity building, planning, finance and paleontology.

Mary Stephens of InSite Consultants is a leader in equitable community engagement, representation and power sharing. InSite will facilitate authentic connections to people and communities in Arizona and New Mexico most impacted by climate change and to building code improvements that could exacerbate affordable housing challenges.

“It isn't about inviting people to be a part of this project,” Stephens said. “For us, it's about going and learning from people and then building their power with them through a kind of grassroots organizing tactic. … There's an agenda around building power and not just about making sure that people come to meetings about building codes.”

Stephens says the project should leave community members with a sense that no matter what happens with building codes, the effort has moved them forward.

“We need to right away make sure that community members who have been impacted by climate change or by housing insecurity are not only at the center of that conversation but we need to ensure that there are safeguards in place so that they're not continuing to be harmed,” Stephens said.

Lisa Churchill of Climate Advisory LLC — a climate change expert who has an education and training background in paleontology — has spent most of her career at the intersection of natural and built environments. She was the technical lead for the “Resilient Building Codes Toolkit” published in June 2022 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the LISC national office.

For the RECI project, Churchill serves as a broker between the technical side and the engagement piece of the proposal where she’ll be at the center of conversations about who the building codes are for, who decides what the issues are and who decides what good looks like.

“I do think (LISC Phoenix) has done a great job in terms of setting the table and the expectations,” Churchill said.

The Southwest’s special considerations — extreme heat and water security — pose unique challenges to addressing climate change, especially in a just and equitable way. Just leaving is not easy, especially when looked at in terms of displacement and generational wealth, Churchill said.

LISC Phoenix’s partnership in the RECI project, Churchill said, provides an opportunity for “meaningful engagement with the target audience and to figure out what the needs are and then, as a group, being creative about how can we back that into building codes or does it have to be solved through something else, like zoning.”