Green Infrastructure and Houselessness Blog Series: Part 2 - Potential Harms and Benefits
By Jessie McGinley, Water Policy Intern
This second blog of the Green Infrastructure and Houselessness Blog Series explains how green infrastructure could affect people experiencing houselessness.
Walking down the streets of many big cities in the United States, it is common to see people sleeping on the sidewalks, corners of parks, or under bridges. As described in Green Infrastructure and Houselessness Blog Series: Part 1 -An Introduction–the first blog of this series–unsheltered people face dangers from flooding; prioritizing their safety in work to adapt to the climate crisis is necessary. Natural stormwater management methods can secure safety for those in danger. While green infrastructure can help unsheltered communities become more climate resilient, there can also be drawbacks. This blog explains some of the potential harms and benefits of green infrastructure for unsheltered communities.
Potential Benefits of Green Infrastructure for People Who Are Unsheltered
There are many ways that people who are unsheltered can potentially benefit from green infrastructure. Green infrastructure can provide benefits to unsheltered people, yielding improvements in physical health, mental health, and safety. Some of the potential benefits of green infrastructure in communities that have unsheltered populations include:
Green infrastructure could help control and mitigate stormwater runoff in areas with high populations of people who are unsheltered. People living and sleeping on the streets are extremely vulnerable to flooding. They could get sick from the stormwater runoff collecting debris and bacteria as it flows through the streets. Their possessions could also easily get damaged, destroyed, or lost in flooding. As climate change continues to intensify flooding, it puts unsheltered people at a great risk of drowning. Green infrastructure could prevent disaster from harming unsheltered neighbors’ health, keeping their possessions, and potentially even saving their lives.
Urban Heat Island Effect Graphic from Kevin Forestell‘s blog, Urban Heat Island: What It Is and Why It Matters to Construction
Natural green spaces, such as green infrastructure, have been shown to mitigate the Urban Heat Island effect. People who are unsheltered are among the most unprotected during heat waves, which are becoming more frequent and intense. Unsheltered folks often have limited to no access to consistent air conditioning, fans, or other means of temperature control. Green infrastructure could help mitigate some of the heat (i.e., increasing shade, reducing the urban heat island effect).
Green infrastructure could improve air quality which is very important especially for people who do not have access to shelter and are constantly exposed to pollution.
Green Infrastructure and Water Quality
Uncontrolled flooding in encampments can impact more than just the unsheltered community. People who are experiencing homelessness may not have access to a restroom and are forced to urinate and defecate outdoors. Additionally, people’s trash can accumulate when there is no accessible waste system. This raises concerns regarding the health impacts this can have on the water sources nearby; when flooding occurs, the runoff could pick up the waste and contaminate the water sources. There needs to be accessible restrooms and places to dispose waste for people experiencing homelessness. Alongside the creation of accessible restrooms and trash bins, green infrastructure acts as a filtration system for water and could help mitigate this problem.
Potential Harms of Green Infrastructure for People Who Are Unsheltered
Green infrastructure can be very harmful to people who are unsheltered. As planners, developers, policymakers, and other decision makers develop green infrastructure, it is critical to recognize how projects might negatively impact communities–specifically those that are often ignored. Some ways that green infrastructure projects can harm unsheltered populations include:
“Public” green spaces are not always accessible to everyone in the community. Anti-homeless infrastructure–such as benches with separation partitions to prevent people from laying down or ledges with spikes to prevent people from sitting down–has become popular in urban parks. For green infrastructure projects to truly create more public green spaces, ensuring accessibility is key. One way that green infrastructure projects can ensure accessibility is by not including anti-homeless infrastructure within the project.
Anti-homeless infrastructure - Spikes and bench separators used to deter people from laying on these platforms, particularly people who are unsheltered.
Figure 1: From ‘Hostile Architecture’: How Public Spaces Keep the Public Out article by Winnie Hu, Photo by George Etheredge
Figure 2: From Vancouver’s ‘defensive architecture’ is hostile to homeless, say critics article by Ben Mussett, Photo by Dan Toulgoet
Green infrastructure can be a pretext for displacing people who are unsheltered. Green infrastructure can add colorful plants and open green space. However, this “beautification” can be an excuse for pushing out unsheltered communities. An important question for everyone to consider: is a green infrastructure project being used to intentionally displace unhoused neighbors and push them out of the community?
“Displacement is not natural, not inevitable, and not permanent.”
- Dr. Steward Pickett, Distinguished Senior Scientist of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Green infrastructure projects can cause green gentrification. Green gentrification is when lower income residents are displaced by the increased property value caused by the additional green space. This does not imply that all green investments cause gentrification; but, developers and planners need to recognize this phenomenon and work collaboratively to prevent it. Green gentrification can cause people to become homeless if they can no longer afford their rent. When a more affluent population moves into a neighborhood, NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) is common because affluent people do not want anyone sleeping on the street near their houses and they have the time, money, and resources to demand their displacement. Because of this, the community is “revitalized” with shops such as boutiques and artisan restaurants that replace social services, food banks, affordable housing, and other resources for people who are experiencing homelessness.
Green infrastructure projects could be inaccessible because of laws that criminalize people for being homeless. When developers consider creating a green infrastructure project, they should also consider whether any laws in that area will prohibit the homeless from using greenspaces or further harm unhoused folks. For example, LA recently passed an ordinance that prohibits encampments within 500 feet of schools and daycares. If a green infrastructure project is built within 500 feet of a school, is it truly welcoming to all of the community members?
Conclusion
There are many benefits of green infrastructure that can serve people who are unsheltered, but it is important to ensure that these projects do not contribute to the displacement and criminalization of people who are experiencing houselessness. The third and final part of this blog series, Part 3: Recommendations and Projects to Look at for Inspiration, will propose some general recommendations regarding equitable green infrastructure projects as well as examine a few successfully just green infrastructure projects.