A safe and healthy community for all.
“In the summer, we see how the heat effects our participants,” said Anna Davis, Integrated Participant Care & Resources (IPCR) Site Supervisor at SHH. “We provide water and an air-conditioned communal space, but we have limited hours and capacity which can result in participants being exposed to the risks of extreme heat”.
Every winter during periods of extreme weather (e.g. below zero temperatures, wind warnings, or high rainfall), Squamish Helping Hands opens 15 additional beds in our emergency shelter using the Extreme Weather Response funding provided by BC Housing. The increasingly frequent and devastating effects of heat events are prompting the need for an equivalent emergency protocol to be established for extreme summer weather, as heat events pose serious and unique risks to people experiencing homelessness. Given the potentially fatal or life-altering effects of heat domes and other periods of sustained high temperatures, it is necessary to consider additional funding to combat the risks and harm.
The International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction has published research that suggests people with low incomes are more likely to live in areas with less shade, more paved surfaces, and higher temperatures. The research also states that unhoused populations have high rates of underlying physical and mental health conditions, thus placing them at an above average risk to heat exposure. Climate scientist David Hondula estimated that unhoused individuals are roughly 200 times more likely to die from a heat-related cause than sheltered individuals.
Ask yourself if you heard about the record temperatures in BC last summer season; then, ask yourself if you also heard about the mortality rate for unhoused people in BC during the same period. It is critically important to understand the scientific reports that come out of documenting our rising temperatures and extreme heat events. However, when we consider the impact extreme heat has on unhoused individuals, we also see whose experiences are “marginalized by a focus on specific temperature or the idea that all bodies experience heat in the same way” as Rachel Stern wrote in her UBC graduate thesis.
Academic spaces have popularized a term that summarizes this concept succinctly: thermal inequity. Thermal inequity is defined by the Sustainability Directory as the “unequal heat burden on vulnerable populations due to systemic disparities”. A further breakdown of this term is available on their website. Thermal inequity is a framework that forces the user to consider that heat does not affect everyone equally due to the social and institutional context in which each person lives.
Understanding thermal inequity helps us understand our blind spots in providing informed care during extreme heat events. As always, the best practice in understanding how to improve is to talk to those with lived experience. A recent series of interviews in ScienceDirect with individuals who lived in encampments during a heat wave highlighted several compromises participants were forced to make when locating shelter. Most frequently mentioned was the difficult trade-off between securing a stable location (i.e. where they were less likely to be swept/relocated) over prioritizing access to shade and water.
To fully understand the impact of heat events on those living in a tent or a heat-amplifying structure, the complexities of health and well-being must be considered beyond mortality metrics. Steven Samra, a person with lived experience who writes for the Homeless Hub, urges people to recognize how extreme heat compounds the challenges of already stressful living conditions and can be a direct cause of issues like increased insomnia, food spoilage, immersion in unsafe waters, and heavier usage of drugs or alcohol (a diuretic). Samra highlights how certain drugs produce hyperthermic reactions in the body under normal conditions, so during heat waves “using speed, crack or cocaine […] can spell disaster for a person”.
There is already valuable work being done to understand how to better support unhoused people during extreme heat events. The Lived Experience of Extreme Heat in BC report is a great resource intended to inform future policy and procedure development. Six focus areas summarize all the heat mitigation recommendations put forward by interviewees including: cooling spaces, mobility and transportation, communications, community and social networks, service providers, and policy development.
Falling under the first focus area, one topic explored in this report is the shift from cooling stations to cooling infrastructure. This shift addresses the myriad barriers participants identified when attempting to use this popular public health intervention, including lack of awareness around locations, rules and hours of operation, inability to bring a pet, stigma and a lack of sense of safety and/or belonging, distrust of authority, shortage of trained staff and/or increased interpersonal conflict during heat events. This report also highlights how other heat-related issues such as the risk of wildfires and smoke inhalation also have a greater effect on unhoused people.
With a reinforced understanding of how and why unhoused people are disproportionately affected by the increasingly severe heat events taking place in Squamish, a consideration of funding is required to action life-saving measures. It is essential that the specific experiences of unhoused people facing extreme heat are respected and prioritized to ensure no one’s needs are being overlooked or undervalued.
