Houston’s hub homes program has given neighbors resilient power. Then the EPA canceled Solar For All

HOUSTON (AP) — Doris Brown was almost asleep when a neighbor knocked on her door, telling her to look outside. “There was no light, anywhere,” Brown said, remembering the power outage that summer night in 2023. “I didn’t even know it.”

Brown’s solar panel and battery system kept it powered. She had prepared herself for a night like this. “Call everyone,” she said to the neighbor.

Soon, about 15 “neighbors and neighbors of neighbors” were in Brown’s three-bedroom, 1 1/2-bathroom home in northeast Houston. They charged their phones, cooked, and showered before work and school. Some slept at home.

“There were people sleeping everywhere,” Brown, 75, said. She was happy to be “a port in a storm,” despite one drawback: “They ate all my snacks.”

Brown’s house is a “hub house,” one of seven in a northeast Houston pilot program intended to create emergency shelters — not in shelters or community centers, but inside neighbors’ homes.

The idea was a popular response to decades of community disinvestment and neglect This got neighbors talking about what they could do to prepare for extreme weather and power outages.

“It’s us helping ourselves,” Brown said.

The project was expected to grow to 30 additional homes, until the Environmental Protection Agency in August canceled $7 billion Solar for All program which would have financed its expansion. Harris County, which includes Houston, is now a plaintiff in one of the several lawsuits on cancellation.

Those involved in the program recognize that shelter centers are unconventional: they require community trust and cooperation and affect fewer people than a larger resilience center.

But they also say they are effective at creating pockets of preparedness in communities facing more extreme weather but lacking the resources to do more.

“It was a way to increase resilience in these neighborhoods that are often forgotten,” said Sam Silerio, Texas program director at Solar United Neighbors, one of the nonprofits involved in the pilot program that is also sues for cuts.

A unique approach

The idea of ​​hub homes started after Winter storm Uri in 2021when freezing temperatures crippled the Texas power grid for five days and caused 246 storm-related deathsaccording to the Texas Department of Health Services.

The loss of power contributed to many deaths as people with health problems could not refrigerate medications or operate life-sustaining medical devices. Nineteen people died from carbon monoxide poisoning after inappropriately using generators and grills to stay warm.

“We were like, ‘Shoot, a power grid outage is a serious thing that we’re not prepared for,'” said Becky Selle, co-director of disaster preparedness, planning and operations at West Street Recovery, a northeast Houston nonprofit founded after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

WSR purchased generators for residents willing to share the resource. Brown, who herself almost froze to death in Uri, intervened.

WSR added more supplies to the centers, such as life jackets and kayaks for flood evacuations, and conducted preparedness training for its members.

When Solar United Neighbors, a Washington-based nonprofit, approached them with a private grant from the Hive Fund to add free solar panels and batteries to several homes, WSR knew exactly where to install them.

The pilot had its challenges: Some roofs had to be repaired before they could accommodate solar panels, and hub captains had to learn how to manage their batteries so they didn’t drain them.

Success also required good neighborly ties that modern communities often lack.

“You have to build that trust,” said David Espinoza, a central shelter captain and co-director of community organizing and language access for West Street Recovery. The 34-year-old went door to door in his building, introducing himself to sometimes suspicious neighbors. “I got to know my neighborhood a lot better,” he says.

About a dozen people are on Espinoza’s “list,” but he said the center is there for anyone in need, prioritizing older neighbors and those with children or health issues.

There are other benefits, too: The solar system and batteries reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut Espinoza’s utility bill in half.

Espinoza, who is bilingual, said that for neighborhoods like his with mixed-status, Spanish-speaking and medically vulnerable households, hub houses are helpful even with other shelters nearby.

“They can access me a little easier,” he said.

“Social capital”

Efforts to build local resilience have intensified in recent years as extreme weather conditionspower outages and electricity price overburden communities.

Average annual power outage hours in the United States have jumped over the past decade, largely due to extreme weather, according to Sarah Kotwis, a senior associate at RMI, a nonprofit dedicated to clean energy.

“Communities need to think more strategically about resilience,” Kotwis said.

That preparation starts with connections between neighbors, said Renae Hanvin, CEO and founder of Resilient Ready and an expert in “social capital,” or “connections, trust and cooperation between people.”

“It’s the missing link in the disaster resilience ecosystem,” Hanvin said. “At the end of the day, the first thing you need (in an emergency) to help you is a person.”

As disasters get worse, first responders simply can’t help everyone at the same time, she said, so neighbors must think of themselves as “zero responders.”

Many communities have also turned to “resilience centers,” or locally trusted institutions, like community centers or churches, equipped with year-round backup power, emergency supplies, and even social services.

Ideally, investments in resilience are not an ‘either or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or’, said Dori Wolfe, SUN Texas senior program associate. “Hubs are a part of the web, and there should be having a resilience center at the center of each of these nodes,” she said. “We need all of this.”

“A huge disappointment”

Solar United Neighbors and West Street Recovery planned to expand the program this fall as part of a $54 million grant awarded to Harris County by the EPA.

They intended to increase the number of central fireplaces to 30 and add more batteries to existing ones to better operate heating and cooling during outages. The money would also have funded a local resilience center.

In August, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin canceled the EPA’s Solar for All program, intended to support residential solar energy for more than 900,000 low-income households. Zeldin said authority for the “waste” program was removed as part of Trump’s tax and spending bill.

“It’s a huge disappointment,” Silerio said. Solar United Neighbors and Harris County sued the EPA in separate lawsuits this month over the budget cuts, as did more than a dozen state attorneys general.

The firing “pulls the rug out from under the very people the federal government should be protecting,” interim Harris County Administrator Jesse Dickerman said in a statement to The Associated Press.

West Street Recovery is not abandoning more central homes. The nonprofit plans to raise funds from the community and seek other grants.

“These programs have been a great help to the community,” Espinoza said. “Without funds from the federal government, it’s going to be a lot more difficult.” »

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