Homeless Planet

At the core, environmental justice is racial and economic justice. For poor people, the environment is a looming issue. Ending homelessness and poverty will require a fundamental change in how we relate to the land and to each other.

Project HOME works from a definition of sustainability put forth by the United Nations—“The ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  It is a definition which embraces changing the present while looking to the future.

From this theoretical framework springs practical and strategic ramifications about how any sustainable organization should then operate. At Project HOME, we have adopted an eight-point sustainability plan, including reducing waste, becoming more energy efficient, and implementing food justice programming. Our hope is to change behaviors on an organization-wide scale, through education which explores what sustainability means at each of our seventeen different sites and implements site-specific solutions. But change is hard work.

The initial starting point begins by measuring impact. We measured energy usage and waste output, looked at purchases and waste at each site, noted the impact of the cleaning program. We took some initial steps: purchasing 100 percent green power and making recycling accessible. We have built gardens, worked for farmer’s markets, hosted harvest festivals. All our future sites will be built in accordance with green building standards.

It is good work, but it is full of tensions—the type of conflicts our entire society will be facing over the next decades as our climate continues to change. I’ve learned that every person has a different definition of what sustainability is. If any change is going to be made, I have to start by engaging people’s lived experiences. 

My goal is to open conversations by hearing what is most meaningful to our community members.  This can be a difficult task, because many people don’t see environmental issues as relevant to their lives, at least not in the way they are often framed by the mainstream environmental movement.  But our interchanges can also be an opportunity to broaden our ideas of what sustainability might mean.

Sustainable frameworks shift entirely depending on one’s experience, background, and identity. I am reminded of a conversation in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior between a middle-class activist from the Northeast dispensing tips for reducing one’s carbon footprint and a poor woman from the Appalachian mountains. Nothing on his list is relevant to her. She lives in a mobile home which uses little energy because electricity is expensive. She can’t afford meat, and she hangs all her clothes because she has no dryer.  I try to remember this interchange as I explore environmental measures with our residents and staff. Any messages must be relevant to our personal experience. 

Sustainability makes work. There is no way around that. I am often asking people who are overworked and busy to add things to their to-do list. Although this is necessary if we are going to move forward, I try to find ways that sustainability programming helps staff and community members meet their goals.

Perhaps this is why I spend a lot of my time on gardening programs. As sustainability coordinator, it is important that I think about energy, waste, fuel use, and other issues. But gardens and food issues are an important and tangible intersection for our work on sustainability, and one of my most successful points of engagement. Gardens can be a place to touch base with people. When we are taking care of plants together, we have the opportunity for deeper conversations. But we are also doing something specific and concrete in the moment, rather than discussing the conceptual ideas around global warming. Gardens do not need to be expensive, and they become a place of pride for folks; a place to bring their knowledge and curiosity.

Hope for my future and those who follow me hinges on changing structural, organizational, and individual habits of pollution and consumption. It will demand that each of us rethink the idea of home, and this planet which is, ultimately, the home we share together.