Healthy energy homes urgently needed in Indigenous communities

This article was published by The Energy Mix on July 18, 2024.

By Gaye Taylor

Solving the intertwined crises in Indigenous housing and health requires Indigenous knowledge, experience, and leadership, concludes a new scoping paper co-authored by Indigenous Clean Energy and the Canadian Climate Institute.

Titled “Beyond Sustainability: The Power of Indigenous Healthy Energy Homes,” the paper [pdf] draws on Indigenous-authored or -led scholarship and experience to explore the intersections between housing, health, and energy in Indigenous life.

In 2018, the Haíłzaqv (Helsiuk) Nation installed its first 20 heat pump systems in homes in Bella Bella, British Columbia, saving the homeowners as much as $250 per month on their heating bills because they no longer had to pay for diesel. But there was another immediate and tangible benefit: parents reported that chronic runny noses and coughs in their children disappeared along with the use of fossil fuels to keep warm.

The scoping paper begins with this anecdote, illustrating that too many Indigenous communities still find themselves in energy inefficient homes that are making them sick, and urgently need healthy energy homes for everyone.

A healthy energy home, the paper explains, will be one that supports all aspects of human well-being (individual, family, community, culture), together with that of ecosystems, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Far From Healthy

“Generations of colonial policies led to the destruction of traditional housing such as wigwams, teepees, longhouses, kekulis, pit houses, igloos, sod houses, big houses, and other styles of architecture used by Indigenous Peoples,” the two organizations write.

“Strategic, appropriate for the land and environment they were built in, and responsive to the cultural needs of specific communities,” these housing designs were replaced with “one-size fits-all housing”, disconnected from the diverse realities of land, climate, and culture.

This failure led inexorably to a “multitude of other challenges,” including poor health outcomes for body, mind, and spirit.

“Among First Nations adults, 43% of those who have asthma and 52% of those living with chronic bronchitis are also living with mould in their homes,” the authors write, drawing a direct connection between poorly ventilated housing and respiratory illness.  “In 2023, of 101 First Nations community homes surveyed in Ontario, almost half had visible mould,” they add.

Overcrowding in many Indigenous homes is also a sign of the disconnect between houses supplied to Indigenous communities under federal programs and the cultural values and needs of their inhabitants. Whereas Indigenous homes “were traditionally multi-generational, with room for extended family members,” government builds have, for decades, been designed for “small nuclear families” at best.

“The rapid degradation of Indigenous homes, largely due to poor construction and being ill-suited for their environment,” has only compounded the problem of overcrowding. Citing 2023 Statistics Canada data, the authors say the percentage of First Nations households requiring major repairs (16.4%) is nearly triple that of non-Indigenous households.

“As a result, rather than growing the stock of available housing to reduce overcrowding, communities are simply replacing existing homes.”

Harmful Overcrowding

The psycho-social harms of overcrowding are multiple, increasing risks of substance abuse, mood disorders, and self-harm. “Overcrowding plays a major role in the prevalence of domestic violence, child apprehensions by child welfare agencies, and in the frequency of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people,” the authors say.

Overcrowding also generates a further fundamental threat to physical health, in that living in close quarters means easier transmission of communicable diseases and infections. The rate of tuberculosis transmission among Indigenous people, for example, is “at least 20 times higher than among non-Indigenous people.” Overcrowding, alongside mould and poor ventilation, is implicated in this statistic.

Furthermore, many of the “one-size-fits-all” structures currently housing Indigenous families are extremely energy inefficient, thanks to air leakage, poor insulation, and outdated heating and hot water systems. Faced with energy poverty from sky-high energy costs, some Indigenous households find themselves having to “choose between buying groceries or keeping the heat on,” between “heating or eating.”

For many rural and remote Indigenous communities, especially those entirely dependent on expensive fossil fuels such as diesel, such trade-offs can be particularly extreme.

On top of the crisis in home heating is a need for energy to cool things off in summer, as households increasingly face extreme heat and wildfire smoke, with energy poverty meaning little hope of purchasing air conditioning and air filtration systems.

Healthy Energy Homes

With the Haíłzaqv Nation heat pump success story as an example, an Indigenous healthy energy home supports every aspect of well-being, the paper states. Healthy energy homes also save individuals, families, and communities money.

The scoping paper cites Yale First Nation in Hope, B.C., which built a Passive House-certified six-plex seven years ago. “Occupants of the six-plex save hundreds of dollars per year on utility bills compared to other homes in the community,” meaning that “families can allocate more resources to other vital needs, such as health care, ensuring that health issues are addressed promptly, and preventing costly long-term health complications.”

Better individual and family health outcomes also mean a more sustainable health care system. Whereas “the minimum cost of both retrofitting existing community homes for energy efficiency and building new homes that meet advanced energy efficiency standards in all Indigenous communities by 2030 is approximately $5.3 billion,” the authors say, citing 2021 data, the federal government spent $8.67 billion on Indigenous health during 2021-2022 alone.

“While further research on the health-related costs from inadequate housing is needed to more precisely quantify the savings to be had, building Healthy Energy Homes could potentially lead to significant health care savings,” they add.

Because they use more climate-appropriate designs and materials, health energy homes also last longer, leaving money and energy to build more homes, which in turn addresses housing shortages and overcrowding.

ICE and the Climate Institute cite numerous cases where such reciprocity is already occurring in Indigenous communities across Canada, including the Mi’kmaw Home Energy Efficiency Project (MHEEP), which has been in operation in Nova Scotia since 2019.

Recently, more than 1,000 band-owned homes have received energy efficiency upgrades such as insulation, heat pumps, and draft-proofing through MHEEP, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 6,200 tonnes and cutting household energy bills by an average of $1,500.

Healthy Housing and Self-Determination

Calls for healthy housing and self-determination over housing reverberate through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s recommendations, ICE and the Climate Institute say.

“Indigenous housing isn’t just about money and investments, it is about people living in communities and having the use of their own funds for how they want to build homes, not how the government of Canada says they should,” they write.

“Therefore, it is essential that investments in and building of Healthy Energy Homes are done in partnership with Indigenous communities,” a process that would “further the process of reconciliation.”

But funding challenges are still daunting, they add. “Because community housing providers are so chronically underfunded, they are operating in this crisis mode, where all they can focus on is fixing the health and safety emergencies of right now and they’re not able to be in a place where they can plan for the future.”