PhD candidate and Public Scholar Rachel Stern (she/her) has been focused on the intersection of housing insecurity, heat vulnerability and aging for some time. Originally hailing from New York City, Stern grew up in a household of long-term renters in a big city. This upbringing attuned her to the challenges that have become the focus of her research. Coming to UBC in early 2021 to do her MA in Human Geography, Stern arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic at the peak of the Omicron variant. Focusing on local field work opportunities due to the pandemic restrictions, she joined a project with Professors Gerry Pratt and Mohammad Rafi Arefin focused on housing justice in the climate emergency. BC had just experienced the devastating 2021 heat dome during which 98% of the 619 people the that died perished indoors, mostly in their own homes, unable to escape the extreme heat. And 90% of those people were above the age of 60.
“I hope that most of my research is useful outside an academic environment, especially because heat is a deeply public issue. I really want to make sure the work I am doing is relevant to helping to keep people safer and more comfortable during future events,” shares Stern.
As part of the Public Scholars Initiative (PSI), Stern receives funding to support her community engaged research with the South Vancouver Seniors Network (SVSN). She is working on a collaborative project with Public Health PhD candidate Katherine White that blends qualitative and quantitative approaches. They met while working with Dr. Liv Yoon as research assistants on her recent research on cooling centres and indoor air quality in Metro Vancouver. Stern and White’s joint project tackles the heat experiences of older adults, uniquely bringing together public health and built environment perspectives. The PSI award will help fund honoraria for community partners, compensation for study participants who will be interviewed and keep weather diaries, and study materials and workshop costs. An important and often overlooked aspect of planning and managing extreme weather responses is taking into account people’s lived experiences. Stern and White’s project will combine interviews, weather diaries, and temperature monitoring with in-home temperature sensors to explore lived experiences of heat.
Rachel presenting some of her research at the Place like Home SFU symposium, November 2023
“What are the politics and the experiences people are having at home during these extreme events that shape their heat experience? And how might we take these things into account to inform public policy?” asks Stern.
Following the 2021 heat dome, Stern’s research is focused on understanding how people’s stories are valued.
“Working on this project connected to my bigger questions around how people experience environmental issues and if we are connecting memory, testimony and ultimately policy. I am asking how has the heat dome been memorialized or not, and how does that impact people’s heat experience, the emergency response and the planning moving forward,” explains Stern.
Housing certainly plays a role in heat vulnerability and many seniors on fixed incomes live in rental units with little to no heat mitigation, placing them particularly at risk. Stern’s work delves into how we can use the testimonials from people’s lived experience of extreme heat to better prepare for future events in a way that doesn’t exacerbate existing inequities. Many older buildings in Vancouver require retro-fitting to accommodate the improvements needed to tackle the challenges a warming climate creates. Combined with an affordability crisis in the city, tenants are placed in a precarious position when these necessary updates require them to relocate.
example of housing needing retrofitting in South Vancouver
“I’ve been thinking a lot about how people’s experiences of environmental disasters are documented. The heat dome has really been documented in numbers and percentages. When doing community engaged research, we are concerned with how the stories that people tell across all parts of their lives inform our understanding of the intersectionality of these issues. Listening closely to these stories can help us tell where the injustices lie,” says Stern.
Rachel leading a group discussion at the Right to Cool workshop, led by Dr. Liv Yoon, May 2024
Strategies to deal with extreme heat across health authorities, within urban planning and for emergency BC disaster responses are all different – Stern asks what stories these institutions are telling about heat and who are they listening to? There is a lot of concern in the climate change movement about the future and a focus on younger generations inheriting current problems. Seniors often take a back seat to these concerns, becoming invisible in the conversation and planning. Projects like Stern’s are crucial to creating inclusive and equitable strategies for mitigating the climate crisis. Stern and White hope to create a toolkit for scaling up the work they are doing with the SVSN.
“It’s great to receive some funding to enable us to do this work. Providing honoraria to community groups and compensating participants for their time has meant that we could design a more comprehensive study and ask for people’s buy-in. It’s rare to be able to get funding as a PhD student to do your own research so this is a really wonderful opportunity,” reflects Stern.
With summer right around the corner, both the academic and local community are eager to learn more about the results of this study. Dedicated students like Stern are raising the bar for the ways intersectional research informs institutional policy and response. Perhaps her findings will be incorporated into better planning for the next inevitable heat wave.
Quick links:
- Read Stern’s Public Scholars Initiative research profile
- Read “Extreme Heat in the Home”, an open-access research paper co-written by Rachel Stern and Dr. Rafi Arefin
