If I seem obsessed with warmth and security this month, maybe it's because the chilly season in Portland has finally set in, and the pervasive damp isn't going to stop for months. Or maybe it's because the theme for Post Carbon's newsletters this month is heating¹. Perhaps the two are not unrelated.

As I indulge in multi-sweater chic and contemplate the yearly ritual of putting putty and plastic over the old, inefficient windows of my 97-year-old home, I'm very aware that I've got it easy. In a pinch, I could afford to turn up the heat a bit; natural gas is not yet as expensive as the heating oil my east coast family relies on, and I have some financial wiggle room to pay for it. While I haven't yet replaced my antique windows, I know how to weatherize them and I'm physically capable of doing so. I live with people, which provides a level of physical and economic security, and I have a network of friends and family in town who I know would help out if something were to go wrong and I needed a warm place to stay.

What of the vulnerable populations who don't?

The most obvious of these is, of course, the homeless, a group that is rapidly growing in the current economic environment. Many cities have some facility for the homeless, but spaces can be highly contested in the deadly winter months even in good economic times.

Rising food and fuel prices mean that concerned kitchen table conversations are more likely to be about mortgage payments than college funds. The large houses that have been in vogue will be a challenge to heat.

Of the housed, elderly people living alone are most likely to be physically harmed or killed from insufficient heat. Often living on limited incomes and physically limited, they might not be able to weatherize their homes or warm themselves with activity.

The "Recommended Immediate Actions to Address Acute Risks Faced by Some Westerly Residents" section of the Westerly, R.I. peak oil task force's report contained some admirably concrete and inventive problem-solving:

1. Create solutions for an anticipated rapid increase in the population who need shelter during the winter months.

a. Develop a clearinghouse for residents who must vacate their homes during the winter months to connect with residents who need to take people in to help pay their energy bills.
b. Establish additional collective housing contingency plans to shelter families in schools and the Westerly Senior Center.

2. Develop training and a service for people who need to have their pipes drained because they cannot heat their homes.

Certainly people will want to stay in their own cozily-heated homes for the winter. But if energy prices make that economically infeasible for individuals, it's bound to also be a stretch for local governments. Towns that want to be effective in helping need to look beyond financial heating assistance for homeowners and instead harness the resources they have.

A program such as that described in 1a could be a great boon to people who find themselves living in oversized homes and worrying about the cost of heating. Temporarily moving in with your neighbors is a step beyond the neighborhood-based checkins that Montpelier, Vt. is organizing. Organizing either would take smaller amounts of public money and have the side benefit of community building.

On the coldest nights of the year, Portland (Ore.) and other towns open emergency warming centers for the homeless. Portland contracts with the Red Cross to run these centers, which protect people who can't get places in overfilled shelters. But Biddeford, Maine has another idea. "Turn down your thermostat and come on over," says the invitation to their warming center on the town's website, explicitly not limited to members of Biddeford’s 50+ Club (which presumably runs the community center where it is located).

Such non-emergency warming centers could be a great service to the community. Already-existing community centers or underused public buildings could be temporarily repurposed as multi-generational warming spaces, where people could mingle instead of shivering alone at home.

Maybe it's not too utopian to imagine elderly community members helping youth with their homework as the snow falls outside the old town hall or grange hall? At any rate, money not spent on heating oil can be spent on other necessities, and even if the warming centers are not shelters (as described in 1b above), they could provide great benefit to the community through better use of existing resources.

Photo credits:
Sarah Gilbert
Steven Erat

1. ^ If you missed the postcarbon.org newsletter this month, definitely check out the heating-related material from Relocalize.net and Energy Bulletin featured therein.

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