Recap — Equitable Green Homes? Housing, Health and Energy in a Changing Climate

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Published on March 16, 2026

What are the barriers to providing equitable and climate-resilient housing for all, and how can we begin to address these barriers? This event, chaired by Lina Brand Correa, a Faculty Fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC), aimed to explore this question and identify connections between each panelist’s perspectives and research. The panelists reflected on emerging themes from their work on housing, energy poverty, and well-being, followed by a discussion on how to address these complex and interconnected issues in the future. 

Introductions from each panelist demonstrated the interconnectedness of their work. First, Evelyn Amponsah is a former CITY/EUC Postdoctoral Fellow and interdisciplinary scholar of Black diaspora, memory, temporality and political life. Evelyn highlighted the spatial distribution of well-being: only certain neighbourhoods in Canada are safe, secure, and affordable, and these inequities are exacerbated due to climate change. Evelyn spoke of her Postdoctoral research in Toronto, Vancouver, and Kitchener with residents in social housing, single-room occupancies, and basement apartments. In these spaces, impacts such as extreme indoor temperatures worsened residents’ existing mental and physical health conditions. This has led Evelyn to question how to redesign systems so that reciprocal care and justice are embedded into infrastructure. 

Similar links between care, energy poverty, and well-being were discussed by Mylène Riva, an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at McGill University. Mylène introduced her research related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how access to clean, sustainable, and affordable energy (SDG 7) is essential for advancing health and well-being (SDG 3). Research from a study of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, has found that social care needs and responsibilities (such as caring for family members) influence energy use and costs. During this study, Bridgewater also experienced an extreme weather event, Hurricane Lee, and many residents shared stories of increased stress and burdens during that time. 

Patricio Belloy, an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Economics, Universidad Austral de Chile, discussed the issue of gentrification in a climate-vulnerable neighbourhood in East Boston, which has a predominantly Latinx population. Patricio’s research used participatory workshops and a human needs-based approach to recognize community assets, assess barriers to need satisfaction and envision desired futures for the community. Activists within the community have been implementing their own solutions, such as green walks, as an opportunity for residents to gather and share their experiences and strategies for improving their lives in the neighborhood. 

To conclude the event, panelists and audience members reflected on how to tackle the interconnected issues surrounding housing, energy, and climate change in the future. Panelists emphasized the need to move beyond traditional climate adaptation strategies towards interdisciplinary frameworks which prioritize concepts such as justice and eudaimonic understandings of well-being. Solutions and points of intervention were proposed, such as meaningfully including groups typically underrepresented in decision-making, and prioritizing long-term outcomes in policy solutions instead of short-term fixes, which may contribute to unintended consequences. 

Connect with Evelyn Amponsah, Patricio Belloy, and Mylene Riva

Watch the full seminar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZI_djG6Ei0

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