As we enter the summer heat season, what actions have you been taking to pilot or test the strategies identified in the Climate Resilience Roadmap?

At the beginning of the year, we met with our partner organizations to discuss which recommendations from the Climate Resilience Roadmap should be prioritized. What we consistently heard was that organizations wanted to focus on tangible actions that would help them prepare for the 2026 heat season. Upon hearing this, we decided to pilot practical initiatives that could strengthen heat resilience while also advancing many of the broader strategies outlined in the Roadmap. 

This led to the development of our 2026 heat response pilot. For the summer, each of our partner organizations has been provided with funding to work on their own heat resilience project. The projects fall under two broad categories, one of them is procurement, which I’m helping to organize, and the other category is related to peer-led initiatives. 

We are procuring essential heat resilience supplies, things like cooling towels, instant cold packs, bottled water, Gatorade, and sunscreen, for the organization so they can distribute them to their residents and broader communities. What we’ve heard from the organizations during the Roadmap consultations is that getting supplies can be really tricky, especially when it is very hot and demand is high. Right now, we have two organizations that are leading procurement of supplies on behalf of the group. These two organizations have a lot of experience with procurement heat response supplies and we are leveraging their existing relationship with suppliers. Combining orders across organizations also means we are able to secure better pricing through bulk purchasing, letting our funding go further.

The other category we have focuses on peer-led work. For example, we have one organization who is piloting peer-led misting stations. Residents within their housing organizations are receiving training and payment to set up and operate the misting stations on hot days. The misting stations will be open for others in the community to come and access. Funding from Vancity has made it possible to conduct peer-led work, as some organizations wouldn’t have had the funding to implement otherwise.  Additionally, paying peers means we are increasing community capacity as it reduces demand on frontline staff. 

Joint procurement and peer-led projects are strategies outlined in the Roadmap, so we are piloting and advancing the Roadmap recommendations already. We will see how it goes this summer, but I think this season’s work will be an important learning opportunity for future community climate resiliency work. 

What have you learned from working directly with Downtown Eastside organizations about their biggest climate-related concerns this summer?

I think there are two prominent issues that consistently come up in conversations with our partner organizations. The first is access to heat resilience supplies. We know this summer is going to be especially hot, so organizations want to be prepared ahead of time. Unfortunately, the City of Vancouver has discontinued their funding for its cooling kit program, so there will be fewer supplies available in the neighbourhood. 

We’ve also heard concerns about the current cost-recovery model used by the city and the province. Under the existing model, organizations generally cannot be reimbursed for emergency heat supplies unless those purchases are made after a heat emergency has been officially declared. This means that organizations cannot be reimbursed for stockpile supplies ahead of them. Supplies typically becomes more expensive and more difficult to obtain after a heat emergency is declared as well, making heat response even trickier. So what we’ve seen is that almost all of the organizations have put part of their project funds from VCF towards a stockpile of heat resilience supplies for distribution this summer. 

Second, I think there is also quite a bit of concern around organizational capacity. Concerns about capacity are not specific to the summer – we know our organizations are having to provide additional services to address climate-related challenges faced by residents year-round. However, these additional services peak in extreme weather, like during heat waves. During extreme heat, staff are often required to provide extra outreach, wellness checks, distribute supplies, and support residents experiencing heat-related health risks, all while maintaining their regular services. Knowing this summer is going to be extremely hot, I think the anticipation of the extreme heat is causing additional anticipatory concern and capacity strains.

Can you share an example of a strategy from the Roadmap that has already been put into practice? What happened and what did you learn?

One of the heat resilience projects was done in collaboration with the Learning Exchange at UBC, and with Hogan’s Alley Society. The Learning Exchange helps coordinate the Urban Ethnographic Field School, a 6-week course in the Department of Sociology at UBC. As part of this course, undergraduate students get paired with a Downtown Eastside organization to do community based work. We were able to work with six amazing UBC students to conduct focus groups with residents at Nora Hendrix Place, which is operated by Hogan’s Alley. 

The goal of these focus groups was to have residents look at existing heat resources from health authorities and other health organizations. A lot of the existing heat resources are non-specific and definitely not relevant to the Downtown Eastside context, so we wanted to understand what information was wanted by this community and how we could make more relevant resources for this neighbourhood. From the feedback of the residents, the UBC students were then tasked with creating new resources.

Through the focus groups, we were also able to learn more about how residents have previously dealt with hot weather and the types of information they’ve received about staying prepared and safe in hot weather. What surprised me from the focus groups was that many residents reported receiving no information on staying safe in hot weather. So, clearly there was a need for relevant resources for this community. 

The UBC students did a fantastic job with developing new resources which we brought back to the residents at Nora Hendrix Place. The residents were really excited to see them and a lot of them already wanted copies for their own use, so I think it was a very successful project. All of the posters are publicly available for use by any organizations and can be accessed here.

One of the Roadmap’s goals is to move from crisis response toward long-term resilience. What does that shift look like in practice within the Downtown Eastside?

There is a priority right now to try to keep people cool this summer, especially for those who are unhoused or living in very hot spaces without easy access to cool spaces. The joint procurement of emergency heat supplies is working to address this priority area.

However, if we were to look at this more from a long term standpoint, I think that the next piece will be to understand how we can keep people cool more sustainably. We need to invest in green infrastructure that provides adequate cooling, so there is less of a need for emergency cooling supplies. That would look like retrofitting buildings and housing units so that there is AC or creating more available community cooling spaces that people can readily go to. 

On top of this, we have heard organizations express the need for a permanent and physical ‘Climate Resilience Hub’ for the DTES that would help with long-term climate resilience. The vision is for the hub to act as a centralized resource for organizations to receive support related to climate change. For instance, the hub could provide updated climate information from the city and province during climate emergencies. Partners have also described the hub as a potential coordinate body for peer-led climate responses, a resource to support organizations in securing climate-related funding, and a shared space for stockpiling emergency supplies. Something like a Climate Resilience Hub, however, would require dedicated funding, space, and resources to operate.

The Climate Resilience Roadmap was developed through a community-engaged research process. How has research helped move the community from understanding climate risks to taking action, and what have you learned about the relationship between research and community organizing?

I think the community-engaged research process adopted throughout the Roadmap has been critical in moving from discussion to action. One of the strongest messages we heard from our partner organizations was that they didn’t want another report describing the climate-related challenges in the DTES, they wanted a process that would lead to tangible action and support them in becoming better prepared for climate events. This feedback has fundamentally shaped the direction of the project, leading to our heat resilience work this summer.

This role has also made me realize that research is not an end goal, but a useful tool, and we can use research to strengthen community organizing. When we have high quality research, such as detailed documentation of existing processes and strong evaluation of community projects, we are better able to advocate for funding and better positioned to influence policy. Generating the evidence to demonstrate the needs that exist and the impact of the solutions we are implementing is vital to making change, but we need community engaged approach to first help us identify the priorities.

As temperatures rise this summer, what gives you hope? What are you seeing in the community that suggests a more climate-resilient future is possible?

It’s been amazing to see the many other grassroot movements and other organizations stepping up within the community to  prepare for the heat. For instance, I’ve seen initiatives similar to the Roadmap work seeking to create cooling kits or open up more cooling spaces. The Coordinated Community Response Network (CCRN) that operates within the DTES is a great resource for sharing the variety of efforts from the neighbourhood. It’s really amazing to see how the community is already banding together.