“Are we Abating the Humans or Abating the Hazard?”: Workers’ Emotional Pain from Homeless Encampment Displacement Events

Urban Affairs Review · 2026-01-07

With unsheltered homelessness on the rise across U.S. urban landscapes, many municipalities with and without emergency shelter capacity implement periodic and/or targeted encampment displacements, where law enforcement, social services, health department officials, and environmental remediation specialists forcibly remove people experiencing unsheltered homelessness from encampments. Research demonstrates that abatements impact the health and wellbeing of encampment occupants; however, little is understood about the social, emotional, and community ramifications of displacements on folks who witness and/or participate in these events. To understand these broader impacts, interviews with professionals and community members (n=12) who are involved in various aspects of encampment displacement revealed participant emotional responses ranging from empathy to anger, demonstrating the complex and painful nature of displacement practices and policies. Participants justified their continuing abatement work and proposed alternative approaches to these incredibly complex issues. Displacements harm everyone involved, highlighting the trauma involved and underscoring the importance of honoring their experiences.

Furnace Air Filter Replacement Practices and Implications for Indoor Air Quality: A Pilot Study

Atmosphere · 2025-11-13

Utah typically experiences 18 days with high fine particulate matter (PM2.5) levels exceeding the National Ambient Air Quality Standards per year. In August of 2022, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall convened an Indoor Air Quality Summit, during which experts in healthcare, industrial hygiene, and atmospheric science, among others, expressed the need to prioritize indoor air quality interventions more within the state. We conducted a furnace filter exchange pilot project that involved 11 families in Salt Lake City’s Westside. These families completed a survey regarding air quality-related concerns while researchers took air quality measurements—both inside and outside the residence. The goals of this pilot study were to gather data about the participants’ indoor and outdoor air quality perceptions, how frequently they changed their home air filters, and any barriers they experienced. In addition, this study developed a proof of concept demonstrating collecting preliminary indoor and outdoor air quality data and furnace filter deposition information alongside the survey. The survey results were limited by a small sample size (11 participants); however, among those sampled we found that residents are acutely concerned about outdoor air quality but are less worried about indoor air quality. We measured substantially lower indoor PM2.5 levels compared to ambient air and found a wide range of filter replacement times from those less than a month to over two years. Our research team learned not only about indoor air quality conditions and resident perceptions, but also about the needs of community members including access to filters, health education, and the need to allow more time to build trust between researchers and residents.

Student responses to the climate crisis: managing distress and exploring support systems

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education · 2025-10-07 · 4 citations

Purpose This study explored how undergraduate students familiar with the climate crisis navigate climate-specific challenges in their personal lives, an area where knowledge is extremely inadequate. Design/methodology/approach The authors examined a broad range of adaptive (i.e. helpful) and maladaptive (i.e. unhelpful) strategies that students employ to manage their emotions concerning climate change, as well as resources that could help them adjust to the climate crisis. Quantitative and qualitative survey data were collected. Findings Students used various adaptive strategies to manage their emotions, including recreation, self-care, eco-friendly behaviors (such as changing habits, advocacy and volunteerism), personal and professional social support and actively seeking knowledge and positivity to empower themselves while participating in climate action. Furthermore, students suggested that having more professionally trained social support and resources for engaging in sustainable action would better help them adapt to the challenges posed by climate change. Gaining insights into effective methods for regulating climate impact can facilitate preventative and treatment strategies to cope with significant climate distress in young people. Practical implications The authors hope that the current lessons can inform pedagogy and help develop evidence-based mental health resources that equip current and future generations to effectively adapt to and mitigate the climate crisis. Originality/value The current findings shed light on eclectic approaches that university students adopt to manage their emotional responses to climate distress. They highlight that most students feel a dearth of resources available to them to effectively manage their personal climate distress and contribute to sustainability.

Understanding Environmental and Food (In)justice through Community-based Research

2024-12-19

Despite Sacramento’s recognition as “America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital,” food insecurity is a persistent issue across the region with nearly one in six residents across the four-county region experiencing food insecurity. Urban agriculture is a promising strategy to alleviate food insecurity by increasing the availability of fresh food in urban centers, which in turn can promote health equity, community resiliency, and food justice. Previous research indicates that in urban areas, including Sacramento, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) frequently report the highest levels of interest in urban agriculture, yet due to systemic barriers, experience the lowest levels of access to community gardens. In this chapter, we explore insights from interviews with Sacramento community members working in the field of urban agriculture and food justice to better understand localized intersections between food equity, urban agriculture, and environmental justice. We explore community visions for localized food sovereignty. Finally, we discuss how educational initiatives can serve as a conduit through which young people can work with community leaders and university partners to co-construct solutions to food and environmental injustices in their own communities, describing the Growing Educational Pathways Through Food Sovereignty (GEPFS) project.

Firewood ABM from The impacts of climate change, energy policy and traditional ecological practices on future firewood availability for Diné (Navajo) People

Figshare · 2023-01-01

Netlogo file containing code to run the ABM.

Firewood ABM Experiment data from The impacts of climate change, energy policy and traditional ecological practices on future firewood availability for Diné (Navajo) People

Figshare · 2023-01-01

A data table containing outputs from the ABM experiment. All data needed to produce results reported in the paper is contained here.

The impacts of climate change, energy policy and traditional ecological practices on future firewood availability for Diné (Navajo) People

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2023 · 9 citations

• Environmental resource management
• Natural resource economics
• Agroforestry

Local-scale human-environment relationships are fundamental to energy sovereignty, and in many contexts, Indigenous ecological knowledge (IEK) is integral to such relationships. For example, Tribal leaders in southwestern USA identify firewood harvested from local woodlands as vital. For Diné people, firewood is central to cultural and physical survival and offers a reliable fuel for energy embedded in local ecological systems. However, there are two acute problems: first, climate change-induced drought will diminish local sources of firewood; second, policies aimed at reducing reliance on greenhouse-gas-emitting energy sources may limit alternatives like coal for home use, thereby increasing firewood demand to unsustainable levels. We develop an agent-based model trained with ecological and community-generated ethnographic data to assess the future of firewood availability under varying climate, demand and IEK scenarios. We find that the long-term sustainability of Indigenous firewood harvesting is maximized under low-emissions and low-to-moderate demand scenarios when harvesters adhere to IEK guidance. Results show how Indigenous ecological practices and resulting ecological legacies maintain resilient socio-environmental systems. Insights offered focus on creating energy equity for Indigenous people and broad lessons about how Indigenous knowledge is integral for adapting to climate change. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture'.

Supplementary figures and code from The impacts of climate change, energy policy and traditional ecological practices on future firewood availability for Diné (Navajo) People

Figshare · 2023-01-01

A knitted R Markdown document that provides code to generate the final summary figure in the paper as well as two supplementary figures.

Promoting Food Systems Paradigm Shifts through Critical Reflexivity: Exploring Interviews as Intervention

Social Sciences · 2023-05-04 · 1 citations

This article highlights the transformative power of community-engaged research for food sovereignty through an examination of reflexive interviewing and knowledge co-production with community partners. Initially, we connected with an urban Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm to explore farmers’ concerns regarding their export of food from marginalized areas of the city to predominantly affluent neighborhoods. Our response to confirmatory data was to explore CSA members’ interest in subsidizing shares for low-income residents. However, continued fieldwork revealed that similar charity-based approaches implemented by other food-access advocates were perhaps underutilized, given their basis in food security rather than more complex community-driven food sovereignty. Recognizing the need to understand the broader relationship between urban agriculture and food equity in SLC, we set out to research how university scholars can work with community partners and food advocates to advance food justice and sovereignty. Through dialogic methods, we explore how critical reflexivity can be embedded in research protocols such that researchers and interviewees reflect on their own biases, thus shifting the outcomes and research processes. Through a retrospective review of data collection, we highlight interactional strategies to promote critical reflexivity before proposing an interview framework that prompts paradigm shifts towards food sovereignty.

Investigating critical community engaged pedagogies for transformative environmental justice education

Environmental Education Research · 2022 · 30 citations

• Sociology
• Sociology
• Pedagogy

Effective environmental justice education poses unique challenges to both educators and students. For students, this pursuit is cognitively challenging at best and emotionally paralyzing at worst. It requires deconstruction of culturally produced narratives that uphold privilege, conceal complicity, and promote individual-level response to systemic problems. In this paper, we explore critical approaches to pedagogy, place, and community engaged learning, as well as their specific resonance with the challenges inherent in environmental justice education. We then thematically analyze student responses to two critically oriented community-engaged learning projects. Student experiences proved transformative as students came to see the structural elements that maintain environmental racism more clearly, demonstrated systems thinking, expressed feelings of agency, and articulated their own positionalities in thoughtful and constructive ways. From these data, we offer critical community-engaged pedagogy as transformative practice for environmental justice education.