This article is part of the Under the Lens series
Dual Crises: Housing in a Changing Climate
I recently spoke with Carmen Cavezza and Rita Robles of Houston-based CEER, the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience.
Cavezza is CEER’s senior climate justice community organizer, and works to connect people with resources, the main mission of CEER.
Robles is one of CEER’s climate ambassadors and is also a climate navigator, working to educate people and help them prepare. She lives in the Denver Harbor neighborhood on the northeast side of Houston, but also works in surrounding neighborhoods, including Second Ward, Fifth Ward, Settegast, Lakewood, Kashmere Gardens, Trinity Gardens, and Magnolia.
Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lara Heard: What does your organization do?
Carmen Cavezza: CEER—the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience—is 27 nonprofits that came together after Harvey… one of the major disasters that Houston experienced. They decided to work coordinating efforts because they found out that they were working in silos, focusing on disaster recovery post-Harvey.
[But] we are shifting that narrative and that type of work because we don’t want to be living in disaster mode all the time.
Our organization is focusing on three main campaigns. I’m going to speak mostly about my campaign because it’s the one that I’m more familiar [with]. We work in the intersection of how climate change is impacting health.
When we started working right before the pandemic, we had a plan. Then the pandemic hit and we had to pivot and find out, how can we continue advancing the work? That’s why this program came about, the ambassador program. We were able to recruit … 14 residents. They would train on how climate change was impacting health because during the pandemic, residents really didn’t want to hear about climate change, they were so focused on surviving the pandemic.
It was a lot of education that we brought to the community to really make them aware. We talk about climate change as the multiplier of all the issues that the community faces. We start talking about pollution, about lack of infrastructure for flooding, and [make] people see the connections, [and] how those things will get worse due to climate change.
With that, we did a [survey with a] little over 600 [responses]. We educate the community with the surveys that ambassadors helped us craft. We broke it down into three components: What was climate change? What are the consequences of climate change? And what are the possible solutions? From there, we picked up our policy solution based on the responses that we had, which was making the homes more climate-proof or weatherizing the homes.
People didn’t really tell us this; the way they explained it was that they want to live in a house [where] they feel safe during disasters, because… we have back to back to back disasters, and the hurricane season just started. That’s our campaign. We are focusing on continuing to educate about how climate change is impacting their lives. Part of the ambassador role is to continue reaching out to people, especially in disasters like this, getting resources, and connecting people to other team members who are focusing more on disaster preparedness.
What makes a climate ambassador? What is a climate navigator?
Cavezza: The climate ambassador is the resident that we train about all these connections of how climate change is impacting their health. We train them about pollution, we train them about air quality, we train them about water quality, and then we also provide some tools for them to be able to talk to representatives and how to engage community members.
That was basically the role back almost four years ago: to tap into their network and to help us connect and help us bring people into our spaces so we can reach out to more people. Fast forward, that role evolved because the nature of the work is never really a one-sided type of thing. We evolved this program into two, [navigators and ambassadors]. The navigator is a branch that came out of this program. The navigator is going to be just focusing on helping us recruit people for the home retrofit or the weatherization program.
The ambassador continues moving forward as the educator, as a connector with the community, as bringing resources to communities in need, and also helping connect people with others. Because like I said, we are not doing disaster preparedness or disaster recovery, but we have partners and they do that. Our role is, and the ambassador’s role is, connect those residents to those groups and coordinate that effort.
We don’t want these people to be suffering in silence. We build a relationship.
Rita Robles, a climate ambassador with CEER
Rita Robles: As Carmen was saying, [the ambassador] is a resident who is aware of the issues and things that are going on in the neighborhood. They trained us [on] the different types of air pollution, water pollution, contamination, and that sort of thing. They teach us how to know the difference between all of them. They teach us how to talk to the people in the neighborhood because a lot of people… were always living in survival mode or crisis mode. [They] have this barrier around them, and it’s very difficult to get to them, but yet they’re suffering.
We don’t want these people to be suffering in silence. We build a relationship. I have people that I met during the pandemic and have built relationships with them slowly since then. Anytime I talk to them, it’s always something. And their health, because they’re stressing all the time, all the crises and whatnot, their health is poor. Most of them have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, have bad hearts because of all the different stresses, and they had a heart attack or stroke, or are on dialysis, that sort of thing.
These things are very difficult for them. We try to lessen the stress on them by giving them resources. We have meetings, we have events, we invite them over, we do surveys, we do all kinds of things so that we can… teach them about what’s going on.
Then at the end, once they feel comfortable, [we] get them to come out and bring their family and their friends and their neighbors and so on so that we can build this community up and that they don’t feel so left out. They don’t feel so overlooked, because most of the time the people will say things like that: “We feel overlooked, we’re stressed out, we gave up calling in and doing this and that.” That’s what I do. I navigate through all these things and try to get them some kind of resolution or at least start on the path in that direction.
Why was it important to make the climate ambassador a paying position? How did that decision come about?
Cavezza: That also came after the pandemic. We were able to receive extra funds from Kresge, our funder, and we brought the committee to the table and [said], “They offered us this extra money, what do you think would be the best way to utilize this money?” A lot of our CEER members thought of, “Give it to the community. Let’s create this program.”
Because it was very difficult. We couldn’t meet in person. We couldn’t really reach out to the community the way we were accustomed to do. If we create this program and we offer a stipend, that will really help the community with this situation of the pandemic, bringing a little bit of income, and at the same time, we will be setting the precedent. Because that was very important for us, that if we are advocating for resources, we should be setting up a model of how CEER can distribute those resources, creating small positions.
Like Rita says, she’s a navigator, she’s an ambassador, but also she is getting extra hours because she had done such great work. Right now she’s acting as the coordinator for the navigator group, too.
Rita, how did you get involved with CEER initially? Did the fact that the position is paying affect your desire to participate?
Robles: It’s a funny situation. I’m part of the Denver Harbor Civic Club, and I’m the vice president there. When the pandemic started, we couldn’t meet anymore in person. A lot of people were like, “What can we do?”
I started doing Facebook Live. I put the videos on Facebook and just started asking questions. From there, people just started asking questions and trying to figure out what’s going on in our neighborhood, to try to become part of the neighborhood.
I was on Facebook one day, and somebody tagged Carmen, and then she contacted me. That’s how I started getting involved with CEER, advocating for my neighborhood and trying to get resources here because we’re an underserved neighborhood. A lot of the time, we’re bypassed. I just wanted to make sure that our community got the help that it needed.
I stayed with CEER because I feel very confident and I believe in their eight points that they’re trying to do for our neighborhood.
Cavezza: The eight-point plan is our policy. It’s a policy platform.
Robles: This is something that we need in our neighborhood as well, because people don’t put two and two together that these underserved neighborhoods are also suffering from climate injustice and climate inequality. Our area is mixed industrial and residential. In Houston, we don’t have any zoning laws. You can have a recycling plant right next to an elementary school. That just really makes it very hard.
We have the railroads around us, we have a lot of industrial companies, we have plastics and oil and gas companies. It’s just all around us, and they don’t realize that it’s making them sick, and it’s just creating their issues, making them worse. That’s why I [became] a climate ambassador and an advocate.
Cavezza: For a lot of the older ambassadors, it did make a difference when we told them this is going to be—not really like you are an employee here—but … a stipend, compensated for the hours that you put into this type of work, because like Rita said, they’re communities with a lot of needs.
[It] didn’t sit right with us, that communities that [are] very well off, they have the time to put up as a volunteer because their needs are met. When we went into lower-income communities, it’s just, how do you ask them to be volunteering some time when they have to work two or three jobs to meet their needs?
It’s something that we’ve been very vocal [about]. We’ve been pushing other organizations to do the same. Some of our own CEER members, but also the city. We push them to do stipends and also we advocate with the funders why this is necessary. We hope that from this we can create also full-time positions or part-time positions.
Rita, was the reimbursement of community members for their time something you thought about when you decided to start working with CEER?
Robles: It was very important because at the time I had to quit my job. I was doing the ride-share gig and I couldn’t work because my parents are vulnerable and I couldn’t just be out there. When CEER started to offer a stipend, I was like, “Oh, that’s good. It’ll help me be able to take care of myself and help a little bit to my family.” It just progressed from there.
What were some times when the climate ambassadors and navigators helped to inform CEER about what their communities needed in a way that you were able to respond to?
Cavezza: Everything that we do, we vetted with ambassadors. A lot of the time, when we’re going to do an initiative, we think, “OK, should we apply for this particular grant?” Then before getting the full proposal ready, we go back to the ambassadors and say, “Hey, we’re thinking about this type of work. Do you guys think that this is something that will benefit the community? Would you guys be interested to pursue this type of extra work?” That’s one of the things that they’ve been really, really helpful [with]: helping us [direct] the work CEER would like to do.
Then, the other one is also pushing the city and the county in the direction that the community feels is the best for them. For example, right now we are involved in the climate action plan for Harris County, and we were really pushing the city so hard to get more meaningful involvement with the community, but the previous mayor was not that open to that. We had an opportunity [to work] with the county, and when they learned about the ambassador program, they reached out to us.
We had a meeting and said, “Hey, they’re reaching out to us because they want us to do community engagement. What do you think about this opportunity? It would be a great chance to really inform what needs to be in the climate action plan so the county is responsive to the needs of the community.” The ambassadors decided that was really a good opportunity, and the county decided to work with us. With that, the community and ambassadors are informing the county climate action plan.
Rita, has working with CEER informed your own thoughts about climate change and how it interacts with the community that you’re working in?
Robles: Most definitely. All the pollution in our neighborhood—some of these things are making us sick, and it’s a factor, it’s a known cause. For instance, I didn’t know that air pollution, especially air particle pollution, can lead to diabetes, and I have diabetes.
I try to educate people and give out that information.
When people find out these things… they’re so surprised. They’re like, “I had no idea.” A lot of people have very simple lives. They don’t have much because that’s all they can afford and so they miss out on a lot of things. They miss out getting educated about these things. If they even listen to the news, they’re only getting some of it. They’re not getting it from both sides. We have to make sure that we give them correct information.
Are there any programs or projects that you worked on personally with CEER? I know that you did the survey. Is there any advocacy work?
Cavezza: Again, we have these back-to-back disasters. We needed to have an area where community can come in and feel safe and they can have also resources in that area. We’ve been advocating to convert [a particular] community center into a disaster shelter/resiliency hub. For that, we’ve been doing a lot of advocacy.
We brought them to Austin to talk about the need of transition into clean energy. Every time that there’s a disaster, the community center lost electricity because of the way it’s connected to the grid. We’ve been involved in the public utility commission, and the failure that they did during the Storm Uri.
We brought quite a few ambassadors to Austin and we talked to elected officials on the impact of their decisions at the ground level. How many people die frozen in bed—their ambassador at that time thought that she would die frozen in bed! That has been eye-opening for a lot of funders and elected officials. How the power of these residents, when you educate them, when you provide the tools, when you provide the information, when they see and they’re able to gather input from nonprofits and go tell the representatives things like, “This is not how you tell us it is. This is what happened. This is what the grid tells us. The policies that you put in place are not there to protect us.”
This is one of the big issues that we are advocating for, energy transition and energy democracy.
Robles: Yes. I went with them when we went to Austin and we spoke and did public comments at the state capital with the PUC. We’ve gone a few times to Austin for different capacities. We give them the voice of our neighborhood, of the residents. A lot of the time, our civil servants—our council members or our congressional representatives—they have everything in mind, but they’re not boots on the ground, so they don’t really have an idea exactly what’s going on.
We need to help all, not just some. We go and do public speaking and we make sure that those people’s voices are heard.
How would you like to see the program grow or change in the future?
Cavezza: The way that we would like this program to grow is creating opportunities for community. Right now, we don’t have the resources to do full-time positions, but we have [been able to] get Rita more responsibility, because she has done great work and also to compensate for those hours.
[In] this type of work right now, in disaster mode, you cannot really say, “OK, Rita, it’s going to be only 20 hours per week or 10 hours per week.” We go and we work sometimes 40, 50 hours when there’s a disaster.
Even though Rita is not an employee of CEER, we brought her in as a consultant type of thing so we can document the hours that she’s working and how we break down those hours. We also did that for my other coordinator of ambassadors.
We don’t have the funds and the capacity right now to create more positions, [but] that’s what we see this program moving forward, to really train more community residents, and get them connected there with another of our organizations or with us.
Robles: Yes, I’m hoping they hire me full-time. [laughs]
Cavezza: Also, we asked the residents what they would like to see. We know Kresge is coming to an end. Those funds for this particular ambassador program were also coming to an end. We asked them, “What [would you guys] like to do? Where do you see yourself in this space?” A lot of them [said], “We want to work with CEER. We want to continue doing this.”
It was so eye-opening, even for myself. To explore more about environmental justice and all the issues that the communities were facing. But it was difficult to talk to them about that when they were saying, “Carmen, let’s clean the streets, let’s clean the beaches. Look how dirty our communities are.” For me to tell them like, “But that’s not that important. We have cancer clusters here because of the pollution and we have this contaminant in the water.”
Later on, after the training, when they told me, “Oh, my God, Carmen, now I understand what you were saying. This is what is killing us.” When you give that knowledge and the residents start spreading that knowledge and they tell you, “We want to continue doing this, we want to continue working with CEER.” Even though we run out of money right now and we don’t get another grant, they are the ones telling us what this program would like to do. We listen.
Rita, you were telling me earlier, before we started recording, what you were doing today.
Robles: I was going to pick up solar battery generators so that I could distribute them to residents who still are without power. We were doing an honor system before. This time we have to do limited capacity to people with medical issues, elderly, that sort of thing. I’m going around picking up the batteries or the generators and giving them to the residents.
Then if their battery dies and they have no way to charge it, I pick that back up and charge it for them and then take it back or get them another one. I’m going out to people who cannot leave their home. For instance, they’re bedridden or they can’t walk, or they’re very elderly. They can’t go to the cooling centers, or they can’t go to the water and ice distribution. They don’t have a vehicle to sit in line, to go to the distribution.
I try to make sure that everybody—not just some, everybody—especially the most vulnerable people, are getting assistance, whether it’s food, water, and ice, generators. Sometimes we give out gift cards. It just depends.
It’s whatever we have and what we can do. That’s what I do. I go to people’s houses. They come to my house. I go to events. We take surveys. We do all kinds of stuff. I can’t even think about it because it’s so much, and so many people just, are doing without, and I just feel like I need to do more. That’s what I try to do. I just try to do more every day.
Is there anything you wanted to add that we didn’t talk about, or anything you thought was important to share?
Robles: This is something that I keep saying: The people that are in charge, they’re just not understanding. It’s great that we have these resources out there so that people can go pick up water and ice and all that, [but] there’s a huge gap that is leaving out the most vulnerable… I consider myself blessed that I have a home, a roof over my head, a vehicle, food, and everything.
But there’s people that every day is a struggle. It’s a struggle for them. We’re just trying to make sure that we help them as best as we can. Make [the people in charge] understand that … these are the ones that are hurting the most, and that we don’t want to lose them. They’re just as important as anybody else.
Cavezza: I would like to … bring attention [to] why it’s important to fund this type of work. Right now we see a little bit more opportunities. Four years ago, there were very little.
Recognizing the importance of the work that groups like CEER do on the ground and the impact that we have to the community… sometimes it’s very difficult to measure our impact. When I talked to a communication expert, [they asked] how we measure our work.
I say, “How do we measure success?” Like, “How do you measure hope?” Because in situations like this, this is what we offer people. Hope that they’re not going to be alone. That Rita’s going to bring a battery. That CEER is going to contact the representatives and we’re going to be dropping water, or that we’re going to be calling the representatives regarding unsafe situations in the neighborhood. How do you measure that? In the metrics it’s very difficult sometimes to come up with how we measure success.
But the more the funders fund this type of work, the more changes we can really bring to the communities.
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