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Not AvailableLow-income households bear a disproportionate share of the health and financial consequences of poor housing and energy insecurity, and these burdens intensify during extreme weather events. Comparatively little is known about how the professionals who seek to address these needs through administering housing, energy, and health programs understand and manage these intersecting challenges. This study asks how service providers working with low-income communities perceive and respond to the relationships among housing conditions, energy insecurity, and health, and what their accounts reveal about the institutional arrangements through which assistance is delivered. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 21 service providers working across housing, energy access, public health, and community services in Pennsylvania, an inductive analysis identified housing disrepair, energy insecurity, health vulnerability, administrative burden, and uneven access to assistance as recurring themes. We interpret these themes through three connected concepts: many of the dwellings providers encounter operate as household-level “sick buildings,” environments of chronic exposure in which dampness, mold, poor ventilation, and thermal inefficiency gradually erode health; the households they serve experience a condition of housing-energy precarity, in which constrained incomes, insecure tenure, and unaffordable utilities narrow the options for staying safe and well; and providers themselves practice a form of institutional bricolage, piecing together fragmented programs, funding streams, and eligibility systems to assemble workable support. Findings are presented as service providers’ professional perspectives rather than direct accounts of residents’ lived experience. The study repositions the resilience of low-income housing as an institutional accomplishment as much as a property of buildings. It draws out implications for renter-inclusive retrofit programs, eligibility simplification, and integrated housing–health–energy referral systems.
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This content will become publicly available on June 1, 2027
Exploring energy insecurity and health impacts among low-income households in Pennsylvania
Abstract This study presents exploratory evidence on energy insecurity, heating and cooling hardships, and related self-reported health impacts among low-income household respondents in Pennsylvania. It responds to community members’ interest in work that concurrently explores resilience to extreme weather events from both an engineering and a non-engineering lens. Insights gathered through the community engagement studio and focus group discussions identified energy insecurity as a viable entry point for examining resilience through a systems-thinking lens. We collected and analyzed survey responses from 1,006 participants living in Pennsylvania and benchmarked key indicators against the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) statewide estimates. Our findings indicate that energy insecurity is a key aspect of resilience to extreme weather events that requires an exploration of a broader set of interacting constraints, including poor building envelope performance, aging or inefficient systems, deferred maintenance, limited repair pathways, and barriers to accessing support. Reducing vulnerability, therefore, requires coordinated action across these multiple factors rather than a single intervention alone. These results point to the need for resilience strategies developed across disciplines and sectors that concurrently address household conditions and program access. Our findings have identified health challenges that can help strengthen the case for pre-disaster investments in partnership with the health sector. We have also generated additional qualitative data through semi-structured interviews of 20 professionals who work closely with low-income communities in areas such as housing, energy access, public health, and community services. The results are currently being validated and will be included in a subsequent publication.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2135713
- PAR ID:
- 10686142
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environment Systems and Decisions
- Volume:
- 46
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2194-5403
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Extreme weather events, Resilience, Low-income housing, Energy security, Heating and cooling, Health impacts
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Associated Dataset(s):
- View Associated Dataset(s) >>
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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