Storms drenched Cincinnati this spring, flooding the Ohio River and downing power lines. As rain fell on the night of April 2, homes throughout Avondale went dark.
When Community Council Vice President Jennifer Foster heard The Redding, a 9-story apartment building, was one of the places without power, she sprung into action.
“I looked for flashlights, [and to] see what else I could bring,” Foster said. “It's getting dark, so [I'm] like, ‘Okay, you've got to hurry up.’ ”
When Foster got there, she saw the lobby packed with residents in wheelchairs who couldn't get back to their apartments without the elevator.
She thought about the networks of people and organizations she knew who could help provide food, electricity and places to sleep for the night.
But, Foster kept running up against a problem.
“Who could hold that capacity?” Foster said. “It's best for us to create that space that we could hold that amount of many people because most places won't be able to hold that many people at one time.”
Power outages like this are happening more frequently throughout the U.S. as climate change intensifies extreme weather and strains the electric grid, according to Climate Central.
That’s why Foster and a team including the city of Cincinnati and the Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio have spent the past few months planning to create a resilience hub for the community.
What is a resilience hub?
Resilience hubs are places for communities to gather and get support during emergencies and everyday life.
Nikki Vandivort is a FUSE Executive Fellow working in Cincinnati’s Office of Environment and Sustainability. She likens the hubs to warming or cooling centers that can operate year-round.
The city plans to develop them as part of its response to climate change, outlined in the 2023 Green Cincinnati Plan.
“We recognize that climate change leads to more frequent and more severe disruptions. Anyone who is already facing issues with their stability — their housing stability, their access to food — if they face a disruption, it could be harder for them to come back from that,” Vandivort said.
She says resilience hubs can help.
The Urban League starts planning
Vandivort says the Urban League is already doing resilience-related work.
People go to the League's Reading Road office daily for financial empowerment classes, career training and food distributions. Now, it's planning to improve its building’s energy systems so it can be a place for people to get help during emergencies, too.
The Urban League, city, Avondale Resilience Hub Advisory Committee, and Groundwork Ohio River Valley conducted a needs survey and energy audit to determine how to do that.
Urban League Chief Operating Officer Jerome Wright says they’re looking into adding solar panels and battery storage to their site.
“If [there] is a power outage for a couple of days, we could be that place where people can come and charge their phones and cool off and be a safe place where they can communicate to families elsewhere,” Wright said.
A national trend
Across the country, communities are establishing resilience hubs like this. They’re putting them to use as climate change intensifies hazards like storms and floods and heatwaves.
In pictures, the Northside Community Center in Ann Arbor looks like a typical building. It has tan siding and sits between houses, a school and a park. Community Action Network Executive Director Derrick Miller says, during the day, it serves as one of the largest food distribution sites in Washtenaw County, Michigan.
“We do have a variety of other groups that use that space. There's a community garden as well, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Toastmasters, etc.,” Miller said.
The addition of a solar array and 20 kilowatts of battery storage has allowed the community to use the center during crises, too, like a recent ice storm.
“We ended up setting up an overnight warming shelter at that location because we were able to keep the power on and keeping systems going, whereas, pretty much nobody, unless you had batteries or generators, was having power during that time,” Miller said.
Turning the center into a resilience hub was pricey, Miller says. It cost the nonprofit approximately $60,000.
“It's like, yeah, but it's also extremely expensive if you don't have it and a crisis happens,” Miller said.
He hopes more communities make similar plans to address the effects of climate change and keep people safe.
In Cincinnati, the Urban League may be one of the first resilience hubs, but likely won't be the last. Other community organizations are reaching out to the city to learn more about them.
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