Did you know that some of our most disadvantaged Wisconsinites pay a high percentage of their income for their utility bills just to have heat and keep the lights on?
While some other Wisconsin residents experience burdens in paying their energy bills, a new analysis has found that in some areas of Milwaukee, Black, Hispanic, and Latinx households may pay over 10% of their income for utilities, or risk getting their power shut off. For households that are already among the most disenfranchised, the pandemic has taken an added health and economic toll, and now many face mounting utility bills where they must make a choice between power and other essentials such as food or medicine. Many of these households are the same ones that experience the most pollution from our current reliance on fossil fuels.
Today, we released an analysis with partners at Alliance for Climate Education, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC), Citizen Action of Wisconsin - North Side Rising Co-op, the Sierra Club, and Voces de la Frontera about energy burden in Milwaukee. The news isn’t good- neighborhoods, especially those tied to historic redlining, that have mostly Black-majority and Latinx/Hispanic-majority households suffer from high energy burden, sometimes even double the energy burden of neighborhoods with white-majority households. Our analysis, Energy Burden in Milwaukee: Study Reveals Major Disparities & Links to Redlined Areas, (Español: Carga económica de energía en Milwaukee: el estudio revela las principales disparidades y vínculos con las áreas marcadas como de alto riesgo crediticio) found that households in well-off white neighborhoods may have an average energy burden of 1% or less, versus the 7 - 10% (or higher) many in predominantly Black, Hispanic or Latinx neighborhoods pay.
The legacy of racist housing policies, and job and income discrimination, contributes to more families of color living in inefficient homes and having higher energy costs than white families, which forces these families to make trade offs between utility payments and other necessities and to navigate even more cumbersome and disenfranchising system hurdles. Meanwhile, energy efficiency improvements to alleviate the cost burdens are largely inaccessible to low-income families, and awareness of programs is often low.
The high energy use contributes to carbon emissions, climate change, and more pollution from burning fossil fuels to create electricity. Communities of color disproportionately suffer the impacts of these pollution and climate impacts.
The analysis demonstrated how dire this situation is. This needs to be immediately addressed. If addressed the right way, we can make sure we provide resources (like programs that fund weatherization programs in the impacted neighborhoods) that will also create jobs, limited air, and climate pollution, and create better places to live. Watch the report release here or read the press release here.
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