A new initiative, Weatherization First, launched a few months ago in Centre County, helps low-income households to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and to save money in the process.
A project organized under the auspices of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light, WF aligns closely with the parent organization’s mission to encourage communities of faith to respond directly to the moral challenge that climate change poses for all of us.
WF geared up for action quickly, asking the congregations interested in WF work to put out a call for volunteers to staff weatherization work teams. Shortly after its launch in mid-2013, the project had enlisted teams from seven Centre County congregations as well as others formed by groups of concerned citizen to work with low-income residents to weatherize their homes.
Three local non-profit organizations — Interfaith Human Services, Housing Transitions, and Central PA Community Action — helped WF to identify appropriate residences for weatherization and to carry out basic energy audits and professional assessments of the homes before work began.
One of the first Centre County communities of faith to join the WF effort was Faith United Church of Christ, located on College Avenue in State College. A pillar of the Faith UCC vision is the denomination’s environmental ministry dedicated to “wonder, reverence, love, and respect for all of God’s creation.” Our need to care for creation, the Faith UCC vision says, calls for us to repair the damage done by our poor human choices — “vanishing and degraded farmland, air unfit to breathe and water unfit to drink, unsustainable energy processes and consumption, and the perilous and immediate and long-term worldwide consequences of global warming and climate change.”
It is not surprising that, with this ambitious environmental vision, Faith UCC, under the leadership of Seann Reed, a hydrologist, quickly enlisted 15 to 20 volunteers willing to take part in WF work teams. From October 2013 to January 2014, these work teams have carried out weatherization projects in five Centre County homes.
A participant in one of the teams, Bob Biber, a retired energy-industry executive describes himself as a self-taught handyman, who has picked up carpentry skills in his retirement years. Despite the limited resources and time available to the volunteers, Biber says he’s satisfied with the environmental upgrades the teams were able to offer to local residents.
Most of the upgrades were relatively simple — insulating and weather-stripping drafty doors and windows, and caulking. Since all of Faith UCC’s projects involved mobile homes, often in bad repair, at times the volunteers had to undertake more ambitious work.
In one home, the team had to repair a large hole in the floor. Another time the volunteers had to frame and refit doors and reinforce an outdoor structure that housed the home’s water heater.
Pastor Monica Dawkins-Smith of Faith UCC also supported the WF program by making the church fellowship hall available as a place for building indoor storm windows. Penn State students from the college chapter of Interfaith Power and Light carried out three work sessions this spring creating almost 40 inexpensive wood and plastic indoor storm windows that can make a big difference in energy savings.
Biber said that the residents were grateful for the upgrades that will not only make their homes more energy efficient, but will save them money on their utility bills. One resident told the work teams that she noticed an improvement almost immediately in her comfort level and in her ability to regulate the temperature in her home.
Another told the team that she was proud of the letter she received from her utility company after the upgrades telling her that her utility bill was the lowest in the neighborhood. For their part the UCC teams were happy to make a difference in the lives of Centre County residents, many of whom seemed to have fallen through society’s cracks and remained invisible to most of the area’s middle-class residents.
There is no question that Weatherization First hopes to address an unmet need in Centre County. At a time when quality affordable housing is in short supply and when federal subsidies for weatherizing low-income housing are declining, WF offers a small-scale local response to the global problem of climate change. There is still much work to be done. Local non-profit Central PA Community Action has a backlog of over 900 low-income households in Centre and Clearfield counties, all in need of weatherizing.
To learn more about local weatherizing efforts, visit www.paipl.org.
