Background
Energy assistance programs are designed to assist low-income families and vulnerable communities with their energy needs. Low-income families (at or below 80% of the area median income) face unique challenges in paying for energy and therefore require unique assistance. On average, low-income households spend 7.2% of their income on utilities, more than three times the 2.3% spent by higher-income households. This high cost is largely a result of living in older and less-efficient homes. Energy assistance programs can help low-income families by improving the efficiency of their homes as well as offering direct assistance in paying for energy bills. However, these programs are made less effective because of several barriers to enrollment, including lack of clear information in the necessary languages and forms of media and poor outreach in target communities. Our project was targeted at understanding these programs and their benefits and limitations within the communities of East Palo Alto and Belle Haven, and creating resources to improve outreach in these areas.
Our project had three main objectives related to energy assistance programs in the nearby communities of East Palo Alto and Belle Haven:
Our project had three main objectives related to energy assistance programs in the nearby communities of East Palo Alto and Belle Haven:
- Understand the benefits, effectiveness and limitations of these programs
- Propose changes to these programs in order to improve their effectiveness
- Create and test prototype materials for effective program outreach in these communities
The communities
Based on statistics from the 2010 U.S. Census, Belle Haven contains 5,970 residents (City of Menlo Park, 2013) and East Palo Alto contains 28,155 residents. Both communities have relatively large Hispanic and Latinx populations, as these groups make up 64.5% of East Palo Alto and 68.6% of Belle Haven. The African American (16.7% of East Palo Alto and 17.9% of Belle Haven) and Pacific Islander (7.5% of East Palo Alto and 5.5% of Belle Haven) communities are also relatively large in both areas.
Both neighborhoods are rich in linguistic diversity, an important aspect to consider when attempting to perform outreach in these communities. Almost 68% of Belle Haven residents and 72.6% of East Palo Alto residents over age 5 speak a language other than English at home, and 60% of Belle Haven residents speak Spanish at home. Non-English outreach is clearly important in the community, as 15.6% of Belle Haven households do not include anyone over the age of 14 who speaks English “very well”.
Only 36.9% of homes in East Palo Alto are owner-occupied, while the same is true of 52.4% of Belle Haven homes. The median income in Belle Haven is $49,228 compared to $52,716 in East Palo Alto and $107,860 in Menlo Park as a whole, which contains Belle Haven. Approximately 14% of households in Belle Haven and 16.6% of households in East Palo Alto fall under the $15,000 annual income poverty line.
Both neighborhoods are rich in linguistic diversity, an important aspect to consider when attempting to perform outreach in these communities. Almost 68% of Belle Haven residents and 72.6% of East Palo Alto residents over age 5 speak a language other than English at home, and 60% of Belle Haven residents speak Spanish at home. Non-English outreach is clearly important in the community, as 15.6% of Belle Haven households do not include anyone over the age of 14 who speaks English “very well”.
Only 36.9% of homes in East Palo Alto are owner-occupied, while the same is true of 52.4% of Belle Haven homes. The median income in Belle Haven is $49,228 compared to $52,716 in East Palo Alto and $107,860 in Menlo Park as a whole, which contains Belle Haven. Approximately 14% of households in Belle Haven and 16.6% of households in East Palo Alto fall under the $15,000 annual income poverty line.
Fieldwork
We focused our community engagement efforts around in-person interactions. During the initial phases of the project, we surveyed and interviewed community members about their general awareness of available energy programs. During the prototyping phase, we returned to these community spaces such as schools and parks to listen to residents’ feedback; we asked them to guide us through their thinking process as they read through the flyer. During the final phase of the project, we returned to the Ravenswood School District where we had been surveying and prototyping to ask for district-wide distribution of the flyer.
We first wrote a short survey in English and Spanish to gauge awareness about energy programs in Belle Haven and East Palo Alto. We distributed these surveys at the Belle Haven Public Library (October 28), the Menlo Park Facebook Farmers’ Market (October 29), and Belle Haven Elementary School (November 4). Reflecting upon the surveying experience as a group, we realized that the survey served as a probe for longer, in-depth, more personalized conversations about the surveyor’s background and needs. Surveyors told us that they are often tenants, without much say on the house infrastructure; many of them pay a flat monthly rental fee and cannot verify to energy programs that they themselves pay for the utilities since the bills are in the landlord’s name. Some were worried about being scammed while others were confused about the myriad of programs. The information available on these programs, if not elusive, was complicated to digest.
While prototyping, our team soon learned the challenges low-income families face when accessing the information about energy programs that is available online. First, the compiled list of program are found in dense, text-heavy reports that a family having language and time constraints cannot realistically access. Second, the information written on websites sometimes does not have the most up-to-date information; some programs, like the Weatherization Assistance Program, are described differently at the state and local level. As a result, we reached out to energy program administrators for clarification. These emails and phone calls prompted interest amongst some of them to follow up on our project with Menlo Spark as well as reach out to Menlo Spark.
We returned to Belle Haven Elementary School multiple times (November 15, 16 and 29) and also went to Beechwood Elementary and Kelly Park (November 29) to present various renditions of a flyer that would inform families about their eligibility for eight local energy cost-saving programs. These in-person conversations allowed us to create more effective flyers, the final results of which are shown below.
We first wrote a short survey in English and Spanish to gauge awareness about energy programs in Belle Haven and East Palo Alto. We distributed these surveys at the Belle Haven Public Library (October 28), the Menlo Park Facebook Farmers’ Market (October 29), and Belle Haven Elementary School (November 4). Reflecting upon the surveying experience as a group, we realized that the survey served as a probe for longer, in-depth, more personalized conversations about the surveyor’s background and needs. Surveyors told us that they are often tenants, without much say on the house infrastructure; many of them pay a flat monthly rental fee and cannot verify to energy programs that they themselves pay for the utilities since the bills are in the landlord’s name. Some were worried about being scammed while others were confused about the myriad of programs. The information available on these programs, if not elusive, was complicated to digest.
While prototyping, our team soon learned the challenges low-income families face when accessing the information about energy programs that is available online. First, the compiled list of program are found in dense, text-heavy reports that a family having language and time constraints cannot realistically access. Second, the information written on websites sometimes does not have the most up-to-date information; some programs, like the Weatherization Assistance Program, are described differently at the state and local level. As a result, we reached out to energy program administrators for clarification. These emails and phone calls prompted interest amongst some of them to follow up on our project with Menlo Spark as well as reach out to Menlo Spark.
We returned to Belle Haven Elementary School multiple times (November 15, 16 and 29) and also went to Beechwood Elementary and Kelly Park (November 29) to present various renditions of a flyer that would inform families about their eligibility for eight local energy cost-saving programs. These in-person conversations allowed us to create more effective flyers, the final results of which are shown below.
Findings
Some of the main barriers to uptake in the available energy efficiency and assistance programs available to the residents of East Palo Alto and Belle Haven have been:
- Lack of knowledge of the available programs and their qualification requirements
- Lack of trust that programs are legitimate and run by responsible organizations that won’t attempt to scam program recipients
- Split incentive problem in which utility-paying renters do not have power to make infrastructural improvements, while landlords do not have incentive to reduce home energy consumption
- Concerns that programs will cost money despite being no-cost in reality
Final Prototype
Our final prototype consisted of a bilingual flyer with principle energy assistance and weatherization program details that clearly funnels the reader towards the most applicable programs given their housing and income situation. A PDF version of the flyer can be downloaded by clicking on either of the images below. We are working to distribute this flyer through the Ravenswood School District in order to place this information in the hands of community members.
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human cities expo
We presented our project at the 2016 Human Cities Expo at Stanford. Pictured below is the team, consisting from left to right of Bianca Draud, Ryan Loomis, Aitran Doan, Isaiah Smith and Robert Young.
Photo Gallery
