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It’s the hottest year ever…again. Heat-related deaths have been spiking year over year. As Deceleration wrote recently, there were nearly 600 heat-related deaths in Texas last year. In Bexar County, 12 local residents died from the heat that same year, according to data released to the Texas Tribune. Border counties have seen hundreds die from the heat since 2010, according to data released to Deceleration. So how are cities responding?
What heat emergency hearings have been convened, let’s say, in San Antonio, Texas? Here we’re building a baseball field downtown and throwing possibly thousands of people from their homes to do it.
Aside from the deep injustice of such measures, displacement is particularly cruel as we know (thanks to communities that track heat deaths, such as in Maricopa County, Arizona) that it is those without homes who are most at risk of dying from heat exposure. Among the nearly 650 Maricopa County deaths that were logged in 2023, 75 percent of them occurred outdoors. And 45 percent were unsheltered individuals with limited access to cooling. Research by now Deceleration Executive Editor Marisol Cortez from several years ago shows that, even with $2,500 relocation assistance, forced evictions can be deadly. Evictions often force multiple moves, as Cortez explains, costing far more than that meager moving allowance.
Currently, residents of nearly 400 units at the Soap Factory in downtown San Antonio are fighting a slide toward displacement and demolition of their units. Meanwhile, a few blocks away, residents of roughly 70 units at the Robert E. Lee Apartments are likewise being targeted. For this new Deceleration Podcast, Episode 33, we make room for the residents of the Robert E. Lee Apartments to describe their experiences of downtown living and gathering efforts to head off forced dislocation.
There are lessons here for working-class residents everywhere who have ever been targeted for the Next Big Thing, even as the current big thing actually requiring our full attention—that is, our climate unraveling—goes largely unaddressed in local communities.
Listen to Deceleration Podcast #33:
Know Your Rights Meeting, October 29
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) is hosting a free in-person workshop in downtown San Antonio with legal experts who will help explain basic renters rights and laws. Spanish services will be available. Staff will be available during and after the presentation.
What Displacement Does
Vecinos de Mission Trails Report: Making Displacement Visible: A Case Study Analysis of the ‘Mission Trail of Tears’
Who Heat Kills
Maricopa County 2023 Heat Deaths Report
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San Antonio Resources
Coalition for Tenant Justice
Texas Organizing Project
Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid
Pueblo Over Profit
Oppressed Revolutionaries for Worker Power