It is New England; it is summer; and it has been hot. Really hot.

For many people living in low-income urban neighborhoods with a high proportion of people of color, it is way hotter than it is for the people, say, of rural South Kingstown or Tiverton.

In fact, there is a moniker for extra-hot city locations found in neighborhoods such as Olneyville, South Providence, Smith Hill, parts of Pawtucket, and other pavement-heavy communities: “urban heat islands.” Urban heat islands occur in places with lots of buildings and other impervious surfaces and fewer trees and green spaces. Closely packed buildings block the movement of cooling breezes. Buildings and asphalt absorb heat. This cranks up the heat during the day and prevents it from dissipating easily at night.

Heat waves, which are becoming more frequent, hotter, and more deadly across the globe, are particularly cruel to homeless people in cities. Many spend their days on the streets and their nights in off-the-grid campgrounds in wooded lots or in other outdoor hideaways. For housing-deprived people, daytime relief can happen at various public cooling centers, including many public libraries, and day centers like the one operated at 1139 Main St. in Pawtucket by OpenDoors, a Providence-based nonprofit. A daily challenge can be just getting water to drink.

Caroline Hoffman, a public health specialist in the Rhode Island Department of Health, co-authored a 2021 paper that stated: “Climate change acts as a risk multiplier, meaning vulnerable populations bear a disproportionate burden of its effects.”

A slow-growing but useful tool to relieve urban heat is more trees. Tree cover, which has been mapped across the state, is scantier in urban neighborhoods with heat islands. The nonprofit Groundwork Rhode Island is conducting a multiyear project to plant trees in hot city neighborhoods.

Urban heat islands are closely linked to historic racial discrimination in housing. Maps showing heat islands in Rhode Island cities conform closely to maps of historic redlined neighborhoods. Groundwork Rhode Island explained: the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, created in 1933, created maps designating neighborhoods “safe” or “risky” for lending purposes. The “riskiest” neighborhoods — outlined in red on maps — contained poorer-quality buildings and residents of color. Residents in redlined areas couldn’t receive loans to buy houses in their neighborhoods. They were also prevented from buying houses in green-lined areas — rated safer and also majority white. This federal policy was designed to encourage white homeownership and reinforce existing boundaries of segregation in American cities.

A newer way of describing these neighborhoods is “environmental justice communities.” This refers to places that have an excessive burden of environmental hazards and a reduced quality of life compared to other communities. Examples include neighborhoods near freeways and factories or large refineries; places with high electricity bills; and places with poor public transit and limited access to grocery stores and fresh food.

Any community’s ability to respond to a natural disaster, including heat waves, may be weakened by various factors, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes as “social vulnerabilities.” Factors of social vulnerability include poverty; unemployment; high housing costs; living in multiple-family residences, group quarters, or crowded homes; single-parent households; no health insurance; no higher education; people aged over 65 and under 17; having a disability; limited proficiency in English; being a racial or ethnic minority; and not owning a vehicle.

How hot is it?

Interviews during two periods of very hot days in August with people in Pawtucket and the Providence neighborhoods of Olneyville, Charles, and Lower South Providence showed people coping with the heat, but sometimes with great difficulty. Interviews were done at the OpenDoors cooling center in Pawtucket, several libraries, food pantries in Lower South Providence, and adult day centers in South Providence and the Charles neighborhood near Branch Avenue.

Several people said they have window air conditioners at home, which help. A subset of people with air conditioners said their AC units had quit working, and they didn’t have the money to repair or replace them. Many people said they relied on fans, often sharing a fan with another family member. One woman, a nurse at an adult day center, said insulation in her home was so bad that the effects of air conditioning on her ground floor — at a cost of an extra $100 a month — dissipated immediately.

Jeriel Adames, 14, works at the Olneyville Food Center on Manton Avenue in Providence. He bicycles about 20 minutes to work from the third-floor apartment he shares in South Providence with his mother and sister. He said he arrives at work drenched in sweat. He bought a window AC unit about five months ago at Walmart and it has quit working. Adames said he doesn’t have the money to replace it. “It is still hot even at night.” He said he feels exhausted when he gets to work after the bike ride.

Daisy Cruz, 57, who spends most days at the Elmwood Adult Day Health Care Center on Miner Street in Providence, lives on Grace Street with her seven relatives. Some family members have window AC units; Cruz has only a fan in her room. “Oh my God, it is so hot,” she said. “My sister can be sitting down and the sweat just pours off her forehead.” Cruz takes a shower at night and then lies on her bed under the fan. At other times, she sprays a mist of water on her face.

Gloria Valenzuela, 24, also a client at Elmwood, lives with family members in Mount Pleasant. She said continuous heat becomes exhausting. “I get super tired, sweaty, kind of weak. I am yawning all day long; I cannot have full conversations. You can never really cool yourself down because you still have to walk to do what you’ve got to do and that gets you hot all over again.”

April Pearson, 61, a client at the Latin Adult Day Health Care Center near Branch Avenue in Providence, said she lives in housing owned by the Central Falls Housing Authority. In the spring, Pearson would have liked to buy a window AC unit, but she said the authority required residents to buy only its own window AC units, at a cost of $400 for the unit and $37 a month from May through August. The purchase “set me back financially; it was hard. But I had to do what I had to do. But what if someone else cannot afford that?”

Dara Lee Saran, 44, interviewed at the OpenDoors shelter in Pawtucket, is homeless. She said she spends nights in the woods behind the Seekonk Speedway, where people shelter in tents on top of pallets. She said she had just spent a night at Miriam Hospital in treatment for heat exhaustion and dehydration. She had stiff joints, muscle cramps, and a dry mouth. She was vomiting, delirious, woozy, and couldn’t stand up. She was hungry after not having eaten in two days. “When you are homeless you cannot just go anywhere for a glass of water.”

Nick “Mouse” Hoyas, 56, is homeless and lives mostly outdoors, although he finds shelter some days at the Pawtucket Public Library, an official cooling center, where he can get drinking water. He sometimes works as a roofer and says it can get up to 110 degrees on a roof in hot weather. When a roofer succumbs to heat exhaustion, Hoyas said, “We take him down, put him in the shade, hose him down. The next day he is tired, dizzy, nauseous.”

Ronald Doyle, 60, lives near Smith Hill. He has heart disease, takes lots of medicines, and is on a list waiting for a heart transplant. He lives with his son and daughter and shares one fan with his son. Doyle said his rent is $840 a month and his social security disability is $900, so he has no spare money to buy an air conditioner. “This is a red brick project and it holds a lot of heat. The temperature in the house is the same as outdoors.” Doyle stays at home, tries to rest, and moves around carefully, to not disturb his internal defibrillator.

Lynn Blanchette is active in the Smith Hill Partners’ Initiative, a neighborhood improvement group, and she also is a professor in the School of Nursing at Rhode Island College.

She said the array of factors aggravating extreme heat in poor city neighborhoods is formidable.

“Housing is too close together; there is no good ventilation; houses are not well insulated; windows are leaky; kids play out on the sidewalks; adults who work in construction or outdoors may not be able to take breaks or stay hydrated,” Blanchette said.

Existing health problems can be aggravated by heat, Blanchette said. People with upper respiratory problems such as asthma find it harder to breathe in high humidity. Medicines are less effective. People with heart disease may be taking diuretic medicines that cause them to lose fluids, and this works against the need to keep hydrated. Older people who may have heart or lung illness may need to walk to stores to do errands; in days of extreme heat, this can be dangerous. For anyone with heart or lung diseases, maintaining health regimes while keeping hydrated and cool “is a delicate balance,” Blanchette said.

Damage to the climate; nature to the rescue

Climate science shows that the average global temperature has increased about 2 degrees Fahrenheit and global warming is accelerating. It is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. The warming climate is making heat waves, droughts, and floods more frequent and intense.

The Rhode Island Department of Health Climate Change Dashboard reports that since 1900, temperatures in Rhode Island have risen around 3 degrees. By the year 2065, Rhode Island could have between 13 and 19 more days where temperatures reach over 90 degrees.

Hoffman, the public health expert at DOH, in a report to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, wrote that “in Rhode Island, an increase in the maximum daily temperature from 75 to 85 was associated with a nearly 24% increase in the rate of emergency department visits for heat-related illness between 2005 and 2012. … On average, southern New England has experienced one heat wave each year for the last 50 years. In 2021, Rhode Island experienced three heat waves over the summer, which has happened in only 11 other years.”

One weapon to fight urban hot spots is more trees. Groundwork Rhode Island is a chapter of a national organization with a mission to build “healthier, more resilient, and more equitable urban communities.” One of Groundwork’s projects is the Climate Safe Neighborhoods Partnership, and one of the partnership projects is planting trees in urban neighborhoods that lack tree canopy and the cooling shade it provides.

The Tree Equity Score Analyzer quantifies tree canopy coverage in many municipalities and neighborhoods in Rhode Island. According to the maps, canopy coverage ranges from highs of 68% in Peace Dale and 55% in Tiverton. The city of Providence as a whole is 27% and Pawtucket as a whole is 25%. Low canopy cover percentages include 17% at Quonset Airport and 16% in Olneyville.

From 2020 to 2022, Groundwork Rhode Island used a $143,000 grant from American Forests via the Pawtucket Central Falls Health Equity Zone to plant 197 trees in the two cities, at no cost to residents. The grant included maintaining the new trees for three years. In spring 2024, Groundwork Rhode Island spent $80,000 to buy 400 new trees to plant.

“Trees are a natural resource for helping to mitigate extreme heat,” said Currie Touloumtzis, urban tree program manager for Groundwork Rhode Island. “Trees sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen. A process called evapotranspiration also releases water vapor and cools the air.”

Evan LaCross, spokesperson for DEM, said the agency’s Urban Forests for Rhode Island Technical Assistance Program has partnered with the Green Infrastructure Center to create grants to help poorer urban communities plant trees. The first five cities to win the grants — Pawtucket, Central Falls, Warren, Westerly, and Newport — were announced in April. The municipalities will get technical help from the Green Infrastructure Center and money to plant and maintain trees over the next five years.

DEM received $1.5 million through the 2022 federal Inflation Reduction Act and another $300,000 through congressionally directed spending to give tree-planting money and support to eight communities over the coming five years.

Some people work in the heat and also observe the travails of people who struggle daily to cope with it. Antoine Lindsey works for OpenDoors at the organization’s 24-hour cooling center in Pawtucket. He spends a lot of time in the sun, monitoring the area around the building to watch for loiterers. “Heat changes the mood of people,” Lindsey said. “When they are hot they tend to have a bad temperament. They get crabby, edgy. That can lead to arguments, fights.”

Jennifer Romans, youth services specialist at the Smith Hill Library — also a cooling center — has been sick from heat and has seen it happening to patrons coming in for relief. The library has had air conditioning for seven years, but before that, in very hot weather, “it was unbearable in this building,” she said. “The staff would get sick; patrons would pass out.” She described heat exhaustion as a mix of nausea, vomiting, and “a screaming headache.”

Romans said people in the neighborhood working on lawn care or simply walking to do their errands sometimes come into the library and say, “Can I just sit? Can I have something to drink?”