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OK! Map of households without piped water access in the United States, 2013-2017. Note: Lighter areas indicate areas with a higher number of households without piped water. There are clusters of sanitation facilities in major cities and certain regions across the country. Photo credit: Katie Meehan.

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Map of households without piped water access in the United States, 2013-2017. Note: Lighter areas indicate areas with a higher number of households without piped water. There are clusters of sanitation facilities in major cities and certain regions across the country. Photo credit: Katie Meehan.

A team of researchers from King's College London, the University of Arizona and ECONorthwest has found that an estimated 1.1 million urban residents in the United States live in homes without proper indoor plumbing. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis of census data for 50 of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. and what they learned about people living without standard indoor plumbing and related amenities.

In advanced countries such as the United States, most people are assumed to have basic amenities such as access to clean water and related facilities. In this new effort, researchers have found that this is not the case for many people living in some of the country's largest cities. In reality, many people, especially minorities, live indoors without proper plumbing.

The work involved analyzing data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal agency that conducts nationwide surveys every ten years. To learn more about access to running water, researchers focused on data from whether people had access to “full sanitation,” meaning a bath or shower. They found that for about 500,000 households in large urban areas, the answer was no.

Analyzing the data further, the researchers found that about 1.1 million people lived in such households. They also found a connection between a given city's wealth gap and the number of people living without running water. For example, they found that percent-wealthy cities like San Francisco, Portland and Austin had some of the highest rates of what they call plumbing poverty. Using raw numbers, they found that New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco had the most people living in plumbing poverty. They also found that race played a role. On average, blacks were 35 percent more likely to live in plumbing poverty than whites. They also found that sanitation poverty was most commonly found in rented facilities, particularly mobile homes.

More information:
Meehan et al., Geographies of insecure water access and housing-water connectivity in US cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2007361117

Magazine information:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

© 2020 Science X Network

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Who is affected by “sanitation poverty” in the United States? Mostly city dwellers, according to a study – Circle of Blue

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The post Who within the U.S. Is in ‘Plumbing Poverty’? Principally City Residents, Research Says appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

These 10 hotels embody environmental sensitivity plus energy and water efficiency.

Hotels consume more energy and water per square foot than just about any other building type, according to the ULI report Sustainability in Hotels: Opportunities and Trends Shaping the Future of Hospitality. At the same time, guests are paying closer attention to a hotel’s environmental impact when choosing where to stay. As an additional incentive, design strategies that cut energy and water consumption pay off in lower utility bills.

The following 10 projects—all completed during the past five years—include adaptations of a film warehouse, a tire factory, an airport terminal, and an oil company’s headquarters, as well as newly constructed buildings that reduce energy waste with ethernet cables, integrate photovoltaics into their facades, and deploy cooling methods borrowed from African termites.

RON NYREN is a freelance architecture and urban design writer based in the San Francisco Bay area.

(Courtesy of CitizenM)

1. CitizenM Seattle South Lake Union
Seattle, Washington

Amsterdam-based CitizenM opened its first West Coast hotel in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood in 2020. The seven-story building consists of 264 rooms in modular units that were prefabricated and finished off site, a strategy that minimizes construction waste as well as cost. The local office of engineering firm Arup adapted the modular cage design of other citizenM hotels to meet the stringent requirements of local seismic codes.

The heating and cooling system conserves energy by relying on an active chilled beam in each room, a dedicated outdoor air supply, and heat pumps that capture excess heat to pre-warm domestic hot water. CitizenM’s smartphone app allows guests to check in, open the room’s doors, and control the lighting, blinds, room temperature, and entertainment options. An art piece by local artist Jesse LeDoux wraps a corner of the facade. The hotel was designed by the Amsterdam-based design firm Concrete in collaboration with the local office of Gensler.

(OZ/Valentijn Kortekaas)

2. Four Elements Hotel
IJburg, Netherlands

Ben Bronsema of Voorschoten, Netherlands, studied the techniques that African termites use to moderate temperatures inside their mounds. The Four Elements Hotel draws on his findings, relying on the sun and wind to heat and cool its 198 guest rooms as a kind of natural air-conditioning system. The 11-story structure has two solar chimneys facing southwest. These glazed vertical voids use sunlight to heat air, which rises through a heat exchanger that captures it for the building’s water supply. An underground thermal energy storage area captures any excess heat for later use.

As the warm air rises, it draws outside air down through another vertical shaft, the “climate cascade,” where sprays of water cool or heat it for ventilation. This passive design strategy reduces the need for mechanical fans. Guests can control their room temperatures and the level of air flow. Photovoltaic cells cover the facade, rooftop, and canopies to provide energy. Completed in 2019, the hotel was designed by Amsterdam firms OZ and NwA architecten and Stockholm-based Doos Architects for developers Amstelius/Dutch Green Company of Amsterdam and Borghese Real Estate of Nijkerk, Netherlands.

(Hornberger + Worstell)

3. Grand Hyatt at SFO
San Francisco, California

The only on-airport hotel at San Francisco International Airport, the Grand Hyatt at SFO provides views of airplanes landing nearby through its curved glass facade. Designed to be 26 percent more energy efficient than a typical hotel of the same size, the building has rooftop photovoltaic panels that generate 133,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. Occupancy sensors power down lighting, heating, and cooling in rooms when guests are absent in order to lower electricity consumption.

Low-flow faucets and shower heads, cooling towers with high-performance water-flow controls, and efficient-flush toilets are estimated to save 6.7 million gallons (25.4 million liters) of water each year. The hotel’s dual plumbing system will enable it to use reclaimed water for toilet flushing and irrigation. Guests can reach the hotel via an automated people mover that also connects to rapid transit and local and regional bus service lines. Designed by local firm Hornberger + Worstell with its associate ED2I, the hotel opened in 2019.

(Bruce Redman Becker, FAIA)

4. Hotel Marcel New Haven, Tapestry Collection by Hilton
New Haven, Connecticut

When noted modernist architect Marcel Breuer designed a brutalist structure for the Armstrong Rubber Company in 1967, he inserted a two-story void between the research labs on the lower levels and the offices above, shielding offices from noise and giving the building its distinctive profile at the intersection of two interstate highways. Though listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the structure (later the Pirelli Tire Building) was largely abandoned in the late 1990s until local architect/developer Bruce Redman Becker’s firm Becker + Becker purchased it in 2020. Becker adapted the concrete building as the Hotel Marcel with the goal of creating a net zero energy hotel.

Opened in 2022, the all-electric, 165-room hotel relies on a rooftop solar array as well as solar canopies over the parking area to generate all its electricity. A power-over-ethernet (PoE) lighting system minimizes the amount of energy required for lighting. High levels of insulation and triple-glazed windows keep heating and cooling costs low. The design team, which also includes Brooklyn-based interior designer Dutch East Design, retained existing board-formed concrete and repurposed other building materials from the site, including light fixtures and wood-paneled walls.

(Anders Fredriksen)

5.House of Choice
Solna, Sweden

In the Arenastaden neighborhood of Solna, the House of Choice brings 336 hotel rooms, 88 long-stay apartments, and offices for the Swedish headquarters of Oslo-based Nordic Choice Hotels under one roof—a roof with a sawtooth shape that maximizes the amount of energy its photovoltaic panels can generate. The entry facade, which faces south, is also covered with solar panels made of different sheets of glass: dark gray and ribbed, dark gray and smooth, and pearl beige. Etching on the solar panel glazing adds further visual interest.

Solar panels are also integrated into the roof of the light-well courtyard. A ground-source heat pump system with 25 boreholes supplies cooling and heating. Opened in 2021, the building is targeted to generate more electricity than it consumes. White Architect of Gothenburg, Sweden, designed the building for Solna-based developer Fabege and Nordic Choice Hotels.

(Julie Soefer Photography)

6.Lodge at Gulf State Park
Gulf Shores, Alabama

Gulf State Park Lodge opened on state parklands on the Gulf of Mexico in 1974; 30 years later, Hurricane Ivan destroyed it. The site was abandoned until another disaster, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, ironically provided settlement funds to build a new lodge and heal the surrounding dune ecology. Sasaki of Watertown, Massachusetts, oversaw restoration of the 6,150-acre (2,490 ha) park. The existing manmade dune was removed and dune grass planted to encourage the natural growth of sand dunes, enhance wildlife habitat, and protect the site from future storm surges.

Lake/Flato of San Antonio and Rabun Architects of Atlanta designed the new five-story, 350-room lodge on a much more compact footprint than that of its predecessor, set well back from the Gulf. Shaded porches and natural ventilation moderate temperatures inside. Pervious parking lots allow stormwater to percolate into the ground, and air-conditioning condensation is collected, filtered, and used to supplement water in the swimming pool. Guests have access to new trails and a 900-acre freshwater fishing lake. Operated by Hilton, the lodge opened in 2018.

(Brandon Barre Photography)

7. The Sinclair, Autograph Collection
Fort Worth, Texas

Sinclair Oil Holdings built its 17-story Fort Worth headquarters in 1929 with a zigzag modern exterior and art deco interiors, embodying the Texas oil boom’s exuberance. More than 90 years later, the structure has found new life as a hotel with cutting-edge energy-saving technology. Farukh Aslam, chief executive officer of local company Sinclair Digital, purchased the building in 2013 and chose a PoE system to supply electricity for lighting, automatic window shades, smart mirrors, and minibars. Because PoE reduces the energy loss that comes from converting AC power to DC, the light fixtures also run much cooler, relieving strain on the air-conditioning system.

The system is estimated to reduce the hotel’s energy use by more than 30 percent. Occupancy sensors and smart thermostats conserve electricity as well. Opened in 2020, the hotel forgoes a diesel generator in favor of a lithium-ion battery as its backup system during power outages. Dallas-based Merriman Anderson Architects renovated the exterior, and the Dallas office of Forrest Perkins handled interior design.

(Tom Ross)

8. Paramount House Hotel
Sydney, Australia

In the Surry Hills neighborhood of Sydney, local developer Citadin repurposed the 1940s art deco headquarters of Paramount Pictures Australia as the Paramount House, containing a cinema, bar, café, and coworking space. In 2018, Citadin revamped the adjoining 80-year-old film warehouse as the 29-room Paramount House Hotel. Architecture firm Breathe of Brunswick, Victoria, topped the three-story brick warehouse with a copper screen to give guest-room balconies privacy from the street while filtering daylight. The screen’schevron patterning references the streamline modern style of the Paramount House next door.

The design team minimized building waste by using locally sourced and recycled materials, such as recycled timber floorboards. Historic brickwork is exposed, with remnants of former stairwells, parapets, gable ends, and joists visible in places. Every guest room is different in shape. A former film vault turned atrium contains the reception lounge. On the roof, a seven-kilowatt photovoltaic array contributes to the building’s electricity supply.

(David Mitchell)

9. TWA Hotel
New-York, New-York

When the TWA Flight Center opened in 1962 at JFK International Airport, its design, by noted modernist architect Eero Saarinen, embodied flight in the building’s sweeping curves. The air terminal closed in 2001, its future uncertain. The Port Authority of New York restored core interior spaces, and the local office of hotel owner/operator MCR/Morse Development added an underground event space and deferentially set new hotel wings back from the historic structure, which houses restaurants, shops, a ballroom, and a fitness center. A triple-glazed curtain wall provides both thermal and acoustic insulation.

Opened in 2019, the hotel produces all its own energy with a highly efficient cogeneration plant that runs on natural gas and recaptures engine heat for hot water and space heating. Ultra low flow water fixtures reduce water use. Roof and plaza drains pump stormwater into the airport’s watershed storm system for filtering. Local firm Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners served as project and preservation architect in a team with Brooklyn-based Lubrano Ciavarra Architects and New York City-based firms INC Architecture & Design and Stonehill Taylor.

(Nick Caville/BDP)

10. Wren Urban Nest
Dublin, Ireland

Opened in 2021, the 137-room Wren Urban Nest hotel relies on 100 percent renewable energy by means of a variety of carbon-reduction strategies. Heating and cooling are supplied by air source and water-to-water heat pumps, with help from a high thermal mass, a tight building envelope, and a design that shares solar heat gain from one side of the building with the other during the winter . In warmer months, heat gain is diverted to the building’s hot water system.

The designer, the Dublin studio of BDP, equipped the west elevation with a folded, glazed facade that halves the time of exposure to direct afternoon sunlight at any given period. Smart building technologies turn off lights and heating/cooling as well as automatically close and open blinds when guest rooms are unoccupied. A vegetated roof and a stormwater runoff system help filter and absorb stormwater. The hotel’s kitchen uses induction stoves, and the local community can access the kitchen’s food waste through an app.

More in This Issue:

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While rents declined in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have spiked by an unprecedented 17.1% nationally over the last year, according to Apartment List. At the same time, the only generation to record an increase in renting activity in the past year (up by 21%, per RentCafe) is Gen Z — a generation which is playing a big role in a seeming urban revival.

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Rent growth continued to increase in March, with Apartment List’s national index up by 0.8%. So far this year, rents are growing more slowly than they did in 2021 — however, rental prices continue to rise at a faster pace than pre-pandemic. In addition, over the first three months of 2022, rents have increased by a total of 1.8%. In March, rents increased in 93 of the nation’s 100 largest cities, with “Sun Belt markets in Florida and Arizona continuing to see some of the nation’s fastest growth,” per Apartment List.

The Miami metro has seen the nation’s fastest rent increase over the past six months, up 8%, and also ranks No. 1 for year-over-year rent growth, producing a 30% increase. Over the past six months New Orleans rents went up 8%, Orlando rents rose 6%, Tucson rents increased by 5% and Salt Lake City rents hiked by 5%.

In terms of supply, Apartment List notes there is a gradual easing of the tight market conditions that have characterized the rental market over the past year.

In the midst of these rising prices, one generation seems to be less affected than others. A RentCafe report finds that Gen Z represents more than a quarter of lease applications nationwide, mostly centered in large urban hubs that promise job opportunities. Gen Z residents may bring new life into cities once considered in decline due to the pandemic.

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In 2021, Gen Z rental hotspots included San Francisco, which saw a 101% increase in new apartment renters of this generation, per RentCafe.

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San Francisco’s popularity was echoed by Jersey City, New Jersey (with a 95% Gen Z increase over the past year), and Manhattan, New York, at a 65% increase. Rounding out the top 10 cities attracting Gen Z renters are Philadelphia, Boston, Arlington, San Jose, Seattle, and Minneapolis.

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About the Author

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a full-time financial journalist and has written for several publications, including Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, Bloomberg and Business Insider. She also worked as a vice president/senior content writer for major NYC-based financial companies, including New York Life and MSCI. Yaël is now freelancing and most recently, she co-authored the book “Blockchain for Medical Research: Accelerating Trust in Healthcare,” with Dr. Sean Manion. (CRC Press, April 2020) She holds two master’s degrees, including one in Journalism from New York University and one in Russian Studies from Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, France.

The post Regardless of Rents Spiking, Gen Z Transferring to Main City Areas Like San Francisco, Manhattan appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Retailers in sectors that have seen outsized gains from U.S. consumers are capitalizing on the favorable market for tenants that exists in most urban corridors. That’s one of the key takeaways from JLL’s City Retail 2022 report, which found that home goods, athleisure and outdoors retailers are taking the lead in urban leasing. The report also found that while landlords are still open to negotiation, pandemic-related concessions such as percent-sale rent are increasingly harder to come by.

Here are a few of the companies moving into the nation’s urban corridors.

Activewear/Outdoors
• Vuori, a direct-to-consumer activewear brand with a $4 billion valuation, plans to open 100 stores in the U.S. over the next five years. Vuori opened on Abbot Kinney in Los Angeles this past summer next to a handful of other DTC brands.

• Lululemon opened a pop-up-turned-permanent store also on Abbot Kinney and expanded its location on Robson in Vancouver.

• Alo Yoga will be moving into The Superette, a new Seaport development in Boston. Developed by WS Development, The Superette will open by summer 2022 with 40 stores, restaurants and entertainment venues built around a central courtyard.

Outdoor clothing retailers have also been busy.

• Arc’teryx opened three stores over the past year and a half: along West 4th in Vancouver, in Union Square in San Francisco (one of the only 2020 deals in the corridor) and in SoHo in New York City.

• Icebreaker, an outdoor clothing retailer that specializes in merino wool, relocated to North Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

• Blocks away in the Gold Coast corridor, Wilson Sporting Goods opened its first brick-and-mortar location this past summer. The company opened its second store in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood in late January.

[Read More: First Look: Wilson Sporting Goods celebrates sports, play at NYC flagship]

Home Goods
• Joybird, a DTC home furnishings retailer, has opened several stores over the past year including on Melrose in Los Angeles and is expected to move into the former Williams-Sonoma location in the Marina in San Francisco.

• Avocado Green Mattress moved onto M Street in Washington, DC. The Sill, which began as an online plant delivery business and now has physical stores in five cities, opened on Newbury Street in Boston in the fourth quarter of 2021

Lease Negotiations: Back to business
Throughout 2020, landlords made concessions unheard of on prime urban corridors, according to the report. Rents came down and more months of free rent were given. There were also far more lease covenants, increased tenant improvement allowances, kickout clauses and shorter terms.

However, as rent collection improved in late 2020 and into 2021, percent sales and rent relief agreements have become rarer, the report noted. While rents haven’t returned to pre-COVID levels in most corridors and markets are still tenant-favorable, it is (mostly) back to business in terms of traditional lease negotiations. Incentives still exist, especially for the first year, terms are shorter, pandemic language exists — but many of the drastic concessions are 2020 history, JLL reported.

The JLL report can be downloaded here.

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The home services market, Urban Company, announced Wednesday that it has raised $ 255 million in a new round of funding and confirmed a valuation of $ 2.1 billion.

The new round of funding – a Series F – was led by Prosus Ventures, Dragoneer and Wellington Management, while Vy Capital, Tiger Global and Steadview participated. The Gurgaon-based startup said * the new round includes a primary capital infusion of $ 188 million, while the remainder is a secondary sale by some angels and other early investors. The startup has raised around $ 470 million so far.

Formerly known as UrbanClap, the seven-year-old startup offers a range of home services on its platform. Does your air conditioner need maintenance? Is the TV not working? The house needs a fresh coat of paint? Problems with the plumbing installation? Does your toilet need to be cleaned and disinfected? How about a haircut in a location of your choice?

These are just some of the services Urban Company offers its customers who can place an order through the startup’s app or website and choose a good time and place.

The idea of ​​the startup comes from its three co-founders, who in their early 20s are wondering why no one else has tried to break into the industry, which is still largely disorganized, said Raghav Chandra, founder of Urban Company, in an interview with TechCrunch.

What started as an idea is now a unicorn. The startup now operates in 35 cities in India, Singapore, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. More than 35,000 service partners are active on the platform, said Chandra, who acts as Urban Company’s chief technology officer.

“Urban Company is disrupting a large, fragmented industry that has seen little digital adoption,” said Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investment for India at Prosus Ventures.

With its technology-based platform and strong focus on providing high quality, trained service partners, Urban Company is able to solve the very difficult task of producing services. “In addition, the initial pull with international expansion in well-known regions is encouraging and offers the opportunity for significant growth in the future,” he added.

The startup’s rapid growth was abruptly halted last year after New Delhi imposed a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Chandra said the startup bounced back last year after the nation reopened and had its best month to date in March of this year.

Chandra said the startup will use the fresh capital to continue expanding in the markets it operates in and work on ways to improve onboarding, training and safety of service staff on the platform. The company also wants to expand its technology team. The startup plans to file an IPO within the next 24 months, it said.

Urban Company spends weeks training and educating the workers who join its platform, Chandra said. The startup now also enables employees with expertise in one category to find out more about other categories, increasing their chances of getting more work and earning more. Chandra said offering continuing education courses to workers will remain a key area as the startup expands.

* The startup announced the new fundraiser in April in a filing with a local regulatory agency, but co-founder and CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal declined to comment, citing the rising coronavirus cases in the country.

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Big cities are alive and well.

City dwellers fled their cramped, expensive apartments to make more space in the suburbs. That was the story of 2020, as Insider reported several times. But millions of people live in big cities, and hundreds of thousands who have left could move back.

This is the argument taken from a recent Bank of America Research report, led by a team led by US economist Michelle Meyer, that the shift is not the urban exodus it appeared to be. BofA said that while the pandemic accelerated pre-existing migration from cities like New York City and San Francisco, these two are the only true examples of anything resembling an exodus, and that the reopening will trigger a return to both cities.

“Both have the potential for a speedy recovery,” the note said. “NYC and SF remain the top cities for young renters because of their economic, financial and cultural centers, and the decline in rents over the past year adds to their affordability.”

As house prices rose to record highs across the country, rents fell in NYC and San Francisco. According to Apartment List, rents in NYC fell to about 22% from March 2020 to January 2021, and rents in San Francisco fell to about 26% over the same period. Rents in both cities have started to recover, but both are still much lower than they were before the pandemic.

The decline has allowed young professionals in San Francisco and NYC to move to single or luxury condos for the first time and receive discounts of up to $ 1,000. Some have even signed leases that go beyond the typical year, which signals that they are not going anywhere anytime soon.

As both cities slowly reopen, signs of economic life are already evident. NYC brick and mortar retail spending was around 70% for the first three months of the year, while restaurant personal spending improved. According to separate BofA data, it is still 30% lower than two years ago until mid-April. This is still a significant improvement from the 70% decline at the end of January.

In San Francisco, card spending increased 10% in April compared to two years ago, though not quite as high as the 15% increase in NYC. Insider’s Melia Russell and Berber Jin reported that venture capitalists are confident that the Bay Area is making a comeback and will remain the global capital of entrepreneurship.

People plan to return to NYC and San Fran

BofA’s results reflect new data released earlier this week by USPS. Bloomberg reported the same data and viewed the urban exodus as more of an “urban shuffle”.

Overall, Manhattan saw temporary removals increase by 138%, according to USPS data, a number that may not even include those with second homes elsewhere. However, a closer look at the data shows that the moves were mostly local, often within the region or even the same city.

While 19,000 Manhattan residents moved to Florida, 10,000 said they wanted to go back. In fact, more residents – 20,000 – moved to neighboring Brooklyn than to Florida. Some of those who have left for the northeastern suburbs are already returning to the city, and that is also happening in the Bay Area. While the rate of permanent removals grew the most in San Francisco, according to USPS data, temporary removals in the area also more than doubled, compared to 17% nationally.

Many of those who moved permanently from the two cities did not get very far. Some San Franciscans made their way to Sacramento or Oakland, while some New Yorkers made their way east to Long Island, upstate to Westchester, or by train to Bridgeport, Connecticut or Philadelphia, according to Bloomberg.

Big cities are not dead, but they have changed – or have shrunk. In urban areas, spending is projected to decrease by 10% or more in an economy where more workers are remote. But the return of former residents, signs of increased spending, and government aid of $ 600 million for San Francisco and $ 5.6 billion for NYC are all signals of economic recovery, even if the landscape is different than it was before the pandemic.

As BofA put it, city flights are “more myth than reality”.

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Map of households with no access to tap water in the United States, 2013-2017. Note: Lighter areas indicate areas with a higher number of households without tap water. There are plumber clusters in major cities and certain regions of the country. Photo credit: Katie Meehan.

A team of researchers from King’s College London, the University of Arizona, and ECONorthwest found that an estimated 1.1 million city dwellers in the United States live in homes without proper interior plumbing. In their article, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis of census data for 50 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States and what it shows about people living without standard indoor plumbing and associated facilities.

In advanced countries like the United States, most people are believed to have basic amenities such as access to clean water and facilities. In this new effort, researchers found that many people who live in some of the largest cities in the country are not. In reality, many people, especially minorities, live without proper sanitary facilities.

The work involved analyzing data obtained from the US Census Bureau, the federal government agency responsible for conducting statewide surveys every 10 years. To learn more about access to running water, the researchers focused on data from questions about whether people had access to “full plumbing” described as residential buildings that had both hot and cold running water along with at least some water Bath or shower was passed into her house. They found that for approximately 500,000 households in large urban areas, the answer was no.

Upon further interfering with the data, the researchers found that such households accounted for around 1.1 million people. They also found a link between a particular city’s wealth gap and the number of people living without tap water. For example, they found that percentage-affluent cities like San Francisco, Portland, and Austin had some of the highest rates of what they termed plumber poverty. Looking at the sheer numbers, they found that New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco had the highest number of people living in poverty. They also found that race played a role. On average, blacks were 35 percent more likely to live with sanitary poverty than whites. They also found that poverty poverty is most common in rented facilities, especially mobile homes.

High COVID-19 Rates Among Indian Reservations – Water and Language Barriers Affect Risk

More information:
Meehan et al., Geographies of Unsafe Access to Water and the Relationship between Housing and Water in US Cities. Procedure of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073 / pnas.2007361117

© 2020 Science X Network

Quote: Study Shows Over 1.1 million U.S. City dwellers live in homes without proper indoor plumbing (2020, Nov. 3), as of March 8, 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2020-11-million -urban-people-homes- were retrieved. correct.html

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By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan; Circle of blue; Great Lakes Now on Detroit Public Television; and Michigan Radio, Michigan’s NPR News Leader; who work together to bring news and information to the audience about the effects of climate change, pollution and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. You can find all works HERE.

Even in the richest countries, basic water services are not universal. At least 1.1 million people in the US don’t have hot and cold running water in their home and a shower or tub to bathe in, according to a new study.

This “poverty poverty” is highest in cities and most acute in cities like San Francisco with the greatest income inequality.

The lack of sanitary infrastructure is not just limited to the homeless. Katie Meehan, lead author on the study, said this was an important finding.

Although the study found that poverty poverty is closely related to traditional indicators of marginalization such as income and race, Meehan said other factors play a role. Poverty poverty is also linked to housing: tenants and people living in mobile homes are more likely to lack full plumbing services than homeowners.

Meehan said that focusing on these structural issues, where there are legacies of discrimination, is one way to redefine the problem of water access. Rather than looking at building more pipes or increasing supply as a technical matter, Meehan prefers to ask why the pipes were not initially expanded to specific areas.

“This brings poor people’s attention to the institutions that produce poverty,” Meehan, senior lecturer in human geography at King’s College London, told Circle of Blue.

The study, published Nov. 2 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, recorded the country’s challenges in accessing water in broad but differentiated gaps. It found that 73 percent of people live in metropolitan areas without a full installation. Almost half live in the 50 largest cities in the country. Households headed by a black person were 35 percent more likely to have incomplete plumbing than white households. Tenants in major cities were 61 percent more likely to have incomplete plumbing than homeowners. In neighborhoods with higher income inequality, the likelihood of plumbing was higher.

The high number of city dwellers without full plumbing is an interesting finding that contradicts the typical representation that plumbing deficiencies are most common in rural areas, Meehan said.

Although New York and Los Angeles had the largest number of people living without a complete installation, San Francisco had the highest population under these circumstances. Portland, Milwaukee, and San Antonio also had high relative numbers of poverty poverty.

Sera Young is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Health at Northwestern University and focuses on household water insecurity. Young, who was not involved in the study, praised the research to debunk the idea that inadequate plumbing is primarily a rural problem.

“Water security is a global concern, and here in the US we’re not immune,” Young wrote in an email to Circle of Blue. “The 1.1 million people living in poverty in the US are likely not just an underestimate, the numbers have likely gotten worse since 2018.”

Meehan agreed that the numbers are most likely an undercount and the results are the “low end” for those who lack plumbing. The data for the analysis comes from the American Community Survey, a questionnaire administered annually by the US Census Bureau and sent to households. Data from 2013 to 2017 were used in the study. When it comes to sanitation, running hot and cold water as well as a shower or bathtub for bathing are currently queried. At the request of Congress, the Census Bureau stopped asking if homes had toilets in 2016.

Stephen Gasteyer, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University who was not involved in the study, said it would be helpful to fill an information gap: estimating the number of people in the United States who are lacking water and sanitation.

Gasteyer, who studies access to water, contributed to a separate report published last year that looked at not only access to water but also toilet facilities. This report, using previous census data that included the toilet question, estimated that 2 million people in the US do not have these services.

These types of numerical ratings are just a start, Gasteyer said. The next step is to investigate why the numbers are high in certain areas and not in others. One of the weaknesses of the census data is that it is not clear why a person claims to have no plumbing services. Is it because your water has been turned off for several months because of unpaid bills? Or is it because there is no pipe connection to your house? Or do they live on the street but have a postal address?

“If we want to fix the problem, we have to understand what’s behind the data,” said Gasteyer. “We need to do case studies to understand the mechanisms, not just the numbers.”

Gasteyer said the study’s finding that tenants are more likely to have poor plumbing is consistent with his experience working on field work to access water in Mississippi. Activists there told him it was difficult for tenants to hold landlords accountable for poor service.

Meehan is similarly fascinated by the mechanisms by which poverty alleviation occurs. The census data provides a comprehensive overview but does not explain the process for a specific city.

“Does it tell you how the engine works? No, ”said Meehan. “That requires additional research.”

Read more about access to water at the Great Lakes Now:

Lack of utility data obscures customer water debt problems

Millions of Americans are plagued by water debt at a time of COVID-19

Minority communities are questioning the EPA’s election boost

Michigan governor publishes a $ 500 million water infrastructure plan

Questions and Answers from Policy Experts: Continue to advocate for safe drinking water with elected officials

Featured image: Detroit house that turned off water in 2014. (Photo by J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue)

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