Climate Resilience Starts With the Homes We Already Have
Climate resilience can sound like a big, abstract idea until you start looking at what is happening inside real homes.
A house in Oregon that rarely needed cooling now has to manage hotter summers. A home in Maine that was built around a long heating season also has to deal with more summer humidity. A family wants to move away from oil heat but first needs an electrical upgrade. A weatherization project opens up a wall and finds damage no one could see from the outside.
Those kinds of realities came up throughout Emily Mottram’s recent conversation with Charity Fain, executive director of Community Energy Project in Portland, Oregon.
Community Energy Project works across weatherization, electrification, energy affordability, advocacy, community solar, and direct home improvements for lower-income households. The details of that work are specific to Oregon, but the larger questions are showing up in communities across the country.
What happens when the homes we already have are asked to handle conditions they were never really prepared for?
Changing weather changes what a home has to do
Cooling used to be a much smaller part of the housing conversation in Oregon.
Many older homes, especially those occupied by lower-income households, were built without it because they simply did not need it very often. That assumption is becoming harder to rely on as summers get hotter.
When Charity moved to Oregon 12 years ago, she remembers needing cooling for maybe one particularly hot week during the summer. Today, Community Energy Project is installing more heat pumps in part because households need cooling for much longer stretches of the season.
A similar shift is happening in Maine.
For years, cooling was not necessarily a major part of the conversation there either. Recent summers have brought longer periods of heat and significant humidity, which means homes that have historically spent most of the year focused on heating are now being asked to handle cooling and dehumidification too.
The change does not have to be dramatic before it starts affecting buildings. Sometimes it is a longer humid season. Sometimes it is a hotter summer. Sometimes it is a weather event that used to feel unusual and now happens often enough that people have to plan for it.
The house still has to respond.
Resilience depends on the risks a place actually faces
Climate resilience looks different depending on where you live.
In Maine, snow, cold weather, and power outages are familiar risks. In Oregon, the pressure looks different. Hotter summers, wildfire concerns, occasional ice storms, changing rainfall, and reduced mountain snowpack all shape what households need.
Snowpack matters in Oregon because much of the state’s precipitation is seasonal. Summers are typically dry, so reduced snowpack affects what happens later in the year.
It also connects to energy.
Oregon relies heavily on hydroelectric power. Less snowpack can affect that system at the same time hotter weather is increasing demand for cooling.
That creates a larger question around resilience. What happens when households increasingly need cooling at the same time weather conditions are putting more pressure on the grid?
There is no single version of resilience that applies everywhere. The practical work starts with the climate, housing stock, energy system, and risks people are actually living with.
Existing homes rarely come with a clean scope of work
Much of this work has to happen in homes that already exist.
Community Energy Project has been doing weatherization education since it began in 1979. Some interventions are simple. Window inserts and storm-window kits can still make a difference, especially for renters who may have very little control over the building itself.
Other projects are much more involved.
Through funding from the Portland Clean Energy Fund, Community Energy Project has been able to complete projects that average about $50,000 per participating home in some programs.
That work can include insulation, roof replacement, electrical upgrades, heat pumps, and heat pump water heaters.
The important part is how quickly a project can expand beyond the original energy goal.
A homeowner may be ready for electrification, but the electrical system may need an upgrade first. A solar project may make sense, but the roof may not be ready to support it. Weatherization may be the goal, but other conditions in the house have to be addressed before that work can happen well.
That is the reality of existing-home work. The project has to respond to the building that is actually there, not the clean version of the scope everyone hoped for at the beginning.
Good investigation still cannot show you everything
Energy audits and diagnostic tools help teams understand an existing home before construction starts.
They can identify opportunities, shape the scope, and give homeowners a better idea of what the work might involve.
They still cannot reveal everything hiding inside walls, roofs, and finished assemblies.
“You always find something wrong,” Charity said. “There’s always some change order.”
Emily shared an example from an energy project in Texas that started as a window replacement job.
Some of the homes had window air-conditioning units that had not been draining properly. Once the windows came out, the team found rot below them.
Now the project needed wall repairs too.
“We don’t have X-ray vision,” Emily said.
That is an important expectation to set around existing buildings. A good inspection can reduce surprises. It cannot promise that every hidden condition will be known before the work begins.
The value is in doing the best investigation possible, then being prepared to adjust when the building reveals something new.
A solution still has to be buildable
Existing-home work has a way of making theoretical ideas practical very quickly.
Community Energy Project is a licensed general contractor, but it subcontracts much of the construction work. Its staff handles energy audits, homeowner relationships, scopes, coordination, and follow-up while working with local contractors to complete the work.
That process creates a constant reality check.
A detail may sound perfectly reasonable until someone is trying to install it in an existing house with limited access, awkward framing, old materials, and finished spaces already in the way.
That feedback matters.
It helps teams understand which solutions are realistic, which details create unnecessary difficulty, and where an idea needs to change to fit actual construction conditions.
Community Energy Project also works to make the process easier for contractors. The organization builds relationships with local small businesses and prioritizes opportunities to work with women-owned and minority-owned contractors as part of its workforce diversity goals.
Good ideas still have to survive contact with the field.
The work is not finished when the equipment is installed
A new system still has to make sense to the person living with it.
Heat pumps are a good example because they can behave differently from the heating systems people are used to. Someone who has always adjusted a traditional furnace thermostat in a certain way may use the same habits with a heat pump and end up disappointed by the energy bill.
Community Energy Project spends time helping people understand that difference.
Charity has lived through the learning curve in her own house. She joked that it took two years to get her husband to stop touching the thermostat after they installed a heat pump.
The example is funny, but the point behind it matters.
You can install the equipment correctly and still fall short if the person living with it does not understand how it works.
That is why the process does not stop at installation. Homeowners are part of the conversation before work begins, during construction, and after the equipment is running.
“At the end of the day, it’s somebody’s home,” Charity said.
The technical work matters. So does whether the person living there can use it successfully.
Energy affordability is part of whether an upgrade works
A home improvement does not exist separately from the household paying to operate it.
Community Energy Project’s work extends beyond weatherization and construction into utility advocacy for exactly that reason.
At the Oregon Public Utility Commission, the organization focuses heavily on energy affordability and households carrying the highest energy burden. That means looking at who has the highest bills relative to income, where those customers live, and which household types are being affected most.
That advocacy has helped support low-income utility discount programs in Oregon. Some of the lowest-income households may receive discounts of 60 or 70 percent on their utility bills.
The organization has also worked on protections that prevent investor-owned utilities from disconnecting customers for nonpayment immediately before major weather events.
Those protections matter when weather moves beyond discomfort.
Oregon experienced an extreme heat event a few years ago when temperatures reached around 116 to 118 degrees and people died in their homes.
At that point, access to cooling is not simply a convenience.
The affordability question looks different in Maine, but it is still present. Many households rely on oil heat, which can require a large amount of money at once to fill a tank. Electricity brings its own cost concerns, but the payment structure is different, and electrification can be paired with weatherization to reduce how much energy the home needs.
A technically successful upgrade still has to work financially for the household living with it.
Local funding is becoming more important
The outlook for climate work in 2026 is complicated.
Federal funding has become less predictable, which has put even more attention on what communities can accomplish locally.
The Portland Clean Energy Fund has become an important part of that work in Oregon.
Community Energy Project is helping with a newer initiative called Energy Friendly Homes, a program planned at roughly $130 million over five years. It is intended to support low-income and moderate-income households in Portland, including renters.
The organization is also starting a rooftop solar program for lower-income households.
Even there, existing conditions shape what is possible.
A household may qualify for solar, but the roof may need work first. The energy upgrade is connected to the condition of the rest of the building.
Community Energy Project is also preparing a report based on several years of low-income electrification work. In some homes, electrical monitoring equipment allows the team to compare actual energy use before and after improvements.
That gives the team a way to look at what really happened instead of simply assuming the upgrade performed the way everyone expected.
When larger systems are uncertain, local programs become one of the clearest places to keep making progress.
Trust determines whether the work can happen at all
Improving someone’s home requires more than technical knowledge.
It requires someone to open the door.
Some of the households Community Energy Project serves are navigating significant fear and uncertainty outside the project itself. That affects whether people feel comfortable attending events, sending their children to school, or answering the door when someone arrives at their home.
For an organization doing in-home work, those realities cannot be separated from the project.
“We have to be intentional,” Charity said. “We have to acknowledge where there is pain and harm.”
That means paying attention to how the organization communicates, how it advocates, and how it maintains the trust people have placed in its staff and contractors.
The same community focus showed up when the conversation turned to how people could help.
Community Energy Project has local volunteer opportunities, including hands-on weatherization work and helping assemble kits for workshops.
But the invitation was broader than that.
If you are not in Portland, find the organizations doing this work where you live.
“Go out and find a group locally that needs your support too.”
Climate resilience is a large challenge, but the response is often very local. It happens when an older house needs a new roof before it can take solar. It happens when a homeowner learns how to use a heat pump. It happens when a contractor finds something unexpected behind a wall. It happens when a community organization helps a household stay safer during extreme weather.
The conditions will look different from Oregon to Maine and everywhere in between.
The work starts with understanding the homes, people, and risks already there.
Want to learn more about Charity Fain and Community Energy Project?
You can also listen to the full episode of E3: Energy and Efficiency with Emily for more on weatherization, electrification, energy affordability, and building more resilient communities.
FAQS
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Climate resilience means responding to the conditions homes are increasingly facing, including hotter summers, humidity, extreme weather, changing energy needs, and power concerns. The specific needs depend on the climate and the existing house.
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Depending on the program and the house, the work can include insulation, weatherization, roof replacement, electrical upgrades, heat pumps, and heat pump water heaters. Community Energy Project also works on solar and electrification programs.
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Many Oregon homes historically did not need much cooling. As summers have become hotter, heat pumps are helping provide cooling while also supporting electrification goals.
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Energy audits and inspections can reveal a lot, but they cannot show every hidden condition. Rot, roof issues, electrical needs, and other conditions may only become visible once construction begins.
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New equipment may operate differently from the systems people are used to. Helping homeowners understand how systems such as heat pumps work can make it easier for them to use the equipment as intended.
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Find community-based organizations doing energy, climate, or housing work locally and ask what support they need. For people in Portland, Community Energy Project also offers volunteer opportunities.
