Reason to Vote -- A Portable Crisis in America

After three long years of working on the Gulf Coast our team has seen firsthand many well-crafted community led rebuilding projects squashed by outdated and poorly constructed policies. With funds yet to be distributed the health of families have deteriorated as they languish in FEMA trailers. Recently 7,000 of the 38,000 families in trailers were instructed to leave because of concerns of formaldehyde. This is considered a human carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We began to try and understand why these trailers were seen as a 'the only viable solution' and during our initial research we hit upon something that impacts the lives millions of children.

While an outcry has emerged over FEMA trailers, currently more than 220,000 portable trailers serve as classrooms for 6 million children in this country. For the most part, these classrooms are constructed in the same way and using the same materials as FEMA trailers. Children complain of nausea, headaches and increased asthma rates. A recent Environmental Working Group (EWG) study shows that children in portable trailers experience a risk of cancer 2 to 3 times higher than the general population.

Other issues in the EWG study showed that trailers have poor acoustics, HVAC systems with minimal ventilation, mold growth, bad lighting, site pollution through poor planning and much higher energy consumption than traditional schools. These units, ganged together on school grounds because of overcrowding, have also robbed education facilities of their playgrounds. How can we teach our children about protecting the environment, when we obviously don't care about theirs?

The truth is we do, but the way federal and state funding is currently set up it is far easier to 'procure' than to build. When a school is faced with overcrowding or crumbling infrastructure more than 78% of school principals end up using portables. These trailers are not 'cheap', they are $80-100,000. More than $17 Billion have been spent on these toxic boxes. So it's not about saving money, it's about having to negotiate poor policy, poor fiscal management and an unwillingness to come to consensus on budgets because of party politics.

Architecture is a political act and the constraints that are restricting design and construction professionals to build better environments are directly tied to broken policy and funding. If you believe in supporting innovative design for all then it is vital for you to exercise your vote in this upcoming election. And you should vote for those who have plans to change laws that restrict our ability to excel in developing energy efficient, human-centric environments for all.

Cameron Sinclair
Executive Director, Architecture for Humanity

This op-ed appears in issue 013 of Good Magazine.