Chicago program to light up dark streets is gateway to energy efficiency

Yahoo

2 days ago

The 79th Street corridor is one of the busiest thoroughfares on Chicago's Southeast Side. But many of its adjacent side streets are poorly lit at night, posing hazards ranging from inconvenient to dangerous.
For instance, obscured house numbers can confuse both delivery drivers and emergency responders. And higher levels of crime have been correlated with poorly lit streets, making it feel unsafe for children to play outdoors after sunset or for pedestrians to walk alone in the dark.
'For those people who are going to work in the winter at five o'clock in the morning and it's pitch black out there, yeah, they're scared. They're walking down the middle of the street,' said Sharon 'Sy' Lewis, founder and executive director of Meadows Eastside Community Resource Organization, commonly referred to by its acronym of MECRO.
But block by block, things are changing, in no small part due to Light Up the Night, administered by MECRO in collaboration with the energy-efficiency program of Chicago utility ComEd. The initiative aims to solve the problem of dark streets by outfitting the front and back of homes with energy-efficient lights that automatically turn on at night and off during the day.
Light Up the Night was launched in 2019 as a pilot program in the South Shore community of the city's South Side with an initial goal of providing Energy Star-certified LED light bulbs for up to 300 residences.
The program had to pause during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, but eventually, Light Up the Night was able to achieve that goal and then some. Lewis said it has served more than 500 homes so far, and she is pursuing funding to expand.
MECRO staff or volunteers install the bulbs into existing outlets at no charge to residents. Lewis said this proactive approach yields better results than just distributing packages of light bulbs and other energy-saving devices that may or may not get used.
For Lewis, the installation process provides an opening to talk to residents about other energy-efficient measures, like weatherization or purchasing new appliances. The upgrades, often eligible for rebates to offset the cost, can dramatically reduce utility bills. This is particularly impactful in communities like those surrounding the 79th Street corridor, in which many residents spend a big portion of their income on energy bills, largely due to predominantly older and often poorly insulated housing stock.
'Light Up the Night is not just a gateway to safety, it's a gateway to energy savings. And it starts with the little things. And because we installed it, instead of sending them an 'energy box,' then we know that it's working. When you drive down that street, you know that it's working, you see that impact,' Lewis said.
A minimum of 75% participation is required per block, and each homeowner or renter must provide consent before installation can begin, Lewis said.
'If the average block has 36 homes on it, if we get 15 on each side, at minimum, we have really created an impact for the block,' Lewis said. 'So now you have the whole community lighting up at once [at dusk], and then they all go off in the morning.'
A legacy of segregation and disinvestment has left residents of predominantly Black communities like the Southeast Side with a strong distrust of outsiders. As a lifelong resident and visible activist, Lewis has an advantage when it comes to engaging with residents, but obtaining initial buy-in around South Shore was still a challenge.
'Getting people to sign up, that was a problem because we can't not have data on where we are leaving the lights. … [But] people didn't want to provide their information,' Lewis said.
To get the program up and running, Lewis worked with neighborhood block clubs to overcome apprehension and to identify particular streets in the South Shore community that would benefit the most from the new lights. She also worked with other community organizations, especially those focused on violence prevention.
It was easier to start up the program in Austin, a neighborhood on the city's West Side, where, also in 2019, Lewis collaborated with Steve Robinson, executive director of the Northwest Austin Council, with whom she had worked previously on a number of initiatives. Chicago police officers assigned to that community were also enthusiastic about the program, and helped Lewis identify blocks where adding lights would be especially impactful, she said.
'[Robinson] invited me over there. It was a whole change. It was a sea change. It was amazing. [The police] were excited about it. They were looking forward to the change we were doing,' Lewis said.
Wherever it has been implemented, this small-scale program has had an outsized positive impact, Lewis said. Additional lighting on front porches and entryways also enhances safety for visitors to the community, including service providers like mail carriers, delivery people, and rideshare drivers. Likewise, floodlights installed at the rear of a home or apartment building add to the ambient lighting in often dark alleyways, which results in fewer garage break-ins and instances of illegal dumping of garbage, Lewis said.
MECRO does much more than install lights. The organization also helps guide new and existing small business owners, conducting educational seminars and offering technical assistance. And it provides residents with referrals for energy-efficiency improvements and other sustainability-related resources they might not otherwise know about.
But Light Up the Night remains part of the organization's core mission.
While illuminating areas that used to be dark is the program's first objective, once the new bulbs have replaced older, less-efficient lights, the lower utility bills can be eye-opening for residents.
When people see those savings, 'they start thinking, 'Well, what if I get all energy-efficiency light bulbs? Hmm. Okay, now my bill has gone really down. What if I do the weatherization program? Now my bill is really down,'' Lewis said.