Community Resilience Hubs: Infrastructure That Connects and Protects

Community resilience hubs are physical spaces that are often schools, churches, or community centers equipped with solar power, battery backup, cooling and heating systems, and trusted community leadership. But just as a bridge connects two sides of a river, a resilience hub connects neighborhoods to vital support like energy, communication, and care before, during, and after a storm or disaster.

For Local Governments: A Smart, Scalable Investment

Think of resilience hubs as critical infrastructure. Like roads and water systems, they are foundational. Their benefits to local government include:

• Reduced strain on emergency response systems,
• Lower energy costs through solar and battery savings,
• Faster, more localized disaster triage and recovery, and
• Trust-building through community-centered services.

"I think that [cities] just need to start to make it a priority to invest in solar microgrids through bonds and treat it like it's no different than road improvements, or drainage improvements, or electrical improvements, or any number of other things that city government is expected to fund,” said Joshua Cox, CEO of Community Power South.

From the Together New Orleans initiative, launched in the wake of Hurricane Ida through input from Community Power South and others, the Community Lighthouse strategy began by installing solar microgrids and battery storage on neighborhood anchors like churches and community centers. These local sites are resilience hubs equipped to maintain power when the grid fails, providing continuity for charging, refrigeration, cooling, and communication. Designed as flexible public assets, they meet everyday community needs, then automatically shift into emergency mode when disaster strikes, offering energy, shelter, and critical logistics at the neighborhood level.

When Hurricane Francine grazed New Orleans last year, nine Community Lighthouses were activated within hours. Even though power outages lasted just 36 hours, those resilience hubs received and distributed oxygen tanks and clean water directly from the city because local officials knew they were accessible, powered, and trusted. “These end up being almost like satellite response centers for government, even though they are not government-related,” said Cox. “These lighthouses end up becoming these sort of aggregation centers for resources because they know that they're in neighborhoods run by people who are trusted.”

Trust is an underutilized emergency asset. And unlike temporary FEMA pods or federal staging areas, resilience hubs are already there. Already known. Already powered.

For Communities: Dignity, Safety, and Belonging

Resilience hubs are designed with and for the communities they serve. They:

• Keep seniors' medicine cold when the grid fails.
• Offer a place for families to cool down or warm up.
• Restore internet access for communication and updates.
• Provide training, care, and connection even on sunny days.

But it’s not just what they do. It’s who they serve and how.

As Dr. Johnathan Richardson, Pastor of Wesley United Methodist Church of Baton Rouge, put it, “When you have a lighthouse in your community, it serves as triage for resources, but also the people are enriched. Each lighthouse has trained individuals within it that can help with those who may not be as mobile as others. They walk the neighborhoods to do an assessment of their radius and increase the camaraderie amongst neighbors.”

In an era of weather unpredictability, that level of preemptive care isn’t just compassionate, it’s strategic. But the value of resilience hubs doesn’t begin and end with climate events. Rolling blackouts, aging grids, and unexpected disasters make their utility critical year-round.

“To know that there's a place there that will have the power because it has its own power sources as a microgrid, and when it's not in use, guess what it's feeding? It's feeding the larger grid,” said Richardson. “When you have rolling outages, and every municipality has it, you can stand up these lighthouses in ways that are not directly associated to climate events.”

Matthew Wesley Williams of Groundswell adds, "Resilience hubs earn their stripes on sunny days.” His team’s VICARS Community Center in Atlanta feeds hundreds of families weekly and serves as a local planning meeting space. Now, as a functional resilience hub with battery and solar, it offers three days of clean backup power and an estimated $7,000 a year in energy savings. That’s resilience that pays for itself.

“It's also a matter of participation in local decision-making,” said Williams. “So, we operate off the principle, ‘nothing about us without us’. We don't do community resilience hubs if there's not a community advisory council in place with whom we build and design, and drive resilience hubs. And we don't do it for folks, we do it with them.”

The Cost of Doing Nothing

When communities are left to react without preparedness, the results are predictable: longer recovery times, disproportionate harm to low-income and marginalized residents, and deeper mistrust in public systems.

Without resilience hubs, where do you send a refrigerated truck full of vaccines after a power outage? How do you locate vulnerable residents who are sheltering in place without a phone signal? Where do you charge emergency equipment when the grid is down?

We’ve seen what happens when we wait. Now is the time to act.

How to Fund the Future

Standing up a resilience hub takes strategic coordination, but it’s possible and already happening across the region. Successful models combine:

• Federal resources 
• State and municipal infrastructure bonds,
• Philanthropic capital to fill gaps, and
• Community-based ownership to drive long-term stewardship.

Cox emphasized that local governments could bond for resilience hubs the same way they do for roads and drainage. A $10 million bond, he noted, could potentially fund dozens of microgrids across a metro area, building a distributed safety net that strengthens the entire grid.

Groundswell’s model shows how blending revenue streams can bring resilience hubs online without burdening the host institution. Grants and donor capital de-risk the project upfront; tax incentives stretch dollars; and partnerships with utilities or cities keep operating costs low. “The city is very much bought in. There are multiple kinds of efforts to continue to drive the proliferation of resilience hubs throughout the city and the state,” said Williams.

Savings on energy bills and speed of recovery can be quantified. That data helps local governments make the budget case to councils, state legislators, and voters.

Why We Can’t Afford Not To

This isn’t a luxury project. It’s a lifeline. Local governments and community-based organizations that invest in resilience hubs are not just preparing for disaster; they are showing what community-centered, people-powered infrastructure can look like.

The Southeast is no stranger to storms. But what if the real emergency isn’t the next hurricane or flood or rolling blackout, but it’s how little we’ve invested in being ready?

Resilience hubs offer more than relief. They offer restoration of dignity, of connection, and of hope.

They are proof that local power isn’t just about electricity. It’s about agency, access, and the kind of leadership that shines brightest when everything else goes dark.

As municipalities across the region prepare for another season of uncertainty, one thing is clear: Resilience isn’t optional. Connection is critical. And the time to build that new bridge is now.

To learn more about opportunities for resilience or sustainability-focused technical assistance and ways to learn and receive support from other communities in the Southeast, contact the Southeast Sustainability Directors Network at
info@southeastsdn.org.