Diana Hernández Brings It All Home

Diana Hernández, assistant professor of Sociomedical Sciences, sees the world—especially her native South Bronx—through the lens of the home. Growing up in a Section 8 apartment, she watched her mother become a homeowner, illustrating what she later learned in school: that housing can be a route to move into better opportunity.  

“Housing can be a launching pad, a chance to live well,” says Hernández. “I grew up in a disadvantaged community that still, 30-odd years later, faces many of the same issues of concentrated poverty, health disparities, and environmental burdens. All of the facets of my work as a researcher, a sociologist, a landlord, a neighbor, are very much alive and present in this neighborhood that somehow sits on my heart.”

Hernández’s current research project centers around smoke-free housing—the last frontier in the public health war on tobacco’s harmful effects. In New York City, smoking is regulated in most places: bars and restaurants, public spaces like parks and beaches, even Times Square. There is no citywide ban on smoking in apartment buildings or homes, though most newer buildings have banned tobacco. In her study, Hernández is looking at compliance and enforcement of smoke-free policies in 12 affordable housing developments with more than 900 residential units.

“In affordable housing settings, it’s a balancing act,” she says. “We want to reduce smoking to create better health outcomes, but we don’t want these kinds of policies to threaten the residents’ sense of housing stability. How do we reduce harm, get buy-in from the residents and make sure the rules are enforced in a humane way? These are the questions we’re looking to answer.”

In addition to the academic and policy implications of Hernández’s work, its door-to-door nature also serves as a form of community-organizing and awareness-raising—bridging the gap between research and practice. A trained sociologist, she and her team are often the ones providing information to residents about their buildings’ fuel sources or energy efficient practices, and how these factors can impact their health. This ground-level experience was at the root of her work on “energy insecurity,” where Hernández’s cutting-edge research has documented how housing conditions and the inability to pay for household energy harm people where they live.

While she could afford to live elsewhere, Hernández has chosen to reside and invest as a building owner in her home neighborhood. “People who are upwardly mobile tend to do a lot to distance themselves from the places that shaped their disadvantage,” she says. “The fact that I live and promote living in my old neighborhood is a small intervention on its own.”

The South Bronx is what she describes as a “pre-gentrification” neighborhood—and it’s starting to feel the pressures of development. While Hernández wants to see investment to improve her community, she worries that revitalization will come at the cost of pricing long-time residents out of their homes.

“I don’t know the right answer, but for me, the antidote to gentrification lies in coexistence,” says Hernández. “That would be the ideal situation: if we didn’t concentrate poverty and we didn’t concentrate wealth and opportunity, if we had people of different economic means and professional status, racial and ethnic backgrounds, all send their children to the same schools, to play in the same parks, to coexist.”

Inside and outside the classroom, Hernández often sees students struggle with their place in the community: as privileged members of gentrifying Washington Heights, many are both uncomfortable about their role in the neighborhood changes and unsure about how to take action. Echoing comments from her new colleague in Sociomedical Sciences, Raygine DiAquoi, director of the School’s Office of Diversity Culture and Inclusion, she urges students and others in the Mailman community not to let discomfort paralyze them.

“What if discomfort was the thing that propelled people to do more, to take action in service of the communities where we live, study, and work?” asks Hernández. She offered some ways to do just that: “Be a good neighbor: shop at mom-and-pop stores, interact with people, advocate for affordable housing, find out about Columbia’s neighborhood preservation plans. You can’t just stay in your safe zones, because that can perpetuate the very inequalities that you’re frustrated by. You have to be tough-skinned and still do your part to be part of the change you hope to see.”