As this summer already made clear extreme heat is here, and it’s set to get worse in the coming years.
As a result of rising temperatures, more and more people are also at risk of serious health concerns that come with it, including heat stroke, cardiovascular problems and respiratory problems. It is especially true for already-vulnerable groups including the elderly, those who are pregnant, and those with pre-existing conditions such as heart disease or diabetes.
In Texas — a state that often sees some of the hottest temperatures in the country — extreme heat is dead more than 330 people in 2023, setting a new record. More recently, millions of people in cities like Houston had to deal with a massive heat wave while the navigation causes power outages by Hurricane Beryl.
Despite the growing toll, there is shockingly little regulation around protecting people from the effects of heat. This is a stark contrast to how policies tend to treat the extreme cold. And while extreme cold continues deadlier than extreme heatas heat waves become more dangerous, the gap between the two is likely to shrink.
For example, very few states have laws requiring landlords to provide air conditioning for their tenants. Conversely, most states have policies mandating the provision of heat in winter. But even navigating what is and isn’t necessary around extreme heat is difficult. A comprehensive state-by-state cooling policy resource does not yet exist, which speaks to the sparse landscape of regulations that consider heat exposure.
This is largely due to policy makers behind climate change, the opposition of lessor groups to such requirements, and the hefty cost of both energy bills and equipment that would actually address the problem. There are also questions about who will bear those costs, including concerns that air-conditioning mandates will simply fall on tenants in the form of higher rents.
However, the need for adequate cooling will only become more urgent. And the growing incidence of heat waves – which becomes stronger, longer and more frequent — underlines the fact that air conditioning is no longer a luxury, but a necessity and that the lack of it in people’s homes can be fatal.
There are major gaps in cooling policies
Cooling policies for rental properties vary from state to state, often city to city. There is no federal law or regulation governing them, and many states do not have them either. Although some cities like Dallas have passed ordinances requiring landlords to provide air conditioning, for example, Texas does not provide the same protection nationwide.
“There is no baseline right to air conditioning or anything like that at the federal level,” David Konisky, Indiana University’s co-director of the Energy Justice Lab, told Vox.
As a result, such measures – known as habitability laws – are highly dependent on where people live. These laws, which determine what requirements a landlord must meet for the housing they provide, rarely includes refrigeration. For heat, meanwhile, these policies tend to say that rental properties must include a heating unit that keeps them above a certain temperature.
“Unlike heat, cooling really isn’t included in habitability standards or enforced in increasingly hot summers,” says Ruthy Gourevitch, a housing policy manager at the Climate and Community Project.
Some government policies, such as those in California and New York, requires landlords to maintain air conditioning already in a unit, but they do not require them to provide AC in the first place. Most states have experienced scorching heat waves in recent years, but many still have no state law on the books to require cooling systems.
A similar dynamic is evident when it comes to federal energy assistance programs, which often devote most of their funds to assisting renters in the winter to cover heating costs. About 80 percent of the funds allocated to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) are distributed in the winter, while much less is distributed in the summer, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. That’s largely a byproduct of the program being underfunded, with much of the money running out after being used in the winter, Wolfe says.
This collapse could leave tenants who need such help struggling to cover costs in the summer, even if they have access to air conditioning.
As Rebecca Leber previously reported for Vox, this same trend applies when utility companies turn off power, something they do when a customer misses their payments. Many states will offer protection to customers in these situations during the cold months of winter. Not so with the increasingly angrier, hotter months of summer. According to Vox’s previous reporting41 states offer customers protection against utility shutdowns during the extreme cold if they fail to pay a bill, while only 18 states offer the same for extreme heat.
Preventing such shutdowns is one key way to ensure people have access to air conditioning during severe temperature spikes, Leber writes.
“There are many policy areas where historically we have this distinction between cold and heat,” says Konisky. “[We’ve thought that] It was more important to try to protect people from extreme cold temperatures.” But now, “heat is just as deadly, just as much of a concern.”
These omissions can have serious consequences
As extreme heat becomes more common and dangerous to people’s health as a result, the impact of these gaps will become increasingly apparent.
Low-income renters in particular are disproportionately affected by such omissions, experts say, because they are less likely to be able to afford their own cooling systems. Black Americans are also more likely to live in places where they are exposed to extreme heat, Found a 2020 study. According to research by climate and health scientists Adrienne Hollis and Kristy Dahl, “counties with large African-American populations are exposed to extreme temperatures two to three more days per year than those counties with smaller African-American populations.”
The risks of being indoors without air conditioning or other cooling options during these heat waves are high, especially for the elderly, infants, pregnant people and those with serious health conditions such as heart disease and high blood pressure. Serious complications that can arise include blood clots, kidney failure and asthma.
“With access to cooling, it is unfortunately going in that direction to be another one that shows the economic divide in the country and also the world,” says Wolfe. About 13 percent of American households lack air conditioning, with renters more likely to go without than homeowners.
The consequences of that lack have become increasingly apparent in recent years, with several cities such as Phoenix record high heat deaths recorded. In 2023, Phoenix experienced 30 consecutive days of heat over 110 degrees Fahrenheit and saw 645 deaths, nearly double the number from the year before. A large proportion of these deaths included people who were low-income or homeless, according to Phoenix officials.
Being inside during such heat waves, without air conditioning, is particularly dangerous.
“It can actually get hotter inside than outside, and that’s a very important environmental justice issue,” Leah Schinasi, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health at Drexel University, said. closed in a 2024 Heliyon study.
The policy that can change
In addition to regulations that treat cooling systems as a necessity, experts believe there should be more funding to cover the costs associated with them.
Some cities, where temperatures have been consistently high and rising, such as Dallas, have passed ordinances in recent years to mandate that landlords provide air conditioning that keeps units below a specific temperature. Other cities, such as Los Angelesconsider similar suggestions.
Such policies complement a handful of state-level laws.
Seth Gertz-Billingsley, a Harvard law student who has studied heat protection policies across states, notes that the Oregon law is one of the most extensive. that law – which passed in 2022 – allows tenants to install air conditioning, and also establishes an emergency fund to help low-income tenants afford AC. However, it does not require all landlords to offer air conditioning.
In addition to strengthening requirements for air conditioning and other cooling systems, advocates say it is important that such policies account for the costs that would accompany these changes, so they are not simply passed on to tenants.
For example, federal and state governments can offer subsidies to landlords, Wolfe says. And more funding is needed for energy assistance programs focused directly on renters.Wolfe estimates that LIHEAP could use an additional $3 billion annually to cover the costs people face in the summer. Tenant protections against rent increases and possible evictions should be baked into such proposals, too, Gourevitch says.
Another important consideration is the need to install cooling options, such as heat pumps, which are more efficient than traditional AC. The paradox of air conditioning has long been that it is essential to help preserve people’s health during heat waves, but at the same time it spews a significant amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Devices such as heat pumps, which move heat from inside to outside and vice versa, are a more climate-friendly alternative, especially in winter, as they are very more efficient than conventional furnaces.
However, to change such policies, lawmakers must catch up with how quickly climate change is happening and affecting people’s lives. Predictions for this summer and further shows that the world is poised to get warmer.
“Many of our habitability laws and enforcement policies are many decades old, and need to be updated to confront the new reality we live in,” says Gourevitch.
