The US is failing renters during extreme heat waves

As this summer has already made clear, extreme heat is here, and it’s poised to get worse in the coming years. Due to soaring temperatures, more and more people are also at risk for severe health concerns that come with them, including heat stroke, cardiovascular problems, and respiratory issues. That’s particularly true for already-vulnerable groups including elderly people, those who are pregnant, and those with preexisting conditions like heart disease or diabetes. In Texas — a state that often sees some of the hottest temperatures in the country — extreme heat killed more than 330 people in 2023, setting a new record. More recently, millions of people in cities like Houston have had to deal with a massive heat wave while navigating power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl. Despite the growing toll, there’s shockingly little regulation around protecting people from the effects of heat. It’s a stark contrast to how policies tend to treat the extreme cold. And while extreme cold continues to be deadlier than extreme heat, as heat waves become more dangerous, the gap between the two is likely to shrink. For example, very few states have laws that require landlords to provide air conditioning for their renters. Conversely, most states have policies that mandate the provision of heat in the winter. But even navigating what is and isn’t required around extreme heat is difficult. A comprehensive state-by-state cooling policy resource doesn’t yet exist, which speaks to the sparse landscape of regulations considering heat exposure. That’s largely due to policymakers lagging behind climate change, the opposition from landlord groups to such requirements, and the hefty cost of both energy bills and equipment that would actually address the problem. There are questions, too, over who would bear those costs, including concerns that mandates for air conditioning would simply fall on tenants in the form of higher rents. The need for adequate cooling will only become more pressing, though. And the growing prevalence of heat waves — which are getting stronger, longer, and more frequent — underscores the fact that air conditioning is no longer a luxury but a necessity and that the lack of it in people’s homes could prove fatal. There are big gaps in cooling policies Cooling policies for rental properties vary state by state, often city by city. There’s no federal law or regulation governing them, and many states don’t have them either. Although some cities like Dallas have approved ordinances mandating that landlords provide air conditioning, for instance, Texas doesn’t offer the same protections statewide. “There’s 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 include cooling. For heat, meanwhile, these policies tend to say that rental properties need to include a heating unit that keeps them above a certain temperature. “Unlike heat, cooling is really not incorporated into habitability standards or enforced in increasingly hot summers,” says Ruthy Gourevitch, a housing policy manager at the Climate and Community Project. Some state policies, like those in California and New York, require landlords to maintain air conditioning that’s already in a unit, but they don’t mandate that they provide AC in the first place. Most states have experienced scorching heat waves in recent years yet 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 dedicate most of their funds to assisting tenants in the winter to cover heating costs. About 80 percent of the funds allocated to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) are doled out in the winter, while far less is distributed in the summer, says Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. That’s largely a byproduct of the underfunding of the program, with much of the money running out after it’s been used in the winter, Wolfe says. This breakdown can leave tenants in need of such aid 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 holds true when utility companies shut off power, something they do when a customer misses their payments. Many states will offer protections to customers in these situations during the cold months of winter. Not so with the increasingly fierce, hot months of summer. According to Vox’s previous reporting, 41 states offer customer protections from utility shut-offs during the extreme cold if they fail to pay a bill, while just 18 states offer the same for extreme heat. Preventing such shut-offs is one key way to ensure that people have air conditioning access during dire spikes in temperature, Leber writes. “There are lots of areas of policy where we have this distinction historically, between cold and heat,” says Konisky. “[We’ve thought that] trying to protect people from extreme cold temperatures has been more important.” But, now, “heat is just as deadly, just as big of a concern.” These omissions could have severe consequences As extreme heat becomes more common and more hazardous to people’s health as a result, the impact of these gaps will become increasingly apparent. Low-income tenants, in particular, are disproportionately affected by such omissions, experts say, because they’re 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, a 2020 study found. 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 older people, infants, pregnant people, and those with serious health conditions like heart disease and high blood pressure. Severe complications that could result include blood clots, kidney impairment, and asthma. “With access to cooling, unfortunately, it’s heading that direction of being another one that shows the economic divide in the country and also the globe,” says Wolfe. Roughly 13 percent of US households lack air conditioning, with renters more likely to go without than homeowners. The consequences of that lack have been increasingly evident in recent years, with multiple cities like Phoenix recording record-high deaths from heat. In 2023, Phoenix experienced 30 consecutive days of heat over 110 degrees Fahrenheit and saw 645 deaths, almost double the number from the year before. A large proportion of these deaths included people who were low-income or unhoused, according to Phoenix officials. Being inside during such heat waves, without air conditioning, is particularly hazardous. “It can actually get hotter indoors than outside, and this is a really important environmental justice issue,” Leah Schinasi, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health at Drexel University, concluded in a 2024 Heliyon study. The policies that could change In addition to regulations that treat cooling systems like a necessity, experts say there needs to be more funding to cover the costs associated with them. Some cities, where temperatures have been consistently high and climbing, like Dallas, have approved ordinances in recent years to mandate that landlords provide air conditioning that keeps units under a specific temperature. Other cities, like Los Angeles, are considering similar proposals. Such policies add to a handful of laws at the state level. Seth Gertz-Billingsley, a Harvard law student who has studied heat protection policies across different states, notes that the Oregon law is one of the most expansive. That law — which passed in 2022 — allows renters to install air conditioning, and also sets up an emergency fund to help low-income tenants afford AC. It doesn’t, however, mandate that all landlords offer air conditioning. In addition to strengthening requirements for air conditioning and other cooling systems, advocates say it’s important that such policies account for the costs that would accompany these changes, so they aren’t simply passed on to tenants. Federal and state governments could offer subsidies to landlords, for instance, says Wolfe. And more funding is needed for energy assistance programs directly focused on tenants. Wolfe estimates that LIHEAP could use an additional $3 billion annually to cover the costs people face in summer. Tenant protection from rent increases and potential evictions needs to be baked into such proposals, too, says Gourevitch. Another key consideration is the need to install cooling options, like heat pumps, which are more efficient than traditional AC. The paradox of air conditioning has long been that it's crucial to help preserve people’s health during heat waves but that it simultaneously spews a sizable amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Devices like heat pumps, which move heat from indoors to outdoors and vice versa, are a more climate-friendly alternative, especially in the winter since they are vastly more efficient than conventional furnaces. To change such policies, however, lawmakers need to catch up with how quickly climate change is taking place and affecting people’s lives. Forecasts for this summer and beyond show that the world is poised to get hotter. “Many of our habitability laws and enforcement policies are many decades old, and need to be updated to confront the new reality that we live in,” says Gourevitch. Clarification: This piece was originally published on July 11 and now includes more context on heat pumps.