🏡💚 Historic heat waves and the damage done
This Week in Green Social Housing
July 26, 2024
This week’s historic heat wave serves as another reminder that the ravages of the climate crisis are already here. We’ve been witness to record-breaking temperatures across the Western United States, including all-time highs in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and a number of California cities from Palm Springs to Redding. In Houston, Texas, a million electrical customers remain without power due to the damages of Hurricane Beryl, as the heat index reaches triple digit temperatures.
The fact that this heat wave is historic should not be ignored, and yet it is telling that with each passing year we’ve become accustomed to records being broken. Describing extreme heat events as “historic” almost loses its meaning when the expectation is that we will experience even worse extremes next year, or maybe even next week.
But that should not desensitize us to the human and ecological toll of these events. As of Thursday, the official death toll across the West has climbed to at least 38, including 19 deaths in Santa Clara County alone.
All of this comes just a few weeks after the release of a report by California’s Department of Insurance, which goes into detail about the hundreds deaths caused by extreme heat in California over the past decade, and the estimated $7.7 billion in damages. The official count of heath-related deaths are almost certainly a huge undercount — an LA Times analysis previously reported extreme heat deaths as likely more than 6 times the official count, estimating the count to be at nearly 4,000.
And of course, we know the impacts of heat-related deaths and illness are not spread evenly. We know of at least 4 people who died this past week in Santa Clara who were homeless, and another person who was in transitional housing. I’ve written previously about how homelessness and the climate crisis converge, and how heat-related deaths and illnesses are directly tied to increases in extreme heat and increases in homelessness.
In California, it’s not just risky for those without shelter. In Sacramento, a man died inside his trailer park home with no air conditioning. In homes without cooling, the indoor heat can far exceed the already dangerous outside temperatures.
This raises another very urgent issue in California — the lack of mandatory cooling. The state already has a requirement that homes have a functional heating system capable of keeping temperatures to at least 70 degrees. But right now, no such requirement exists for cooling. Landlords do not need to provide air conditioners, cooling fans, or any other kind of health and safety precautions to their tenants, even amid extreme heat waves.
A group of community-based organizations and advocates have been fighting to rectify this. The 2022 budget deal included a section requiring the state’s Department on Housing and Community Development (HCD) to make policy recommendations to the Legislature to ensure that all residential dwelling units can maintain a recommended maximum safe indoor air temperature.
In June, HCD released a draft of its recommendations, and they were found to be woefully inadequate. They suggest a maximum indoor temperature of 82 degrees — but only to newly constructed homes. This would do nothing to impact existing homes.
As the LA Times Editorial Board asks: “Is this really the best California officials can do?”
They go on to rightfully say, “the fact that landlords may incur hundreds or even thousands of dollars in costs to retrofit their units is no reason to shy away from meaningful standards to protect people who are in unsafe conditions in their own homes.” This week is all the more evidence that halfway measures for political expediency are a tacit acceptance of the deaths and damages caused by a broken housing system and worsening climate emergency.
Advocates continue to pressure HCD to alter its recommendations, and I strongly encourage you all to support or get involved in that work (feel free to message me if you’re interested). And for everyone — stay safe, cool, and take care.
Drinking water, finding shade to stay cool. Source: AP via CalMatters
WHAT WE’RE READING
Hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, billions of dollars: The cost of extreme heat in California (Cal Matters)
Some Californians Found Dream Homes Inland. But It Sure Is Hot There. (NYTimes)
What Europe can teach us about social housing (Inside Housing)
Surprise Utility Fees Pose a Barrier to All-Electric Homes (NRDC Blog)
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