It is really, really hot in many parts of the United States, and only getting hotter. Some 94 million people across the U.S. have been under heat advisories in the past week thanks to a high-pressure weather system known as a heat dome. This year could end up being the warmest year on record, topping a record broken only last year. Just about anywhere you go in the Northern Hemisphere is scorching. Record temperatures in Asia and Europe are estimated to have killed hundreds, and potentially thousands, per Reuters. More than 1,000 pilgrims taking part in this year’s Hajj, to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, have succumbed to the heat as highs soared to 125 degrees at the city’s Grand Mosque. Highs in Delhi, India, have breached 104 degrees since May, peaking at 122 degrees; more than 100 people are believed to have died of heat-related causes across the country in recent months. Here in the world’s wealthiest country, protection from the heat is far from guaranteed, either—especially if you happen to be among the 44 million households that rent their homes.
Tenants have different protections depending on the type of housing they live in and where it is. When it comes to temperatures, landlords are mostly required by state or local regulations to keep units from dropping below a certain temperature in the winter. Making sure they actually do that is harder, of course. New York City, for instance, has some of the country’s strongest measures for enforcing these kinds of habitability rules. Nonetheless, the building where I used to live in Crown Heights—part of the Crown Heights Tenants Union—had to go on rent strike and take our landlords to court for turning off the heat for two winters in a row. The shut-off was their attempt to oust longtime residents in rent-regulated apartments so owners could gut-renovate them and bring in tenants who’d pay double or triple the price.
There are fewer protections for keeping renters’ homes cool—or to prevent landlords from trying to force them out by making those homes excruciatingly hot. Certain historically hotter municipalities have established cooling standards and maximum temperature ordinances, in some cases building on state requirements. They’re getting warmer. And as places where extreme temperatures have been relatively rare experience longer, more frequent, and hotter heat waves as a result of the climate crisis too, already-lax requirements for landlords to keep tenants safe in their homes are being pushed to the limit.
Jovana Morales, the Fresno-based housing policy director of the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, worked to pass a bill through the California legislature that would have required rental units be able to maintain safe indoor air temperatures. That failed to advance in the Senate in 2022, but elements of the measures were incorporated into the state budget. Currently, California’s Department of Housing and Community Development, or HCD, is in the process of developing a maximum indoor temperature standard and accompanying policy recommendations to send back to legislators in 2025.