Ben Gallegos sits on the porch of his family's home in the Globeville neighborhood with his dog, Coca Smiles, as the daytime high temperature soars toward triple digits, Thursday, July 27, 2023, in north Denver. Gallegos has taken several measures to keep his home cool in spite of lacking central air conditioning. – Gallegos, like many in the nation's poorest neighborhoods, doesn't have air conditioning.
“To explain it fairly simply: Heat kills,” said Kristie Ebi, a University of Washington professor who researches heat and health. “Once the heat wave starts, mortality starts in about 24 hours." So the 45-year-old wets her hair, cooks outside on a propane grill and keeps the lights off indoors. She's taken the bus to the library to cool off. At night she flips the box unit on, hauling her bed into the room where it’s located to sleep.
“So people are engaging in coping mechanisms, like they’re turning on their air conditioners later and leaving their homes hotter,” Graff said. About one in 10 U.S. households have no air conditioning, a disparity compounded for marginalized groups, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. Less than 4% of Detroit's white households don't have air conditioning; it's 15% for Black households.
“So it was like cool in one room and a heat stroke in another,” Lewis said. For the first time, Lewis now has air conditioning through a local non-profit, she said. “We don’t have to sleep or eat in the same room, we are able to come out, sit at the dining room table, eat like a family.", mostly elderly people without air conditioning, in the Portland area, Oregon passed a law prohibiting landlords from placing blanket bans on air conditioning units.
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