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By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde, CalMatters
During the most recent heat wave in Los Angeles, Memphis Perez, his wife, three children and elderly mother crammed into a bedroom, the only room in their apartment with air conditioning. He paid for the air conditioner himself, but thinks his landlord should have provided one instead.
“It’s like being inside a toaster,” Perez said. Temperatures reached the upper nineties; it was sweltering for days. “It’s only fair for them to do their part and provide a survivable experience in an apartment,” he added.
But it is unlikely the state Legislature will make that happen this year, despite a report from the California Department of Housing and Community Development recommending that the state set a maximum indoor temperature standard of 82 degrees for all homes.
Sen. Henry Stern, a Los Angeles Democrat, authored a bill that would make it a state policy that residents must be afforded comfortable temperatures in the dwellings they rent. The bill, however, was amended to remove any specific temperature goal. A second bill by Assemblymember Damon Connolly, a San Rafael Democrat, would have prohibited mobile home landlords from banning air conditioners.
Both measures face a final hearing today, as they come out of suspense files. If they fail to pass today, they are dead for the year.
The two proposals are the latest battlefronts in the ongoing conflict over how California adapts to climate-driven heat in homes. Housing and environmental advocates want the state to set a standard that will offer immediate relief, especially for low-income renters, who tend to live in older and less-efficient buildings.
Landlords argue that it’s not fair to force them them to pay the cost of upgrading existing buildings to solve a problem they didn’t cause. Their opposition has blocked action toward a policy in the past.
“There’s a lack of political will, and also [the landlord groups] do hold a lot of influence,” said Jovana Morales-Tilgren, housing policy coordinator for Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. “They have a lot of funding to, in not so many words, kill a bill. That really limits what advocates can do.”
Landlords “aren’t opposed” to rules – but still block them
Lawmakers tried before to address rising heat with a temperature-specific cooling standard for homes and apartments.
In 2022, former assemblymember Richard Bloom tried to set rules mandating cooling standards for new and existing units. Stern was a co-author of the bill.
Fighting the bill aggressively, the California Apartment Association spent $1.2 million, and the California Building Industry Association spent $1.6 million on lobbying overall that year.
Both the apartment owners and the building association want more research and smaller steps toward upgrading decades-old housing stock, said Bob Raymer, a lobbyist who represents them. The groups also don’t want the full responsibility of paying for it.
“Let me be clear. We’re not opposed to cooling standards,” Raymer said.
But three years ago, Bloom and his co-authors amended the bill to request $5 million to have the state housing department study the potential for rules, incentives and other forms of relief. The apartment association and the building association opposed that, too. After the bill passed, they wrote a letter asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto the proposal.
That study resulted in the report that influenced Stern’s bill. He said he introduced a follow-up proposal he felt at the time might be easier to attain – one that only included a temperature standard for newly built housing.
Renter advocates call the original language of Stern’s current bill misguided. New homes and apartments are built to more energy-efficient codes, so they have less of a cooling problem.
That wouldn’t protect the low income renters who need cooling the most.
“In conversations with (Stern) and his staff we were able to amend it to force the state to start looking at this in a broader way,” said Morales-Tilgren.
Stern acknowledged his amendment replaced a rule with a more aspirational policy.
“I will concede it’s a little less pointed and heavy handed than past efforts,” Stern said. “But we thought it’s something we can pass this year.”
Unlike 2022, the major apartment and building associations aren’t formally opposing Stern’s current bill.
Debra Carlton, a spokesperson for the California Apartment Association, says the group “has been in conversations with the senator.” While apartment owners “understand the importance of addressing extreme heat, we think it feels unnecessary,” she said.
The Southern California Rental Housing Association, however, is formally opposing Stern’s bill. Spokeswoman Molly Kirkland said the organization sees the bill as a potential precursor to a retrofit mandate, one that rental owners fear could lead to unexpected costs.
“It’s not just putting in air conditioning or a cooler,” Kirkland said. “If it becomes a really substantial remodel as a result of the retrofit, then it could mean terminating tenancy to accomplish that.”
Stern still wants a temperature-based cooling standard, and believes his bill will guide state policy in that direction. “These are the political realities of how big of a fight you want to pick with the landlord lobby right out the gate,” he added.
Living in a crowded, old, and uninsulated Lincoln Heights apartment with his extended family, Perez is tired of waiting for help.
“The temperatures here in L.A. are rising every year,” he said.
Negotiating costs for a complicated solution
As landlords, renters and the state tussle over who pays the cost of adaptation, experts agree the solution likely will include a mix of strategies.
Advocates and landlords acknowledge that cooling all of California’s homes would be extremely expensive, and would require the state to offer financial incentives to make it possible. But facing a $20 billion state budget deficit, lawmakers may be hesitant to spend the money.
It could cost between $6,000 and $13,000 per unit to install heat pumps, not including electrical panel upgrades if needed, said Maya Ofek, a research analyst with the UCLA Center for Sustainable Communities.
With the state’s help through no interest loans, grants, or tax credits – landlords might be able to cool one room in every residential unit in the state, said Raymer, the lobbyist for the landlord and building groups. But requiring landlords to cool every building in the state without any help is unrealistic, he said.
Stephanie Pincetl, director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, doesn’t have a position on Stern’s bill. But she agrees with Raymer on that last point. The state needs more data about the housing stock and energy efficient cooling to create a strong policy, she said.
“Simply requiring landlords to make these buildings more thermally performing is kind of a cheap way to do this, relative to the responsibility of the state, which has only recently had better building codes,” she said. “It’s a very difficult situation that has no easy answers at all.”
Locals lead, with the state left behind
Five years ago, during a brutal heat wave, Maria Serafin set up a portable air conditioner in her living room to cool her family. The next month, after a $500 electricity bill, she gave the air conditioner away; she’s a renter in an affordable housing community. She just has fans now.
Serafin is one of the many Californians who overwhelmingly support setting a statewide cooling standard, according to a 2023 UC Berkeley poll.
In the absence of a statewide rule, cities and counties have begun to take action on residential heat problems. Two years ago, Palm Springs required property owners to provide cooling to maintain a maximum temperature of 80 degrees.
Earlier this month Los Angeles County passed an ordinance requiring large landlords to maintain homes in unincorporated areas of the county at or below 82 degrees starting in 2027. Local leaders defied opposition from landlord associations, who made many of the same arguments they made to the state.
Serafin lives in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Wilmington. L.A. has studied the possibility of requiring air conditioning in homes, but the city has no temperature-specific standard. Serafin said if city officials made such a rule, it would help.
“It’s like hell,” she said. “My head hurts. I feel fatigued and anxious. I can’t cook or do housework, because I start to feel desperate and irritable.”
Stern said he hopes that local action builds momentum as the state tries to figure out its strategy.
“There’s so many other things we’re dealing with: wildfire, utilities, oil, the cap and trade program,” Stern said. “This is the silent killer. And it always gets left behind.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
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Not only an additional cost to the landlord but a major cost to the tenant for the cost for electrical usage. And an additional load on the electrical grid. There are relative inexpensive portable units available at Home Depot and other home supply stores but they are costly to run for an extended time. If the purpose of the intended law is to protect the lower socially economic people in our state how do they purpose to pay for the cost of electrical usage? If they struggle to afford rent and food, they surely won’t be able to afford to run an AC unit.
You know this would have ended up with the usual unintended consequences. If I had to rewire a unit to install AC as a landlord, I’d make sure to include a meter, resulting in higher overall costs for every tenant.
It’s interesting to compare how the United States views air-conditioning versus other countries. I was in Italy over the summer and it was very hot there – over 100° F, yet most places did not have air-conditioning! Even the Vatican didn’t have air-conditioning! We took a taxi and the taxi driver did not turn on the air conditioning. They just don’t see it as important and just adapt to the temperature.
Until the temperature kills you.
Read the comment. 100F temp is not going to “kill you.” AC is not an essential life safety matter until we get really up there for sustained periods without shade. I think the comment of SBsunny is to point out that many of us have become spoiled and unable to separate what is nice from what is necessary. This leads to discounting people without the necessary stuff when they ask for assistance.
Increasingly sustained periods of high temperatures, reaching life-threatening levels, are our future, thanks to fossil fuels. That twit was implying that one can just “adapt” to such conditions. That is total idiocy, promulgated by someone with an anti-science agenda.
RHS – Heat can and does kill thousands of people, mostly in their own homes, every year around the world. That’s just a well known fact. Also, the comment you’re taking too literally actually says “OVER 100.”
But yes, people have died from 100 degree heat. Not sure why this is such an abstract concept to some here.
Sounds like the state should just pay all tenants rents.
CA just provide free rent to all tenants
Talk about government overreach.
Talk about setting up a blatantly stupid strawman argument.
He believes in chemtrails … not the sharpest tool in the shed.
BEES – I don’t post anonymously. Nice try though.
When one doesn’t fully understand the world around them , they make arguments similar to this.
SBGetLong-
Air Conditioning is government overreach? Way to play the victim card. OK, then what about sending federalized troops to democratic cities, stealing money appropriated by congress, using emergency declarations as power grabs, dismantling independent watch dogs, monetizing the presidency, giving government contracts to cronies, halting prosecutions of legal donors, or targeting political enemies with state power? Your upset at air conditioning? Give me a break.
*you’re