Marvin Cox, community outreach director with the Metropolitan Action Commission on June 25, in Nashville. As temperatures reached into the upper 90s, the Metro Action Commission was offering free window AC units to seniors, families with young children and people with medical conditions.
Much public housing was built before central air was common, and at a time when it was not necessary in many parts of the country. Yet even asgrow more intense and frequent, public housing residents who want an AC unit must buy it themselves. And some who do often hesitate to use it because of the added cost to their electric bill.
“This is a very small step,” says Daniel Carpenter-Gold, a staff attorney with the Public Health Law Center in St. Paul, Minn. “It doesn't do anything if the resident doesn't have air conditioning or some other form of cooling.” Carpenter-Gold says a public housing agency is functionally a landlord, inherently a tricky relationship, and that could make this a hard ask for some people. What’s more, he says it’s not clear how the message of this new option will be put out to people.