i9: Iowa landlords not required to provide air conditioning

BURLINGTON, Iowa (KCRG) – Another heatwave is here, but not everyone in Iowa has access to adequate cooling in their homes. An i9 investigation reveals that, in Iowa, there are no laws requiring that access.

Kody Hardin is a renter in Burlington who lives with his girlfriend and their 4-month-son.

Hardin’s home is modified with the family’s efforts to keep cool. Curtains block off the western part of the house where the afternoon sun hits hardest. In the bedroom, a box fan sits in a laundry hamper, which is placed right in front of a window unit air conditioner. The jerry-rigged set up is the main cooling system in the part of the house that Hardin rents.

“I spent time in the service. I know what hot is. I’ve been in hot temps. But this isn’t something we want to live in everyday,” said Hardin.

On the day TV9 visited Hardin and his son Khyler, the thermostat in the living room read 79 degrees. Hardin said, in heat waves, it can get even hotter.

“It’s 80 degrees in here, sometimes its 90 degrees in here.”

During the summer, Hardin says he, his son, and girlfriend basically live in the bedroom trying to stay cool. Getting better air conditioning would mean costly upgrades from his landlord.

“I’ve reached out to the landlords and the maintenance guy before in regards to maybe getting some central air put in or something just better in general,” said Hardin.

TV9 reached out to Hardin’s landlord, but we have not yet received a comment.

Air conditioning is expensive to install and maintain, and it’s also not a right for renters.

“In Iowa, landlords aren’t required to provide air conditioning,” said Patrick Bigsby, a staff attorney with Iowa Legal Aid. Bigsby said the law only stipulated that if landlords do provide air conditioning, they maintain it in good and safe working order.

That’s in contrast to winter, when Iowa landlords are required to maintain adequate heating systems, deemed just as essential as running water.

“We worry historically more about keeping people warm in winter. We have policies to do that. We haven’t invoked policies like that for extreme heat. We need to do so,” said Peter Thorne, a professor in the department of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Iowa.

With climate change, Iowa State scientists say the state’s average temperature is up about 1.5 degrees in the last 15 years. That means we’ve had hotter summers and more heat waves.

“Unusually hot summers are becoming more common,” said Thorne.

That’s why Thorne said access to adequate cooling is becoming a public health crisis.

“Heat and extreme heat is basically the biggest killer of people in terms of weather-related disasters,” he said.

The U.S. has already seen the impact of dangerous heat. At least 16 people died of heat-related issues during a heat wave this month in Oregon, a state not used to extreme heat.

Some states like Arizona have made it a law: air conditioning is an essential service that landlords must provide to tenants.

A similar law in Iowa would benefit people like Hardin, who knows he won’t see relief until fall.

“We really don’t know what to do. Just waiting for a miracle,” said Hardin.

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