In Miami, air-conditioning isn’t a luxury — and long overdue in public housing | Opinion

As Florida becomes hotter and summer lasts longer, air-conditioning isn’t a luxury. It’s a must, especially for the elderly or ill.

So the announcement by Miami-Dade County last week that it will spend $2.3 million in American Rescue Plan money to install air conditioners in about 1,700 federal public housing units managed by the county is both a relief to those residents and a potentially life-saving action.

Many of us in Miami dread going without air conditioning for a week or two after a hurricane. But some people in public housing have been suffering without the hope that a power truck would arrive and provide respite. As Morris Copeland, the county administrator overseeing housing, said during the announcement, air conditioning in South Florida “should be a right, not an amenity.”

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has made climate and, with it, the risks associated with increasing heat in South Florida, priorities for the county. She hired a chief heat officer, Jane Gilbert, to focus full time on helping people avoid high temperatures. Miami has even begun announcing an official “heat season” from May to October, as a way to educate the public on how to manage elevated temperatures safely. Those are important moves, designed to help our community in an increasingly warm future.

But until now, more than 1,000 older public housing apartments and homes still didn’t have air-conditioning. That’s a holdover from a federal policy that doesn’t require cooling systems in those units — even in the Sun Belt. And the problem existed here even though, since 2001, the county has required that developers include A/C when they are building new housing.

Within 90 days, as the Miami Herald reported, the county will install the new A/C units in all but a handful of the 8,000 public-housing units Miami-Dade manages for the federal government. Those last units without air-conditioning are in complexes being redeveloped. The county will help residents in those homes get temporary air-conditioning units until the new buildings are finished.

Residents of public housing can purchase their own air-conditioning units, if they can afford it. And Miami has helped out: In 2018, the city provided 51 units in some county-run housing.

The South Florida region already gets about 50 days a year when — using the “heat index” calculation of humidity plus temperature — it feels as though it’s over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A recent report predicted that there will be additional 40 days a year like that by the middle of the century. That will pose an increasing risk, especially for outdoor workers. And studies have show that heat worsens many medical issues, from heart and lung issues to mental health. Combating heat requires planning and investment, such as new shaded county bus shelters, cooling stations and more trees, efforts that are under way.

And if we needed any more evidence that this effort is important, there’s this: Levine Cava announced the installation of the new air-conditioning units on a day when Miami International Airport recorded a high of 88 degrees, a late November record.

The installation of air-conditioning units in public housing is much needed — and much overdue.