'It's inhumane.' Despite how hot it is, Tennessee renters don't have a right to air conditioning

i think it is disingenuous to represent that AC is a standard or required by law for a rental anywhere, at least in the US.

Having AC is a standard and required by law in many places in the US

https://www.rent.com/blog/keeping-cool-tenant-landlord-responsibilities-air-conditioning/

If the building becomes unlivable it’s an issue. high temps with high humidity can literally lead to heat stroke since no amount of fans will help since you literally can’t cool off even with sweating.

What that fix is, I’m not sure, but some buildings in areas of the south become ovens during heat waves and without AC people will get sick or die.

We also don’t technically require that you have a steady supply of oxygen in your apartment, but I’m guessing you’d find it unreasonable if you woke up in a vacuum.

Do we even have a law that says landlords can’t heat your apartment to 100 degrees Fahrenheit? Or a law that specifically proscribes noise machines? Do we really have to specify every fucking thing or can people just be reasonable?

It's just fucked up that an appliance that's connected to the actual rental unit doesn't need to be operational by law. I mean, if the 'fridge dies in a TN rental unit is the landlord required to fix it or does that need to be specified in the lease also?

It's just basic consumer protection, IMO. The AC comes with the apartment, the landlord should be required to maintain it.

I’d argue that if it’s a feature of the unit that was present when someone signed, then yes it should be required to work.

Of course contracts can’t cover every little thing, so it’s ridiculous to rely on them for that level of granularity. Do we need to mandate contracts have an Entry for every feature of every appliance, every piece of infrastructure, every piece of structure? No. These things were presented as being there and functioning. But we should be able to rely on things working as presented. We should have a legal right that that be true

Central Air absolutely needs to be a requirement on all new construction. And window units need to be mandatory unless requested otherwise in every bed room.

It's way too hot these days in the car majority of the US for this to be safe.

I think if the air conditioner was there when she toured the unit, it’s implicitly part of the contract.

Blame building codes and politics. Including an AC in every build could inflate the costs making it unaffordable too.

When I was 21 and moving into a shitty rental with my now wife, the place didn't have AC and we moved in during a terrible heat wave. We bought one window unit so we could at least sleep at night. Later bought one more to make the whole space livable. Those units aren't expensive, pick up an extra shift or two and you can buy one. When we moved into a place with central air we sold one and gave one away.

Counter point: do I have a right to engage in activities that cause the overall habitability of the planet to drop for vast swathes of the population?

Edit: I seem to be getting taken out of context here. I'm referring to corporations/landlords in this context, not the humans wanting to be cool.

Poor wording, rip inbox.

It's very much a selective thing. Humans vs meat machines.

I'm a meat machine. The factory I work in regularly gets over 90°F in the summer and being on long Island its also humid as fuck like 75%+.

I checked the NY state laws on factory conditions and wouldn't you know it, the fucking laws are vague as shit to allow essentially anything... "All factories must maintain a reasonable temperature and humidity." That's the fucking law. "Reasonable" is not defined anywhere in that law... I contacted my business cuck "R"epresentative about what that law means or how we determine what is reasonable, and yet again wouldn't you know, he never responded...

For ambulances, if the air conditioning is broken in the patient compartment it's considered a critical fault and the vehicle needs to be out of service. In the cab it's a minor. Maybe it's in case a judge needs to be transported.

I think we got lazy with our designs once centralized air was mainstreamed. The house my father grew up in the 1950s was designed like you mentioned. It would only allow light through during certain times of year/day with its overhanges and louvers and it jad more windows which allow more air flow....now according to him it was still a miserable place to live during the 1950s Texas summers....

Sort of. Pretty much all of suburban housing is cookie cutter houses made out of the cheapest possible material available. Really the only improvements we've made is better insulation and standardized 2 way heat pumps.

I can't imagine apartments and buildings are much better when you can just slap an AC onto anything and call it a day.

I am from the US and am living in malaysia at the moment and have traveled throughout South East Asia. I think the issue is not that our homes are built I efficiently, but that we just do not tolerate heat the same way that those in South East Asia do. We could open our windows and doors like they do in asia to create a draft and cool down, but it would still be warmer than we would like. Living in Asia is warmer than we would like in general.

I once lived in an apartment with no windows that could open. They were all sealed.

I have to wonder if the United States builds houses inefficiently on purpose.

Starting roughly during the housing boom just after WWII, the United States started building houses cheaply on purpose. One of the most noticeable changes is common house designs went from being Craftsman bungalows with high (e.g. 10') ceilings, lots of windows for good ventilation, and large roof overhangs for shade and protection from wind-driven rain, to "American Small Houses" with 8' ceilings, minimal windows and no roof overhangs.

As the owner of one of the latter (in the South, BTW), I can tell you that trying to keep it cool via cross-ventilation is largely ineffective.

If you think US houses are bad, you should see Australian houses. Barely any insulation and very draughty drafty, so they're too cold in winter and too hot in summer. A huge percentage of houses fall below the WHO's recommended safe temperature in winter.

Sure, you can use AC or heating, but it dissipates very quickly.

I'm from Melbourne, and the climate there is fairly similar to the San Francisco Bay Area where I live now. Similar winter weather, but it gets a bit hotter in summer. Bay Area houses are much more comfortable though. My US house is a 1960s build yet it has way better insulation than even a 2010s build in Australia.

There's a lot more regular breeze in Hawaii

If you've ever been to the deep south usa like Tennessee you would know that's not viable. Temps hit 100 F easily most summers. Humidity is often very high in combination with the scorching heat.

Fortunately it is definitely NOT the norm for homes to be built and/or rented that do not have AC. I've rented numerous cheap homes and apartments in the South, every one had AC. My cheapest rental home was $300/mo and it had all utilities (and central HVAC) working except Internet.

We could just…?

Maybe we could just limit the temps in other hot areas to the same as Hawaii which gets around 85° and rarely goes over 90°?

How about other parts or the US where temps regularly exceed 100° or even 110°? Those airflow designs would do little more than pipe summer heat through their homes.

You can design homes in hot areas to do well, but it’s not an airflow issue. You can do earth berms, thicker walls, much better insulation, and design windows and eaves to prevent the high summer sun from coming in windows to heat the interior. Unfortunately a lot of these kinds of efficient building styles are seen as crunchy-granola and don’t lend themselves to mass produced, cheap material, suburban tract homes and McMansions. The problem is crappy construction and our insistence on the prevalent suburban style.

My childhood friend had a farmhouse that had a back door facing west (I believe that was the direction), and when you opened the door and a specific set of windows, the whole house turned into a wind tunnel. It was pretty cool. I remember his dad saying they'd design the houses that way on purpose.

Can't. Zoning board says it's not in neighborhood character.

Downvoted as irrelevant to the topic of apartment rentals, but it’s a great separate topic with several appealing approaches that could make a big difference

I used to live in an apartment that also explicitly disallowed window units. The apartment did have a fireplace though, and I figured hot air rises, so we just shoved a window unit in there and let the hot air vent out the chimney.

It did the trick, and we never agreed not to install a fireplace unit.

While I admit I didn’t pursue it when I lived in a similar situation, there’s a case to be made that would violate electrical code. You should be able to safely plug in any appliance which meets the limitation of the outlet.

In my case, I just ignored that and got a window AC anyway. Granted it was a lot smaller than needed and even that made the lights dim, but it did plug in to a standard outlet. Probably not a good choice but the easy choice

The landlord said the old wiring could not handle it.

If wherever it was was dry, you can use an evaporative cooler. They can only cool so much, but they're far more energy efficient than an air conditioner.

You can also get low-end portable air conditioners. These are noisier and not as energy-efficient as a window unit, but you can get pretty small-capacity ones that will run on regular 120V lines, don't need 240V. It'll maybe keep a room cool.

https://www.amazon.com/GE-Conditioner-Dehumidify-Evaporation-Installation/dp/B09WSH44RQ

Here's an 850 watt one. Most microwaves will pull more power than that.

Yes. Temperature range is one of the basic requirements not just for life but for all physical phenomena.

I do not know why you are getting downvoted. The state is in the wrong here, but its a redstate so you cannot expect change on their part. making your own air conditioner is the only option.

I mean first of all, not every part of the world needs it. Second... everyone who needs it and can't afford it should also have access.

Giving it to group A does not, in cases like this, preclude group B from it as well.

Multiple things can be bad at the same time

Insulation can only do so much. It's sufficient in some countries and areas of the US, but in others it's just way too fucking hot. When it gets to 100+ degrees F during the day for multiple days in a row, insulation isn't going to keep your house cold for long.

in vietnam its not about insulation it's about having air flow through the house

Most people at least in the South just say, "Turn on the air," when talking about the AC.

Excessive heat and related stress has unpleasant and sometimes deadly effects on human physiology.

Even affecting brain function.

Panting is one way of shedding excess heat, but if it's so hot that even panting doesn't work...

Why does your version of climate change mitigation include intractable suffering from the poor and minorities?

I’m not a Calvinist, you’re not going to be able to convince me that giving myself heat exhaustion will fix climate change. Come after my AC in the 40+ C heat after private jets have been outlawed.

Part of “solving” climate change is being able to adapt or migrate to mitigate it. The planet doesn’t care what the climate is doing, it’s just the living that do so adapting to life in a changed climate is certainly part of a solution