Professor Larissa Larsen works to protect vulnerable populations against the consequences of dangerous indoor temperatures.
Larissa Larsen’s grandmother lived in an apartment building with no air conditioning. She wouldn’t cook hot dinners at certain times and closed the drapes to try and keep out the heat. Reflecting on that experience, Larsen says many older people live in substandard homes, particularly in Rust Belt cities, where they can’t afford air conditioning. “The impacts are really going to be significant as we have more extreme heat,” she says.
The potentially deadly consequences of extreme heat on vulnerable populations is prompting Larsen, a professor of urban and regional planning at Taubman College, to research and advocate for solutions.
In a 2022 study, Larsen interviewed 50 mostly low-income families in Detroit and found that only 35 percent had working air conditioning and could afford to use it. By contrast, that number was much higher in Atlanta (57 percent) and Phoenix (95 percent). “It was a really striking statistic,” she says. Larsen initially focused her research on outdoor temperatures and hadn’t considered indoor temperatures and the factors influencing them. “This is the first time I measured temperatures indoors and realized there’s a whole world of issues that we’re not looking at yet very carefully.”
In 2023, about 2,300 people died from exposure to extreme heat in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and this number is expected to increase as heat waves become more pervasive. Larsen says the focus needs to shift
from ensuring that people don’t get too cold in the winter to better understanding the scope of those who are suffering from extreme heat.
To get a better handle on the situation, she is trying to convince government officials to include a question on the U.S. Census American Community Survey asking people if they have working air conditioning and if they can afford to run it. She met with officials from the Department of Health and Human Services in April and again in September to advocate for the change. Having that information, she notes, “will enable anybody who can access Census data to better understand who’s at risk.”
When a flood, hurricane, or tornado hits, it’s easy to see the damage. But heat is invisible, Larsen explains, and so having data on air conditioning will help elevate its importance. In particular, it could provide crucial information on which parts of a city have vulnerable individuals and low prevalence of air conditioning. That way, during an extreme heat wave, city officials could deploy people door to door to conduct wellness checks and transport residents to cooling centers by bus if necessary. “It would help people target who is likely to die,” she says. In the long term, it would help cities decide where to prioritize home weatherization improvements.
One of Larsen’s studies indicates that a significant amount of weatherization is needed in Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Milwaukee. Many people have an old home that is not protecting them from the elements, she says. The study recommends money be spent through the federal Weatherization Assistance Program to make the homes more energy efficient to better protect residents from unsafe indoor temperatures. And because many people get deferred from the weatherization program because their roofs need fixing, she also advocates for reducing the program’s criteria for housing quality. “I look back to what happened in Chicago in 1995 when 739 people died as a result of elevated temperatures, with a majority in their homes,” she says. “I think we could see repeat happenings of this type, which is really frightening.”
Planners typically turn towards methods like planting shade-providing trees to provide relief from heat. But Larsen says they need to think about the indoor environment as well. “Urban planners need to recognize that the next step is the home” and making sure that residences are “efficient, comfortable and safe.”
But even if vulnerable populations can afford to run their air conditioning, that wouldn’t matter during power outages. A separate study published by Larsen last year shows that a multiday blackout during a heat wave “could more than double the estimated rate of heat-related mortality” across Atlanta, Phoenix, and Detroit. The study calls for a more resilient electrical grid and greater use of tree canopies and high albedo roofing materials — reflective surfaces that don’t hold the heat. Larsen says it’s important to incorporate these types of passive cooling strategies into new buildings and building repairs.
Together, all of these measures — affordable air conditioning, better-built homes, and more reliable electricity — could dramatically reduce the mortality rate during extreme heat, Larsen says.
“We used to think of air conditioning as a luxury item, but in a growing number of areas, it has become a necessity, especially for vulnerable people,” she says. “It’s important that we continue focusing on this issue and the other solutions to dangerous indoor temperatures so that we don’t lose more people.”
