Cities Where The Most Americans Can’t Afford Air Conditioning

Running air conditioning at 75°F through the summer in a 900-square-foot apartment costs roughly $500 a year, depending on the city, according to Thermomath tools. For a low-income family, as defined by HHS guidelines, that expense is crippling on top of rent and other living costs. In many cities, low-income households can’t afford rent and essentials at all.

Samantha Batko, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, recently wrote: “We have historically observed that low-income renters experience high rates of housing cost-burdens and, as a result, are particularly vulnerable to having to make choices between meeting their family’s basic needs or paying rent. And sometimes that results in eviction or homelessness.”

Several studies suggest that heat kills more people indoors than outdoors. Politico reports, “Most people die of heat-related causes inside their home.” In some cities, air conditioning is essential to health for much of the year. As the Department of Energy recently wrote, “Once considered a luxury, this invention is now an essential, allowing us to cool homes, businesses, hospitals, data centers, laboratories and other buildings vital to our economy and daily lives.”

The National Weather Service defines degree days this way: “Degree days are the difference between the daily temperature mean (high temperature plus low temperature divided by two) and 65°F.”

Hot cities, ranked by renter households unable to cover rent, essentials, and AC

City	Cooling degree days	Annual AC cost	Renter households unable to afford	Share of renters
Houston	3,100	$560	~233,000	42%
Dallas	2,800	$510	~128,000	41%
San Antonio	3,200	$580	~120,000	41%
Phoenix	4,700	$850	~108,000	35%
Jacksonville	2,700	$490	~73,000	40%
Austin	3,100	$560	~70,000	31%
Miami	4,500	$820	~67,000	49%
Memphis	2,300	$320	~63,000	47%
Charlotte	1,700	$280	~62,000	34%
Fort Worth	2,700	$490	~61,000	35%
Las Vegas	3,500	$610	~53,000	40%
Nashville	1,800	$270	~51,000	37%
Tucson	3,500	$640	~50,000	46%
Fresno	2,100	$980	~49,000	41%
Washington, DC	1,650	$370	~47,000	28%

To build our statistics, we started with a minimum annual budget for a low-income renter. We set rent at 90% of each city’s median and added $20,000 per year for basics, including food, transportation, health care, and phone service. We then estimated the cost of air-conditioning a 900-square-foot apartment in each city, using cooling degree days from the National Weather Service and local electricity prices from the EIA database.