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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.

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...

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.

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.

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.