Record-breaking stretches above 100 degrees aside, Austin is no stranger to long, hot (and dry!) summers. Their increasing extremity has prompted the Austin City Council to search for solutions, some of them in the city's building codes.
To that end, the council on Thursday passed a resolution initiating amendments to the city’s land development code that would require residential property owners to provide and maintain cooling systems able to keep habitable rooms “a temperature that is comfortable and less than the outside temperatures.”
“We can only expect more extreme weather events, as well as more extreme heat moving forward, especially with the worsening climate crisis that we’re in,” said resolution sponsor Council Member Vanessa Fuentes,. “What this item seeks to do is codify and really bring up our language to ensure that, just like we have requirements around heating, we have requirements around AC units.”
The resolution includes passages pointing out that “paramedics have responded to 176 heat-related calls so far in July ... compared with approximately eight calls per day in June, when 18 paramedics responded to 234 heat-related calls total" and that 279 Texans died because of the heat in 2022, 137 of them in residences.
Council expects to vote on an ordinance base on the resolution in August 2024.
