Heat deaths of people without air conditioning, often in mobile homes, underscore energy inequity

PHOENIX– Mexican farmworker Avelino Vázquez Navarro had no air conditioning in the mobile home where he died last month in Washington state as temperatures soared into triple digits.

For the past dozen years, the 61-year-old spent much of the year working near Pasco, Washington, sending money to his wife and daughters in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, and traveling back every Christmas.

Now, the family is raising money to bring his remains home.

“If this mobile home had air conditioning and it had been running, then it probably would have helped,” said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary, who determined Vazquez Navarro’s death was heat-related, with alcohol intoxication a contributing cause.

Most heat-related deaths occur among homeless people living outdoors. But those who die in closed spaces without sufficient cooling are also vulnerable, typically over 60, living alone and on limited incomes.

Underscoring inequalities around energy and air conditioning access as summers get hotter, many of the victims are Black, Indigenous or Latino, like Vázquez Navarro.

“Air conditioning is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents state energy assistance programs. “It’s a public health issue and an affordability issue.”

People who live in mobile homes or older RVs are especially likely to lack adequate cooling. Nearly a quarter of indoor heat deaths in Maricopa County, Arizona, last year occurred in such dwellings, which become like a scorching tin can under the scorching desert sun.

“Mobile homes can get very hot because they don’t always have the best insulation and are often made of metal,” said Dana Kennedy, director of AARP in Arizona, where many heat-related deaths occur.

Research shows mobile home dwellers are at particular risk in Phoenix’s scorching weather, where temperatures of 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 Celsius) are forecast for this weekend.

“People are exposed to the elements more than in other dwellings,” said Patricia Solis, executive director of the Resilience Knowledge Exchange at Arizona State University, who worked on mapping the impacts of warm weather on mobile home parks for a state preparedness plan.

Worse, some parks prohibit residents from making modifications that might cool their homes, citing aesthetic concerns. A new Arizona law for the first time this summer required parks to allow residents to install cooling methods such as window units, awnings and storm windows.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, 156 of the 645 heat-related deaths last year occurred indoors, in uncooled environments. In most cases, a unit was present but was either not working, had no power or was turned off, public health officials said.

One of the victims was Shirley Marie Kouplen, who died after being overcome by the high temperatures inside her mobile home in Phoenix amid a heat wave when the extension cord that provided her electricity was unplugged.

Emergency services recorded the 70-year-old widow’s body temperature at 41.7 °C (107.1 °F). Kouplen, who was diabetic and had high blood pressure, was rushed to hospital, where she died.

Kouplen was apparently struggling financially, as evidenced by the deplorable condition of his mobile home, which still sits on Lot 60, surrounded by a chain-link fence with a locked gate and a dirt driveway overgrown with weeds.

It’s unclear how the cable was disconnected, whether Kouplen had an electric bill or how he got his power.

“Losing air conditioning is now a life-threatening event,” Texas A&M said.&Andrew Dessler, a U of M climatologist who grew up in hot, humid Houston in the 1970s. “You didn’t want to lose air conditioning, but it wasn’t going to kill you. And now it does.”

Arizona’s regulated utilities have been banned from shutting off power during the summer since 2022, following the 2018 death of a 72-year-old woman after Arizona Public Service disconnected her electricity over a $51 debt.

Ann Porter, a spokeswoman for Arizona Public Service, which supplies electricity to the homes in the park where Kouplen lived, said that “for privacy reasons” the company could not say whether he had an account at the time of his death or in the past. Porter said the utility does not shut off power from June 1 through Oct. 15.

Shutoffs may occur after those dates if accumulated debts are not paid.

Arizona is among 19 states with power shut-off protections, leaving about half of the U.S. population unprotected from losing electricity during the summer, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association said in a new study.

Nearly 20% of very low-income households do not have air conditioning, especially in places like Washington state, where it was not commonly installed before climate-driven heat waves became increasingly stronger, more frequent and longer lasting.

In the Pacific Northwest, several hundred people died during the 2021 heat wave, prompting Portland, Oregon, to launch a program to provide portable cooling units to vulnerable and low-income people.

Chicago, best known for its cold winters, suffered a heat wave that killed 739 people, mostly elderly, over five days in 1995. Amid high humidity and temperatures above 100 F (37.7 C), most of the victims had no air conditioning or could not afford to turn on their units.

In 2022, Chicago adopted a cooling ordinance after three women died in their apartments in a senior living building on an unusually warm spring day. Certain residential buildings must now have at least one common area with air conditioning to provide cooling when the heat index exceeds 80°F (26.6°C) and cooling is not available in individual units.

Nonprofits in historically hotter areas like Arizona are also trying to better address the inequities faced by low-income people during sweltering summers. Phoenix-based community agency Wildfire recently raised money to buy more than $2 million worth of air conditioning equipment to help 150 households across the state over three years, said Executive Director Kelly McGowan.

In some places, laws protect tenants. Phoenix landlords must ensure that air conditioners cool the home to 82°F (28°C) or lower and that evaporative coolers reduce the temperature to 86°F (30°C).

Palm Springs, California, and Las Vegas, both desert cities, have ordinances requiring landlords to provide air conditioning in rental units. Dallas, where temperatures can exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) in the summer, has a similar law.

But most tenants pay their own electricity costs, leaving them to worry about whether they can even afford to turn on the air conditioning or how hot to set the thermostat.

A new report estimates that the average cost for American families to stay cool from June through September will grow nationally by 7.9% this year, from $661 in 2023 to $719 this summer.

Wolf noted that the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which gives money to states to help families pay for heating and cooling, is underfunded and 80 percent of it goes to heating homes in the winter.

At the Kouplen mobile home park, Spanish-speaking neighbors had little interaction with “Señora Shirley,” who used a walker to take her two small dogs outside. Neighbors said the animals were adopted after her death.

Kouplen was buried in north Phoenix at Arizona National Memorial Cemetery next to her husband, JD D. Kouplen, who died in 2020.

“Never forgotten,” reads the shared marker.