If you’re be reading this blog any length of time, you know I’m not a fan of Austin’s oppressive regulatory regime. So it may surprise you to learn that Austin recently passed a housing regulation I actually approve of. So get those cries of “sellout!” ready as I disturb the shade of Ayn Rand* and approve of government intervening in the free market:
Austin has mandated air conditioning for new housing.
The city of Austin has passed an ordinance making air conditioning a requirement for all apartments and homes, where temperatures are not allowed to exceed 85 degrees in any habitable room.
While there’s a state law requiring heating, there is no such state law requiring A/C despite Texas’s scorching summers. City officials say just last year, 900 people were sent to the E.R. with heat-related illnesses. There were also fifteen deaths.
It may still (barely) be possible to find old housing in Austin that doesn’t have air conditioning (I did toward the end of my college days, sharing a house with a giant attic fan rather than real AC, but we moved out before summer hit), but you wouldn’t want to. It regularly exceeds 100° in Austin summers, and I was here when it hit 112°. Sure, there may be a few freaks and or mutant reptilians—
Somehow a picture of Taylor Lorenz has inexplicably been dropped into the middle of this post. It’s a complete mystery how that happened…
—who never overheat, but normal humans do. Austin already has a lot of other requirements as regards plumbing, electricity, etc. In fact, these days I can’t imagine anyone building a house or apartment building in Austin without AC unless they’re running some kind of scam.
I’m not going to say AC is a human right. I am going to say that AC is a reasonable requirement for building new housing in Austin.
*Rand was a devout atheist, so I suspect she would object to being a ghost on fundamental epistemological grounds…
Tags: air conditioning, Austin, Regulation, Texas, weather
By the way, remember: today is the First of May!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEjRHFom1Kk
All photos of Taylor Lorenz need to be accompanied by a trigger warning. That aged-out narcissistic hag is a modern Medusa.
“AC is a reasonable requirement for building new housing in Austin.”
If the purpose of civil government is to protect innocent life, then regulatory regulations such as this are not an unreasonable burden. In the Law of Moses, it was required that city dwellers build a parapet around the upper level of their domicile.
I imagine everyone has seen the movie Ben Hur. The Roman official who died when a roof tile fell and killed him illustrates why this law was instituted. So yes, Any Rand would be very angry at God for preempting her sphere of control but how will she dispute her claim if there is no possible appeal to God allowed by her philosophy?
Errata: Okay, Governor Gratus was not killed by the falling tile but this brought small comfort to the House of Judah.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9GRDiE252wA&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD
” …there may be a few freaks and or mutant reptilians—”
Actually, all you have to do is to be born and raised in the tropics.
In my apartment complex (a temporary stay), I’ve noticed that the only people who sit out on the porch and open the doors to their apartment (albeit when the sun is lower) during the heat are illegals* (based on ethnicity, dress, little to no English skills, etc.).
In the tropics, if you are anything but very well off, you don’t have AC, so when it’s hot, you turn on the fans and open up your domicile to let a little breeze in. It’s just what you do … endure the heat.
True first-worlders in Texas turn on the AC and close up the place to keep the heat out (unless they’re trying to save money). I doubt that any Guatemalans or Nicaraguans or Venezuelans even know that AC also serves as a de-humidifier, so every time you open the window you ‘re-humidify’ your home (assuming it’s humid, which in Texas it almost always is when it’s hot) and the ‘feels like’ temperature actually increases.
Anyway, just a little cultural anecdote ….
When a meteorological event results in a death toll 5x that of the Twin Tower terrorist attack, it merits a response from civil society. French casualties were primarily among the elderly who live alone, so maybe Austin area churches could do wellness checks when it gets exceptionally hot so as to avoid a similar bad outcome.
“In August 2003, France sustained an unprecedented heat wave that resulted in 14,800 excess deaths. The consequences were maximal in the Paris area.“
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC420061/
[…] AC: Austin Mandates AC. “If you’re be reading this blog any length of time, you know I’m not a fan of Austin’s […]
Somehow, I managed to grow up in Houston living in a house with no air conditioning and going to schools with no air conditioning. In the summers, it was off to Scout camp, where there was no air conditioning.
Government has no business telling people what appliances they must buy.
the abbreviation for air conditioning is A/C
A/C, like good medical care, is a Civilization Benefit, not a right. It’s good, great, but somebody has to pay for it. Everything that somebody has to pay for is a benefit. Free speech—nobody has to pay for.
We need more distinctions between rights and benefits.
I grew up in central Florida. My grandfather’s house (built ca. 1910) had one window AC unit in poor repair, and it was quite comfortable (big windows and a porch).
Our concrete-block suburban house (built ca. 1950) had one AC unit in one bedroom – and a pool out back. It, too, was comfortable.
The problem is simply that houses now are designed to be uninhabitable without central AC.