‘Desperately hot' summer drives push to keep public housing cooler

When the temperature inside their home climbs above 40 degrees, Jay soaks a sheet, spreads it over his three-year-old daughter Hayley and turns the fan on high in the hope she will sleep.

Jay, with his daughter Hayley, 3, in her bedroom,
which has the only fan in the house. 

Sometimes he blocks the drain in the bathroom, floods the small room (which has a waterproof seal) and turns it into a splash pool. “She’s only a kid, I want her to have some fun”.

But the truth is that living without an air conditioner in their public housing unit in Mildura during the prolonged stretches of summer heat, when the temperature reached 47 degrees, is not much fun at all.

In an era of climate change, and in the wake of Australia’s warmest summer on record, housing and health services are urging the state government to revise a 20-year-old law which means people who live in public housing can’t apply for air conditioning unless they have a chronic health condition.

Read the story from The Age by Miki Perkins - “‘Desperately hot' summer drives push to keep public housing cooler.”