Cheryl Henderson drags a trash can to the curb at her Third Ward apartment complex and returns up a steep flight of stairs to what should be a respite from the 100-degree heat outside.
But it’s not. Henderson, a native Houstonian who suffers from asthma and COPD, grabs a bottle of water from the refrigerator and sits in a recliner, hoping the air from a box fan will hit her face and reduce the light-headedness. “Sometimes I feel like I might die,” the 54-year-old says. “I don’t want my kids to get a call saying they found my body.”
Henderson is one of about 20,000 Houstonians who either don’t have adequate air conditioning or don’t have any cooling mechanism at all.
That’s about to change.
The Houston City Council passed an ordinance on August 19 that requires rental property owners to provide and maintain operable air conditioning in habitable spaces. The ordinance also eliminates a building code loophole passed in 2011 that says landlords don’t have to provide AC as long as the unit has a window screen.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been in a space where a screened-in window provided the same protection from the external heat as mechanisms by which to cool a unit, whether it be a wall unit, central AC or a fan,” says Council Member Alejandra Salinas, who proposed the ordinance with co-sponsors Sallie Alcorn, Mario Castillo and Edward Pollard.
Council members Twila Carter and Fred Flickinger voted against it, citing concerns about rent increases that could price people out of their homes. “This is an unfunded mandate with no meaningful guardrails for the tenants,” Carter said in a statement. “The costs don’t disappear. The people that we represent don’t pay for policies with good intentions. They pay with their hard-earned dollars.”
During a July 28 committee meeting at which a public hearing was held on the ordinance, Carter referenced a 2025 BakerRipley survey that found 95 percent of 100,000 applicants were denied utility assistance due to lack of resources. Carter asked, “As the utility bills increase, what is the plan for these people who are [living] paycheck to paycheck and they’re one step away from homelessness on any given day?”
“My concern is that the very people you’re trying to assist, you’re going to push right out the door,” Carter said.
Salinas responded that the average cost of running an AC wall unit is $36 per month, and while that cost may be passed on to tenants, they should be afforded the right to decide whether they want to have cool air in their homes during 100-degree summer days.
“If it costs a landlord money to fix a rat infestation or a mold infestation, it might cause the rent to go up,” Salinas said. “There’s a whole list of things that we still require even though we know there’s a possibility that it could potentially result in an increase in rent. But we still require it because we believe in basic standards for all Houstonians no matter who you are or where you come from. The litmus test is, would you want to live in those conditions?”
Salinas added that when a similar ordinance passed in Dallas nearly a decade ago, there were no documented cases of rising rent. Austin commissioned a study when it passed its ordinance last year and found a neutral impact to development costs and affordable housing, Salinas says.
“We are not going to see a significant increase in rent,” she said, noting that at least one landlord told her he would split the costs of $150 wall units with his tenants. The renters would see their bills go up by a few dollars per month until the AC is paid off.
The Houston Apartment Association supported the ordinance, as did the Houston Eviction Advocacy Center, Houston Food Bank, and several superneighborhoods and civic groups.
Enforcement will be handled by the Houston Health Department. Those who don’t comply will be issued citations that can result in a fine of up to $2,000. Landlords have 120 days to comply with the ordinance.
Retrofitting for central air is not required as long as property owners can ensure that some mechanism is provided so that living spaces can be cooled to a minimum of 80 degrees.
Salinas’ office began accepting applications this week for a giveaway that will provide 125 free portable AC units to eligible seniors, low-income households, disabled veterans, people with disabilities and families facing financial hardship. Henderson was among the first to apply.
Salinas also refused a salary increase last week, saying she was only going to accept $9,646 per year rather than the $80,000 offered, and divert the excess funds to staff payroll expenses and the AC giveaway.
Henderson already has two window units, one of which is covered in electrical tape and another, provided by her landlord, that “fritzed out” due to a compressor failure. She also has four portable fans and two ceiling fans in her 520-square-foot apartment on Rosedale Street.
She doesn’t know if her landlord will install central air, but that’s likely to be a monumental task, since the building was constructed in 1938. Henderson is aware that the property owner could also raise her $813 monthly rent, most of which is paid through a government subsidy.
Last month’s electric bill, which she pays for with a disability check, was $199.98. Most of her groceries come from the Houston Food Bank.
The cost of living already goes up every year, she says, but she’d be willing to pay a little extra for air conditioning. “When you have COPD and it’s hot like this, the heat makes it feel like my lungs are closing up on me and I’m choking,” she says. “I’m constantly in survival mode.”
And now, with the passage of the ordinance, she can report non-compliance if the temperature in her apartment creeps above 80 degrees. Henderson says she believes the temperature in her apartment hovers around 90 degrees during peak sunlight periods.
Even as Henderson steps outside because it’s slightly cooler on a covered carport than inside the apartment, she acknowledges she’s one of the lucky ones. Her friend Sandra Edwards is president of the Fifth Ward Civic Club and told the Houston Press on Wednesday that dozens of residents lost power at Rose Plaza apartment complex in Fifth Ward last week.
Residents there pay more than $1,000 in monthly rent and the complex has central air, but when the landlords began doing maintenance last Tuesday, the power flickered, eventually went dark, and stayed out in some units for six days.
“These people gave up their whole Social Security check for rent to make sure they were safe and secure, and they weren’t,” Edwards says. “Think about the people in wheelchairs and on breathing machines. You’re sitting there gasping. I’m not going to have that in Fifth Ward. You can’t do these people like that.”
U.S. Congressman Christian Menefee got involved and reported on Monday that after an assessment by CenterPoint Energy, “the remaining electrical issues appear to be on the property owner’s side.”
Edwards says that power was restored to all units at the apartment complex — where more than 100 families live — by 11 p.m. Monday. But during the outage, two people were hospitalized for heat-related illnesses. Some pawned belongings to pay for hotel rooms, and almost all the tenants had to throw out spoiled food.
“The problem was bigger than me, so I reached out to my prayer warriors and my soldiers,” Edwards says. “My people came and we made sure they ate but there’s still no comfort with no air in this Texas heat.”
Rose Jones, vice president of Texas Physicians for Social Responsibility, says that between 2019 and 2023, Harris County Public Health reported more than 7,600 cases of heat-related illness, representing an increase of 329 percent over the four-year period. Public health data show that indoor areas without air conditioning significantly increase health risks during extreme heat.
Earlier this week, Henderson stood in her small bedroom surrounded by blackout curtains, with all the fans on full blast, and wiped sweat from her brow. She’d been to a commissioners court meeting earlier in the day but she doesn’t leave the house often.
“I leave everything running 24-7,” she says. “If I turn it off and come back, it’s like a sauna. I did that one time when I went to California. I came back home, and I thought I was going to die. I had to go back into the stairwell to try to get some air. I said I’d never do that again. I’ll just pay the light bill and leave everything on.”
A neighbor checks on her periodically to make sure she’s surviving the brutal heat. She volunteers with advocacy groups Northeast Action Collective and West Street Recovery. One of the fans she has in her home was borrowed from NAC and she says she’ll pass it along next week to someone else who needs it.
“Sometimes I wake up in the night covered in sweat and I have to take a cold shower,” she says. “The only time it gets a little cooler during the day is when it rains. People say, ‘Well, you choose to stay there.’ The people who say this are going home to air conditioning. They need to take a walk in our shoes. We don’t choose this. It’s life or death.”
