On the last day of June 2023, during the hottest summer on record — though perhaps the coolest we’re likely to see this century — the temperature in Phoenix hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit. And for the next 31 days, it kept meeting or exceeding that level, finally cooling off to a brisk 108 degrees on July 31.
Given these scorching numbers — and the fact that heat starts affecting a healthy person’s body and mind at about 86 degrees — it is heartbreaking, but not surprising, that at least 645 people died of heat-related causes in the greater Phoenix metro area last year.
Extreme heat, exacerbated by human-caused climate change, doesn’t discriminate; it kills more people than all other natural disasters combined. Still, a closer look at what happened in Phoenix last year reveals that high temperatures are especially hard on the less affluent: 46% of those who died lacked housing altogether, while all the indoor deaths occurred in homes, apartments or mobile homes that lacked air conditioning, allowing the average ambient temperature to reach 102 degrees.
That’s because it’s not just heat that’s at fault here. As a 2021 report from the Arizona State University’s Knowledge Exchange for Resilience put it, “It is rather the lack of opportunity to mitigate the heat and stay resilient to it.” Unfortunately, that ability is distributed unequally among communities of different income levels, race and ethnicity.
For most upper-income, white Phoenicians, the searing heat is a mere inconvenience, experienced briefly as they sprint from air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned homes or businesses. It may elevate their monthly utility bills, keep them from their outdoor workouts, and provide something to gripe about over a cold one, but it is not an existential threat.
But for those who lack a car or a home, or live in shoddily insulated mobile homes and can’t afford air-conditioning units or the power to run them, this kind of intense, sustained heat — which never quite eases up, even late at night — is a constant adversary, threatening them at nearly every hour of the day. An unhoused person who faints or falls or simply sits down for a minute risks second- or third-degree burns from scorching concrete. Many lower-income people live in homes and neighborhoods that are ill-equipped to fend off heat-related illness and lack the shade-giving trees or public green spaces that ease the urban heat-island effect.
Heat inequity plagues every Western city, from Portland to Denver to Sacramento, and there’s a clear and disturbing alignment between income levels, race and ethnicity and surface temperatures and vegetation density. Still, there are ways to mitigate heat’s impacts, from opening more cooling centers and finding homes for unhoused folks, to planting trees and covering streets with cool pavement. Homes need proper insulation, reflective roofs and efficient electric heat pump air-conditioning units. With temperatures rising, it is literally a life-or-death situation.
Phoenix has a goal of creating 100 “Cool Corridors” by 2030 by planting some 20,000 trees across 24 neighborhoods and constructing shade structures, drinking-water stations and other heat-mitigation efforts.
The Cooling Portland program is working to get efficient heat pumps and cooling units to low-income residents, and the city opens cooling centers when a heat threshold is met.
Sacramento’s land-use plan prioritizes planting urban vegetation and building green infrastructure, especially in transit corridors and neighborhoods with high populations of vulnerable people.
Salt Lake City’s Urban Forest Action Plan calls for planting 1,000 trees annually in lower-income west side neighborhoods to tackle the heat island effect.
Data visualization by Jennifer Di-Majo/High Country News
SOURCES: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental Protection Agency, Arizona State University Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, Maricopa County, Multnomah County, “Dimensions of Thermal Inequity: Neighborhood Social Demographics in the Southwestern U.S.,” by John Dialesandro et al.
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This article appeared in the August 2024 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The inequity of heat.”
