New Westminster, British Columbia has become the first Canadian city to mandate that landlords provide a “cool room” in all rental units to protect tenants during extreme heat waves.
The city council of New West, a city of 94,000 located 20 kilometres west of downtown Vancouver, voted unanimously in favour of a bylaw mandating that at least one room in every rental unit be equipped to maintain a temperature of 26°C or below between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., even on the hottest days, reports The Tyee.
The city’s move to protect tenants from heat stroke comes five years after 33 of its residents died during British Columbia’s devastating six-day heat dome. The unprecedented extreme weather event saw daytime temperatures hit 40°C in parts of the Lower Mainland, with indoor nighttime temperatures remaining lethally high.
While the new regulation “really puts the onus on the building owners,” it isn’t prescriptive, New Westminster councillor Nadine Nakagawa told The Tyee. “We’re not saying that you have to have an air conditioner or heat pump—there’s lots of potential solutions for this.”
What is important is to ensure that everyone in the community can survive the kind of extreme heat the community experienced in 2021, she added.
The “cool room” bylaw follows a previous council decision to prevent landlords from banning window-mounted air conditioners.
B.C.’s building code already mandates “cooling rooms” in new rental builds, The Tyee writes. There is no deadline for compliance, but the city has reserved the right to deny non-compliant landlords a business licence.
The B.C. chapter of ACORN Canada praised the decision.
“For too long, tenants have been left to swelter in dangerously hot apartments, told by landlords that they couldn’t even install their own A/C units,” writes the tenant and housing advocacy organization. “But ACORN members know that extreme heat is a matter of life and death.”
The group plans to use the “New West Model” to advocate for similar heat protections across the country.
Meanwhile, the City of Vancouver has approved a $500,000 grant to protect residents of the poverty-stricken Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, reports CBC News. The Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative Society will use the grant to upgrade six privately-owned single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings. The upgrades will include cooling rooms that can also function as warming rooms during the winter, heat pumps, and water filtration systems.
