When Houston City Councilwoman Alejandra Salinas’ staff reviewed local housing codes earlier this year, it came across a surprising exception: As long as a rental unit had a screened window, landlords didn’t need to provide air conditioning.
Following the discovery, Salinas’ team looked at how other cities handled AC requirements, surveyed community groups about the issue and spoke with residents about a possible AC requirement.
“The overwhelming responses we heard were, ‘How is this not already the law?’” said Salinas, an at-large councilmember.
In August, Houston City Council addressed the exception, voting 12-2 to give landlords 120 days to provide and maintain some type of AC in rental units. Federal estimates suggest roughly 17,000 households within the city lacked AC in 2023, the most recent year with available data.
But while the new regulations address AC availability, affordability remains another matter. The ordinance exposes a tension between potentially higher electric bills and tightening household budgets, particularly for lower-income residents who are already struggling to afford utilities.
In 2024, the average household in Texas spent $460 on electricity to power AC, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The tally doesn’t include the costs of maintaining AC units, expenses that are typically passed on to renters by landlords.
In a Kinder Institute survey conducted in early 2026, about 4 in 5 Houston-area residents who struggled to afford their housing costs in the prior year identified high utility bills as a factor, the second-most-cited reason. The survey also showed nearly 60% of residents with an annual household income of $25,000 to $50,000 and about 80% of those earning less than $25,000 would have to borrow money or couldn’t afford to pay an unexpected $400 expense.
Salinas and the ordinance’s supporters are optimistic that the new mandate will improve living conditions and reduce heat-related illnesses, with few downsides. The City Council’s two dissenters, however, worried that some renters won’t be able to afford the costs of AC, potentially leading to an increase in homelessness.
“In the vast majority of cases, this won’t make the difference for something as big as an eviction event,” said Dylan Brewer, an associate professor of economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology who has studied the connection between extreme temperatures and evictions. “But there are going to be some people on the margin whose economic calculus really changes: whether to heat or cool, pay their rent or feed their kids.”
Sweating the summer
AC is nearly universal in the city of Houston. Census Bureau estimates show about 98% of households had it in their homes as of 2023, fractionally below the statewide rate of 99%.
Federal data shows the remaining 2% are most concentrated in parts of Alief, northeast Houston and east Houston — areas that are home to some of the city’s lowest-income residents. The data doesn’t detail what share of homes without AC are owner-occupied or rentals.
“While it is mandated that all of our units have heat, it’s arguable that it’d be more important that units offer air conditioning rather than heat, because heat-related illnesses are more common in a place like Houston than cold-related illnesses,” said Michelle Smirnova, director of the Kinder Institute’s Center for Housing and Neighborhoods.
“We are now entering, especially with the rise in climate-related disasters and global warming, a period where we are going to see these shifts in what is considered habitable living structures.”
Several Texas municipalities have established ordinances in recent years that effectively require some type of AC in rental properties. Dallas and Austin passed regulations requiring rentals to stay no hotter than 85 degrees and at least 15 degrees cooler than outside. Denton and El Paso residential codes enforce similar cooling standards.
Supporters of the new Houston ordinance noted that thousands of people are treated across Harris County for heat-related illnesses each summer. When Houston endured a brutal heat wave in 2023, about 4,400 people visited emergency rooms in the city for heat-related complications, according to the Houston Health Department.
The data did not specify how many treated individuals were at home when their heat-related symptoms began.
The cost challenge
While AC will bring relief to Houstonians who previously didn’t have it, the added costs could leave some residents in discomfort.
In 2024, the median Houston household paid more than $150 per month in electricity costs, with only 1 in 5 paying less than $100, according to Census Bureau estimates. Historically, AC has accounted for about one-quarter of the average Texan’s electric bill, the largest share of all electricity sources in a home.
That burden can be particularly significant for lower-income renters. About one-quarter of low-income renters in the Houston metro area — defined as a one-person household earning less than $30,120 or a family of four earning less than $62,400 — spent at least 10% of their income on power bills in 2024, according to an analysis by the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
Federal subsidies can help defray electric bills and costs related to repairing and replacing AC systems, but they reach a tiny fraction of those in need.
Only 2% of eligible Texas households received cooling assistance in 2024 from the federally funded Comprehensive Energy Assistance Program, which offers support to households with an annual income of less than 150% of the poverty rate. About 41,600 Texas households benefited from the program, receiving $133 million combined.
Researchers haven’t studied the connection between AC mandates and housing specifically. But Brewer’s research at Georgia Tech estimated a slight increase in evictions — about 1 per 10,000 renters — on days with a high temperature exceeding 86 degrees compared with more temperate days. The research found that higher energy expenses served as a main culprit for the higher eviction rate.
“What’s tricky for a household is that we can’t perfectly plan how much cooling we’re going to use,” Brewer said.
The Houston ordinance’s supporters are optimistic that residents with new AC options won’t feel the squeeze of higher electric bills. Salinas said her staff found no evidence of large rent increases after Texas cities passed their AC regulations.
Smirnova added that the ordinance puts AC on par with other essential utilities in Houston homes.
“We don’t make the same arguments about heat, electricity, plumbing or hot water: that we shouldn’t provide this access because it may increase utilities costs and thereby eviction,” Smirnova said. “It’s time for us to understand air conditioning as another key factor in habitable housing conditions.
