Air Conditioning

Perhaps the most basic demand of a tenant is that the living space they pay for is, in fact, livable. Yet as extreme heat becomes the norm, organizers claim that for many low-income Chicago renters, this basic condition is not being met. An initiative called the People’s Cooling Army, launched by the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance, aims to provide and install free repaired air conditioning units for low-income tenants in Chicago’s Humboldt Park, Garfield Park and Hermosa. “Tenants across the city have been left to bake in hot apartments,” organizers announced at a July 8 press conference. “Tenants across the city have been asked to live in apartments where they could not sleep, where they were always covered in sweat, where their children were unsafe.”