With climate changing, change tenant laws - The Boston Globe

With climate changing, change tenant laws

We enjoyed reading the article “ Heat waves like this one demand a rethinking of air conditioning” (Ideas, online June 19). The article certainly stresses the need to focus more attention on air conditioning now that climate change is causing more heat waves in the United States.

Incidentally, we live in an affordable housing building that pumps hot water to the HVAC units in each apartment in winter. Likewise, cold water is pumped to the same HVAC units during summer. The switchover from heat to air conditioning takes several hours and is costly.

We often do not have our air conditioning units turned on until June 15. This year, our building management determined the air conditioning units should be operational on June 12 because of the predicted heat wave.

Massachusetts law says residential landlords must provide heat at 68 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and no less than 64 degrees Fahrenheit at night. This law has a detrimental effect on tenants of buildings with our kind of HVAC system. To adapt to climate change, we urge Massachusetts legislators to reconfigure the dates for heating requirements in rental buildings from Sept. 15 to May 31 and change them to Oct. 1 to May 15.

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Kim Kerrigan and Steven Wells

Boston