How a tiny Fraser Canyon community bested the province's home cooling plan

Seven air conditioners can make a big difference in a 200-odd person town.

Two years after a heat dome settled on the province and killed 619 people, a non-profit in Yale made a plan to help keep indoor temperatures down for the community’s most vulnerable residents.

The air conditioners—which arrived at the first homes this week as heat warnings were issued throughout the province—were bought to help those at risk from increasingly-common extreme heat events. The portable units will be loaned out like life-saving library books during the canyon’s searing summers.

To Maureen Kehler, one of the architects behind the plan, the air conditioners are just the first answer to a pressing question:

“How do we work together to make sure we’re all as safe as we can be?” she asked. “With the climate crisis, we have to.”

The provincial government has announced a plan to give away 8,000 air conditioning units over the next three years. But the large-scale plan has met early criticism.

Sharing the air

The Yale and District Ratepayers Association—a nonprofit and the closest thing the unincorporated community has to a local council—proposed the loanable air conditioner program to the Fraser Valley Regional District in July.

Yale, 20 minutes north of Hope on the road to Lytton, is in one of the hottest parts of the province. Extreme heat events—in this case, sustained temperatures exceeding 30 C and not dropping low enough at night—will trigger air conditioner loans.

Kehler said the plan began several months ago when the Yale Ratepayers committee she chairs—SAFE YD, a community resilience planning group—started determining assets and liabilities specific to Yale when it comes to potential dangers.

Liabilities included heat—the canyon town can reach 40 degrees in the summer—and its relative remoteness.

“Yale is a long, narrow corridor,” Kehler said. “We get cut off from the rest of the world every once in a while.” The committee wanted resources on hand to help people particularly vulnerable to heat, without relying on outside assistance

And Yale’s biggest asset? Neighbours who want to help each other.

The Yale Fire Department, while conducting evacuation preparations, passed out a survey from the committee that helped identify which residents would receive borrowed air conditioners. During a heat wave, a team of eight volunteers—Kehler calls them “neighbourhood champions”—will split up to check on the addresses and lug the air conditioners, when needed, inside.

The FVRD agreed to fund the project with a grant for $3,920, or the cost of the seven $560 air conditioners. Each unit will be equipped with stickers and labels to help recipients troubleshoot the appliances. The instructions also include advice on where to stick the air conditioner (inside one room that a resident wants to keep cool) and when to run it (a few hours at a time) if they’re worried about a sky-high electricity bill.

Residents don’t need to apply for air conditioners or prove medical necessity. They also don’t need to prove low-income, Kehler said.

A bigger plan

Yale isn’t the only community with vulnerable residents who can’t afford an air conditioner of their own. Seniors and people with disabilities across the province are facing similar risks from high temperatures.

Last June, the province announced it was giving BC Hydro $10 million to distribute 8,000 air conditioners over the next three years to “people who have low incomes and are medically vulnerable to heat.” Free air conditioners have already arrived in 1,200 homes across the province.

But the paperwork required to access the free unit has drawn criticism. Low-income households who rent need a landlord’s permission to get the unit, and not all landlords are willing to allow air conditioners in their buildings for various reasons, from increased utility bills to concerns over the building’s electrical grid.

Government and charity

Disability advocate Gabrielle Peters called the province’s air conditioner giveaway a “lottery.”

“It is a plan that seems designed very insincerely,” she said. A sincere plan, she said, would use existing infrastructure (like that associated with food banks or medical equipment) to get air conditioning to people who need it. It would have far fewer barriers to access. And it would be significantly larger in scale.

Everyone is going to need access to cooling eventually, Peters points out. “And some of us need access to cooling urgently, because of heightened risk.”

Extreme heat events affect everyone, and it’s not going away anytime soon. Compared to the number of homes in the province, 8,000 air conditioners is a drop in the bucket. BC is funding approximately one air conditioner for every 625 people. Yale’s local plan will see the community have one A/C for about every 30 people.

But local plans like the one in Yale are not the silver bullet that will replace the province’s stumbling plan, Peters said. They can be faster solutions to immediate problems, and they have powerful impacts for these communities, but it doesn’t work without a strong community to support it. Not everybody has that.

Though Peters applauds the program in Yale, she says the government still has a responsibility to ensure homes are livable through future summers. And that livable needs to mean cool.

“I think we made a decision a century ago that certain things were going to become part of public policy, and not rely on charity,” she said. “We don’t look for community groups to supply indoor plumbing or heating.”

Fast solutions

Kehler and her committee started planning to buy portable air conditioners before the province announced its plan. While it’s funded by local government, the legwork of the plan comes down to volunteers working in their community.

Kehler says the local project will deliver results faster than the province. It also has fewer bureaucratic barriers to entry. And the urgency, after temperatures hit high 30 degree figures in the area last week, is warranted.

“We know that when you involve the government there’s a lot of paperwork,” Kehler said. “It would take a long time for someone in Yale to get an air conditioner when the heat is here now.”

The air conditioners are only the beginning of what she hopes to help the community do to prepare for the encroaching climate crisis. Winter will pose challenges, as well.

“Each community has to figure out what are we facing and how can we mitigate the risk,” She said. “If something goes down, the government isn’t there right away. Your neighbours are.”