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IMAGE: The Guardian, 9 December 2023 |
Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), "ACOSS Summer Heat Survey 2024", 1 March 2024, excerpts:
* Introduction
Summers are becoming hotter with climate change. In fact, the last nine years were the world’s hottest on record, with 2023 being the hottest year to date. Australia is experiencing more very hot days and heatwaves, and Bureau of Meteorology data forecasts more days where the national daily average is over 40 degrees. For people in remote areas and places like central and northern Australia, high temperatures are already common and daily temperatures reach 35 degrees for over half the year.
Severely hot days and heatwaves affect people experiencing financial and social disadvantage worst because they have fewer resources and choices to protect themselves from extreme heat. This is an urgent and critical public health problem. Heatwaves cause more deaths than all other extreme weather events combined. In Australia, there were an estimated 36,000 deaths associated with heat between 2006 and 2017. A lack of access to energy-efficient homes is often a primary factor in these deaths.
People experiencing financial and social disadvantage are vulnerable to high temperatures because they often live in homes that are poorly insulated, with no or limited shading; and no air conditioning or fans to help cool indoor temperatures. Even if the home has air conditioning and/or fans, rising energy costs mean that people on low incomes often cannot afford to run them. They are also less likely to have rooftop solar, which would significantly reduce their energy bills.
Further, people in rental properties are not able to make changes in their home that could make them more liveable, healthy and safe. Minimum rental standards could address this problem by placing requirements on landlords to ensure their property protects tenants against heat or cold. For example, the ACT requires landlords to have ceiling insulation and Victoria is implementing minimal rental standards.
ACOSS conducted a public, online Heat Survey over the 2023-24 summer to explore the intersection between high temperatures, energy performance of homes, energy costs and income. The data is gathered to advocate for support for people experiencing financial and social disadvantage to secure cooler, healthier and more climate-resilient homes, putting people with the least at the centre of government policy and planning.
The survey gives us valuable insight into how severely high heat affects people’s physical and mental health, their wellbeing and activity when they cannot cool their homes. The survey highlights how seriously poverty and poor energy-performing homes can reduce people’s resilience and capacity to cope with debilitating hot weather.
The ACOSS Heat Survey was open from 1 December 2023 to 28 January 2024. It was made available online via the survey tool, TypeformTM.
* Key findings
Exposure to high heat is a major threat to human health. More people die in Australia from heatwaves than all other extreme events combined. With climate change, Australia is becoming hotter. Very hot days and heatwaves are becoming more common. People experiencing financial and social disadvantage are worst impacted by these events.
Those worst affected experience a combination of:
• homes with poor energy performance;
• high energy prices;
• low incomes; and
• health conditions.
To track the intersection between housing, energy costs, heat, and people experiencing financial and social disadvantage, ACOSS conducted a public, online Heat Survey over the summer months, from December 2023 to January 2024. We received 1007 responses from people across the country, including: 66.1% receiving income support; 19.2% in social housing; 36.1% in private rental; 6.4% First Nations respondents. Additionally, 62.7% reported they or someone in their household has a disability or chronic health condition.
The survey found the majority of 1007 people surveyed (80.4%) said their homes get too hot. This was often to do with being in homes with low energy efficiency (e.g., no insulation or shading, dark roofing, no eaves).
More than half (56.7%) could not cool their home because:
• they do not have air conditioners or fans, or have them but they are broken, or have them only in part of the home or they are ineffective in cooling the home; or
• if they had functioning air conditioners and or fans, they could not afford to run them.
People most likely to struggle to cool their homes were:
• people in social housing (78.3%) or private rental (65.7%) with limited control to modify their home or access working efficient air conditioners to better deal with extreme temperatures;
• people receiving income support (60.8%) with limited resources to modify their homes, afford air-conditioning or fans, or afford the running costs to cool their home;
and
• First Nations people (71.9%), two thirds of whom were in social or private rental, and more than three-quarters of whom were receiving income support.
Exposure to high temperatures in the home has a range of serious negative impacts on household members. Respondents to the survey reported:
• Negative physical and mental health impacts, making them unwell (80.5% of all 1007 respondents; 94% of First Nations respondents). For many, the heat seriously aggravated existing chronic health conditions or disabilities.
• Having to seek medical attention for heat stress (14% of all respondents; 25% of First Nations respondents).
• Difficulty sleeping (94% of all respondents; 98% of First Nations respondents), reduced productivity for work and study, and raised tensions in the home.
• Avoiding everyday household activities due to the heat (like housework and cooking).
While medical and government advice often is to leave home to go to a cooler place during very hot weather, this is not always easy. Most people (90.5%) reported that they face mobility, cost and other barriers to doing so.
Many people reported challenges affording their energy bills which meant they couldn’t cool their home and/or afford other essentials:
• 59.8% reported finding it increasingly difficult to pay their energy bills, which affected their capacity to cool their homes.
• Many reported that high energy bills made it difficult to pay for essentials like food (46.7%), medicine (41.4%) or housing (34%).
First Nations respondents were even more likely to be struggling to pay for essentials such as energy and other bills (86%), food (75%), medicine (63%) and housing (58%).
A quarter of all 1007 people surveyed (25.8%) were currently in energy debt with their retailer or believed they would go into energy debt because they could not afford their next energy bill. People receiving income support (69.4%) and First Nations people (55%) were more likely to say they had an energy debt or that they considered it to be imminent.
We note that while the people surveyed are currently housed, extremes of temperature present more severe health risks from exposure and threats to life itself to people living on the streets or sleeping rough.
Findings from the ACOSS 2024 Heat Survey raise similar concerns to the previous ACOSS 2023 Heat Survey Report and Sweltering Cities’ 2021 and 2022 Summer Survey Reports.
However, a hotter summer in 2023/24, coupled with rising costs for energy, housing, food and other essentials were reflected in people’s comments. There was a clear level of distress amongst people surveyed about the growing challenge to reduce the impacts of
heat while affording energy bills and avoiding – or compounding existing - energy debt.
For people experiencing financial and social disadvantage, especially those living with disability or a health condition, the situation of hot homes that cannot be cooled remains untenable, putting lives at risk. The situation facing First Nations people surveyed is much worse on almost every measure. Therefore, prioritising this report’s recommendations for First Nations communities is essential.
Almost all 1007 people who completed the 2024 Heat Survey (96.5%) called on governments to do more to improve homes to be more resilient to extreme heat (and cold) and to support people to be able to afford energy bills and other essentials....
Read the full 30 page report and recommendations at:
https://www.acoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/ACOSSHeatSurveyReport2024.pdf
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