Willie Mae Jones couldn’t take it anymore.
It only took a week and a half after the air conditioning broke in her northeast Gainesville home for her to scrape together the money from her $1,240 monthly Social Security check to buy two window AC units. Jones, 70, put one unit in her bedroom and the other in the bedroom of her 58-year-old autistic brother, who lives with her and has high support needs.
Before it was the AC, it was her utility bill: $1,090 one month in 2021, when Jones wasn’t used to a charge of more than $300. She said a Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) representative told her the house’s hot water tank or AC might be to blame. GRU replaced both through its Low-Income Energy Efficiency Program (LEEP-plus), which provides low-income, homeowning customers a free HVAC installation or insulation upgrade.
But in September 2023, when the city’s heat index peaked at 105 degrees, Jones’ AC cut off.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” she thought.
First, she cried. Then she got desperate. She dug into what little funds she had again, this time to hire a repairman.
Two months later, her AC gave out again.
In a warming world, access to cooling is a matter of life and death. Prolonged heat exposure can trigger heat exhaustion and heat stroke, health risks that intensify the longer our bodies stay overheated. Floridians know it, too: Ninety-six percent of households in the state use some form of air conditioning.
But this constant, machine-humming cool isn’t promised to all residents. Barriers to AC access and affordability leave some feeling the heat in their homes, even as Florida’s hottest days get hotter and last longer in the year.
In Jones’ home, the limited cooling from the window units wasn’t enough, but the cost of the two for the bedrooms already put her in debt. A warm, muggy air crept through the rest of the home like an intruder, radiating through her hallway, kitchen and living room.
Jones knew how much her mind and body could take, she said, but she worried about her brother, who doesn’t speak. He took cold showers and rarely came out of his room, despite his usual fondness for the outdoors. Jones kept a damp towel and ice water in constant reach, darting to complete any household tasks beyond the crisp confines of her own bedroom.
After her AC’s second failure, she began calling GRU daily, begging them to send someone to fix it, she said. No, she didn’t want repair instructions given to her over the phone, and no, she didn’t care that they were busy this time of year. Could they just, please, get somebody?
She wouldn’t bother people, she thought, if she had the money to repair the AC for good.
“But I don’t have it,” Jones said.
So instead, she pleaded through the phone: “We’re not hot anymore — we’re burning.”
“We’re not hot anymore — we’re burning.”
Disparities
As temperatures climb, low-income and minority residents are among those most vulnerable to the threats of heat. AC ownership in Florida drops in low-income neighborhoods, a 2023 study found, a disparity similarly present in predominantly Black neighborhoods.
In Gainesville, a fifth of Black households have no AC equipment of any kind, a rate 72% higher than the community average, according to a University of Florida economic report.
Racially and economically marginalized groups already face higher rates of chronic disease and poorer health outcomes. The added lack of home cooling makes heat-related illness a more likely, more deadly threat.
But even households with AC can find its efficient use compromised by poor housing quality.
Low-income homes tend to be older and lack upgraded appliances or proper insulation. These conditions can make the AC work very hard but to little effect, while running up the household’s energy costs, said Belina Meador, a former coordinator at the Community Weatherization Coalition, now with GRU.
If a building leaks air, it won’t just strain the AC but lead to poor indoor air quality, Meador added, which can exacerbate existing health problems.
“There's so many different points where the [cooling] system can go awry,” Meador said. “Unfortunately, it's not always in people's control.”
When an AC breaks, repair can range from a couple hundred dollars to $1,000. Replacement costs can be as high as $10,000.
While energy efficiency upgrades lower utility bills over time, financially struggling homeowners like Jones can’t afford the hefty upfront cost, much less wait for the savings. The return on investment might take a decade, said William Hasell, GRU residential efficiency program coordinator.
Renters, who are more likely to have lower incomes, face even less incentive to make such investments in homes they don’t own, Hasell added. Landlords in Florida, meanwhile, aren’t required to provide AC.
Hasell helps run LEEP-plus, GRU’s free energy appliance upgrade program for homeowners. (Alachua County provides a similar program that funds home upgrades for local rental units.)
Since its inception in 2007, LEEP-plus has serviced 2,370 homes, with 100 completed in 2024. The number of households serviced is limited by annual funding.
Need for the program is high in Gainesville, Hasell said, where many residents live in older houses with outdated construction standards and poor energy efficiency. Sometimes, the number of applicants exceeds the program’s yearly capacity.
Hasell said he doesn’t foresee the demand waning.
“It’s definitely an issue that's going to probably get more extreme as the climate changes,” he said.
The burden of energy costs
In Florida, AC alone accounts for more than a quarter of home energy consumption and expenses, higher here than in nearly every other state. Rising temperatures complicate this reality, as both a cause and a consequence of heavy AC usage.
Double disparities in income and housing quality mean residents who are the least financially equipped to handle the heat also face the greatest barriers to lowering their energy use.
With homes that are less energy efficient, lower-income households spend a greater portion of their income on energy costs. This so-called energy burden is as much as 19% among the lowest-income households in Gainesville — over six times the city’s average.
In Alachua County, the energy burden is greatest for Black households, which have the lowest average incomes of any racial group in the community.
The connection between reduced energy costs and environmental sustainability is crucial, said Nkwanda Jah, chair of Alachua County’s NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Committee.
“We have to make sure that everyone is able to participate in reducing our energy use,” Jah said. “If people with limited income do not have access to energy-saving means, then that’s not equity.”
In 2022, Jah helped create Alachua County’s EMPOWER Coalition, an initiative designed to expand energy efficiency, weatherization and green jobs in three underserved communities in Gainesville. The program partners with neighborhood representatives from Sugarhill and Springhill, Greater Duval and the Southwest Advocacy Group to identify homes in need.
Other local programs, including the Community Weatherization Coalition and the Central Florida Community Action Agency, also work to alleviate energy costs for low-income households through free appliance inspections and home tune-ups.
From leaky faucets to uninsulated water tank pipes, the AC is rarely the only part of these homes running inefficiently, said Meador, the residential efficiency expert..
“It kind of runs the gamut,” Meador said. “Usually, we’re finding multiple issues.”
Upgrades
In Jones’ home, the Community Weatherization Coalition installed 12 LED light bulbs and seven outlet sealing sheets, cleaned her fridge coils, insulated her pipes and diagnosed the air gaps around her AC.
That was in February. In March, GRU repaired her AC, which still had an active warranty, putting an end to the five months Jones and her brother spent without consistent central cooling. (The utility points out that the need for such a follow-up repair was unusual.)
She hasn’t had a problem with the AC since, she said. Jones replaces the filter each month, using a set GRU provided.
Still, air conditioning can’t fix everything. After it was the AC, it was her dryer, her fridge, her toilet — three more household appliances that stopped working. The equipment in Jones’ house hasn’t been replaced since she moved there 12 years ago to care for her mother, who had dementia and passed away in 2019.
Jones got a new dryer from her cousin, who had an extra, thanking God for that. She bought a new fridge on a line of credit from Lowe’s, payments she’s still making. Her toilet remains backed up, but it’ll have to wait. She doesn’t have the money to fix it. Not yet at least.
“I know how to survive,” Jones said. “We have to know how to survive.”
