By Kate Burke
When summer rolls around and the mercury starts to climb, Ben Kreunen knows it will be near impossible to get a decent night’s sleep.
Despite using multiple fans, and closing blinds and blackout curtains throughout the day, the 57-year-old renter cannot stop the temperature inside his Ringwood East home from topping 30 degrees on a hot summer’s day.
Ben Kreunen is among 50 renters who tracked temperatures in their homes over summer, with concerning results.Credit: Jason South
“On hot days we’re about 2 to 4 degrees below the maximum outside temperature,” he said, noting the heat inside his 1970s brick house typically peaked near 6pm.
“Overnight temperatures, by the time it gets to a hot spell, may be 25 [degrees] as a minimum.”
Even the air conditioner unit is of little use against the rising heat. It does little more than keep the temperature stable, and is not worth the money it costs to run, according to Mr Kreunen.
He is far from alone, with a new report showing Australian tenants are routinely faced with unsafe temperatures in their homes, prompting concerns about heat-related risks to health and calls for new minimum standards for rental properties.
Indoor temperatures in rentals across the country exceeded recommended safe temperatures of 25 degrees for over nine hours a day on average last summer, a report from tenant advocacy organisation Better Renting shows. Temperatures topped 30 degrees for an average of about an hour a day, or 4 per cent of the time, exceeding the recommended threshold of 1 per cent.
The findings are the result of a research project that tracked temperature minute-by-minute across about 50 rental homes nationwide throughout summer.
“Research shows that risk from heat begins to increase above 25 degrees, and standards for healthy buildings recommend keeping below this temperature,” Better Renting executive director Joel Dignam said.
“But our data shows these rental properties were above 25 degrees for hours every day, with temperatures above 30 degrees happening for about an hour a day on average,” he added, noting this was despite the milder summer seen across much of the country.
Indoor temperatures in rental properties routinely exceeded recommended levels over summer. Credit: Peter Rae
In Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, temperatures were above 25 degrees more than 70 per cent of the time.
Mr Dignam said tenants reported struggling to work from home or self-isolate during the pandemic due to the heat. Renters also reported concerning heat levels in properties both old and new, and even those who had an air conditioner said it did not guarantee them a healthy temperature in their home.
While all Australians were impacted by higher home temperatures, renters often faced greater affordability challenges in keeping their homes cool, the report found. They were also reliant on landlords to make improvements, and many tenants who participated in the project, including Mr Kreunen, flagged a reluctance to make such requests.
“A lot of that is linked to the struggle in getting repairs, fears about rent increases … but there is also this awareness of how tight the rental market is in general, and this phenomenon we’ve seen before of not wanting to rock the boat [with your landlord],” Mr Dignam said.
With almost eight million renters across Australia, Mr Dignam said there was a large proportion of people who could not install ceiling insulation, put in a ceiling fan or set up air conditioning to make their home more liveable.
“No Australian jurisdiction has cooling standards for rental properties, and what we are seeing is the outcome of this neglect,” he said.
Better Renting and Healthy Homes for Renters, a national collaboration of more than 100 organisations, has called for governments to implement minimum energy efficiency standards for rental properties to enable tenants to stay cool and healthy, as heatwaves become more frequent and severe.
Improving energy efficiency standards for new buildings, improving the design of cities, and reducing climate emissions to mitigate climate impacts were also key responses, the report noted.
Heatwaves were Australia’s most deadly natural disaster, said Dr Kate Wylie, Adelaide GP and chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ climate and environmental medicine group.
“Heat increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes, especially in vulnerable populations,” she said, noting she worried about her patients in the heat, particularly those who lived in housing that increased the risk.
Dr Wylie said there was a responsibility to ensure housing was equipped to deal with longer and more intense heatwaves expected in the future, adding that heat was a greater problem for those experiencing homelessness and poverty.
Australian Council of Social Service chief executive Dr Cassandra Goldie said renters should have a right to live in healthy homes that were affordable to cool, noting low-income earners in poor quality homes were getting sick, and in some cases dying, because they could not afford, or were unable to install, measures to keep their homes cool in summer.
“We urgently need all states and territories to commit to legally enforceable energy efficiency standards that require property investors to make rental properties habitable and safe,” she said.
Tenants Queensland chief executive Penny Carr said renters had been seeking assistance for heat issues over the summer, and that it would become a growing concern that needed to be addressed.
Ms Carr said new standards to be introduced in the state failed to address the need to regulate temperatures in a home, and hoped to see prescribed temperature ranges for rental properties in the future, rather than dictating requirements for specific cooling features.
For now, she encouraged impacted renters to track temperatures in their home and build a case for changes, but also noted a reluctance from tenants to ask for improvements to a property out of fear it could lead to an eviction notice without grounds.
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