Temporarily housed Britons refused usage of air conditioning by landlords; children suffer

Sometimes news comes that really confirms my worst prejudices against certain communities. In this case I’m talking about the moral vacuums that are companies that profiteer via offering accommodation to those who most desperately need it, aka a certain category of landlord.

The first paragraph says it all:

Homeless families placed in temporary accommodation in London were told they could not use the in-built air conditioning as it had “not been offered as an amenity” for them, leading to two children being hospitalised during recent heatwaves.

This despite the fact that it seems like the building design itself exacerbates the very issues the residents are trying to mitigate.

Residents say the all-glass construction of the block and the fact that windows open only slightly mean that, without air conditioning, their flats have become unbearably hot.

“It is very difficult to cool the flats down,” one person said. “I find that as soon as I enter the building, I become much hotter, start feeling sick and sweat profusely.”

Remembering that the vulnerable homeless families that are forced into temporary accommodation due to a lack of state willingness or ability to actually solve the scourge of homelessness once and for all do, of course, not get to choose where to live .

After the scandal broke it seems like the restrictions have been lifted. Well, in a theoretical “the on button now works” sense anyway.

However, some residents said they were informed that if they used the system they would be billed via a standing charge rather than for how long the air conditioning ran, which could result in bills of up to £500 for the summer.

I have to imagine that a homeless family in temporary accommodation is unlikely to have a spare £500 - so now they are forced to make the cooling counterpart to the standard “heating or eating” choice an unacceptable high number of Britons have to regularly make. This is not a triviality. Heat kills. Nearly 3000 people in the May and June heatwaves we’ve just suffered.

The building in question has form in extremely dubious ethical practices:

The 19-storey glass-fronted block is owned by Criterion Capital, set up by the billionaire property magnate Asif Aziz. The company was accused this year of trying to mass-evict tenants shortly before no-fault evictions were banned, something it has denied.