Cooling centres a 'Band-Aid' solution to extreme heat, advocates for the vulnerable say

The effect of wildfires, droughts and rising temperatures are being felt across all provinces, with municipalities working to help residents beat the heat. The City of Vancouver's response to heat warnings and extreme heat emergencies has been to open cooling spaces and centres. 

Ryan Ness, director of adaptation research at the Canadian Climate Institute, says cooling centres and spaces should be a last resort option during extreme heat events — rather than the city's only solution. 

The City of Vancouver has 39 cooling spaces and 19 cooling centres open to residents looking to escape the summer heat. 

Vancouver's first cooling space opened in 2009 following a significant heat event. 

"[It's a] stop gap Band-Aid… People who need [access to] cooling centres … are typically the most impacted by extreme heat … and often the least able to move themselves around to get to an emergency cooling centre," he said. 

Ness and other community members are calling on the City of Vancouver and the province to increase access to cooling centres and help seniors and vulnerable people refurbish their homes with air conditioning units. 

"Many of our buildings, not only in the Lower Mainland but across the country, were not built for the kinds of extreme heat that we're already seeing," Ness said. 

"The long-term solution involves making sure that people who are most vulnerable to extreme heat have the same opportunity to live in as comfortable and safe a home as everybody else."

In June, B.C. invested $10 million to provide 8,000 free air conditioners to elderly, vulnerable and low-income residents over the next three years. In a related program, B.C. Hydro is offering residential customers $50 off the purchase of a qualifying air conditioner until July 28.

Tenants and tenant advocates have spoken out in recent weeks to say landlords are discouraging installing air conditioning units due to potential building damage. 

Barriers for seniors

According to the City of Vancouver's emergency management director Daniel Stevens, the distinction between cooling spaces and cooling centres was only made this year with guidelines from Coastal Health. 

Cooling spaces are public spaces, such as malls or community centres, open during business hours with air conditioning. Cooling centres are a subset of those spaces, and during a heat warning or extreme heat emergency, the city will extend opening hours, add extra seating and provide bottled water. 

During an emergency, Stevens says up to three centres may be temporarily opened 24/7. 

Beverly Ho, the operations manager at Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice, says there are several barriers to cooling centre access for seniors, who are one of the groups most affected by extreme heat. 

"It's tough for our seniors to access cooling centres because a lot of them don't seem to know where they are or when they're open," she said, adding alerts for cooling centre openings are typically online and come the day before a heat event.

"Sometimes the centres are too far away, or the seniors have low mobility or have trouble getting to the centres on hot days, so they prefer to stay home."

Ho says this can be especially concerning for seniors in social housing without air conditioning or proper ventilation. 

She says the Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice has taken matters into its own hands by checking on seniors in the area. 

"We go to buildings that we've identified as being too hot in the summer. So we would bring frozen water bottles, electrolyte drinks and pass out information flyers about cooling centres," Ho said. 

She says it's important for all levels of government to offer more solutions to heat events and commit more funding to upgrade social housing with air conditioning. 

"It's extremely unsafe, and a lot of folks living in social housing are elderly or disabled with multiple health complications, so they are more vulnerable to extreme weather events like this."

'Increase in usage'

Vancouver's Stevens says it's not clear how many people access cooling spaces during a heat event, given the widespread use of the facilities. 

"We don't know who is coming to access the community centre and who is coming in to access the cooling centre. Sometimes it's a combination of both." 

"We do track the overall usage of those facilities. When we activate cooling centres and compare it to day-to-day uses, and we do see an increase in usage during the extreme heat event," he said. 

Stevens says while the city is working on other solutions, such as planting more trees to increase canopy coverage, there are limits to what the city can accomplish.

He says he often hears people request cooling devices be designated as medical devices or be subsidized by the city. 

"That's really something that's done within the provincial government and the health-care sector … that's beyond the capability of local government," he said. 

"[Instead, we are able to] support community partners, for example, neighbourhood houses, etcetera, to expand our cooling centre reach … [and] making sure we've got the right species [of trees to increase] the cooling effect in neighbourhoods."