City officials say the historic Yale Building at 6565 S. Yale Ave. became the first to violate Chicago’s cooling ordinance this year when its chiller broke down in late August.
“Following our inspection of 6565 S. Yale Ave., inspectors cited the property for an inoperable chiller and noncompliance with the City’s Cooling Ordinance,” wrote Nefsa’Hyatt Brown, director of public affairs for the city’s Department of Buildings, in a Sept. 3rd email. “[The Department of Buildings] has escalated our enforcement action to the Department of Law for Circuit Court.”
Records show the failed inspection occurred on Aug. 31. The first hearing in the case was held on Sept. 2. Landlords and building owners can be fined up to $1,000 per day, per violation.
After the tragic deaths of three elderly women at the James Sneider Apartments in Rogers Park in the summer of 2022, Chicago’s cooling ordinance was established to protect those who may be more vulnerable to heat. The ordinance requires certain buildings — including nursing homes, housing for older persons, high-rises over 80 feet, and residential buildings with 100 or more units — to “provide air conditioning in every unit, or maintain a designated air-conditioned common area available to residents when the heat index exceeds 80 degrees,” Brown wrote. “We have had 8 violations of the Chicago Cooling Ordinance referred to the City’s Department of Law, including the most recent at 6565 S. Yale.”
So far this year, 14 people have died from heat-related causes in Cook County, the most in any year since at least 2015. Eleven of the deaths have occurred in Chicago.
The Yale Building was constructed in Englewood, in the 1890s, and renovated into low-income senior housing in 2003. John Luce, the building’s owner, said that the 20-year-old, 100-ton chiller has been fixed and will be getting replaced this fall. In order to mitigate the situation, Luce said he provided more than 10 extra window air conditioning units to his residents. “I feel terrible about it,” he said.
On the afternoon of Sept. 9, a few residents said the building did get extremely hot during the previous week, but they said the cooling system had been fixed and there were no more issues. In the days following the failed inspection, Chicago experienced its warmest start to September ever with high temperatures topping 90°F on each of the month’s first four days, according to the National Weather Service.
But Luce said he wasn’t aware of the cooling ordinance and the changed regulations. He said his property manager and a fellow building owner from a nearby area were also unaware of the changes. To his knowledge, Luce said they were only required to have air-conditioned common areas.
According to Luce, at the time of inspection, the building had two separate air-conditioned common areas, each with ice water and one air conditioner. Luce said the inspectors asked him to get one additional air conditioner in each common area, to which he complied. Luce said the inspectors measured the temperature of each apartment unit and around the building overall. At the end of the inspection, he said the city found the building to be noncompliant with the cooling ordinance.
“They need a segway to send information to us,” Luce said. “I just need to know if there is a change in the law.”
Hundreds complain about ‘no air conditioning’ each year
Soon after the Chicago City Council passed the cooling ordinance in June 2022, the city began logging complaints it receives from residents reporting that their buildings have no air conditioning.
According to Brown, the department received and resolved a total of 397 such complaints during June and July this year. “The Chicago Construction Code defines every building owner’s responsibility to keep mechanical systems, including cooling equipment, operable and maintained. Most of the air conditioning complaints [the department] receives fall under that broader responsibility,” Brown wrote in an email.
Brown noted that, previously this year, the department hadn’t issued a formal violation or filed a court action under the cooling ordinance. “That is not because problems do not occur,” Brown wrote. “It is because they are resolved quickly through repair and voluntary compliance, often with the [department of buildings] on site, before they reach an escalated level of enforcement.”
A WBEZ analysis of city data shows hundreds of Chicagoans have filed no air conditioning complaints through the city’s 311 nonemergency hotline each year for the past several years. In all, more than 1,900 such complaints have been filed since the passage of the cooling ordinance in June 2022.
Nearly 1,000 buildings have logged at least one complaint during that span. The Yale Building ranks fourth overall with 23 complaints. City data show three complaints for the building have been filed this year: one on July 20; one on Aug. 31, the day the building was inspected and found noncompliant with the cooling ordinance; and one on Sep. 2.
Ald. Maria Hadden (49th), who introduced the cooling ordinance, pointed out that climate change is the reason why these buildings are vulnerable to heat. She said that many buildings were built almost a 100 years ago, and the heat that Chicago experienced at the time wasn’t as intense or frequent.
“There’s a reason why so many of our residential buildings, school buildings, park districts, they’ve all been retrofitted with air conditioning or cooling systems,” Hadden said. “In many respects, we don’t seem prepared for it. Individuals aren’t prepared. Systems aren’t prepared.”
The Department of Buildings advises residents to file a report by calling 311, if they believe their building is not meeting cooling requirements. Leaving detailed 311 reports with contact information, as well as having multiple neighbors in the same building file separate reports, can help establish the scope of the problem. The department also advises property owners to prepare early and inspect their cooling systems.