Montgomery County, Maryland's Pioneering Air Conditioning Regulation: A Regional Benchmark Reshaping Tenant Rights

Editor's note:This article is the second in a three-part series focusing on local policies that grant tenants rights to cooling equipment.Click hereto read the first article.

About five years ago, Victoria Price urged local lawmakers in Montgomery County, Maryland, to adopt a policy that no local government in the region had yet enacted: requiring landlords to provide cooling for tenants during the summer, in a manner consistent with winter heating requirements.

At a public hearing in 2019, Price, then 69, recounted her nearly 14 years of renting in a senior apartment building over 50 years old. She said the building's cooling system frequently broke down, sometimes for extended periods. She mentioned that residents had been hospitalized for heat exhaustion, others had fainted, and one neighbor had died, partly due to excessive heat in their unit lacking usable air conditioning.

Her testimony painted a picture of what can happen whenvulnerable populations—such as the elderly, young children, and those with underlying health conditions—lack indoor cooling. As climate change drives record temperatures in cities that previously rarely saw extreme heat, this has become an increasingly pressingissue。

Montgomery County in 2020passedthe law supported by Price and other local tenant advocates. Under the new policy, many landlords must provide air conditioning from June 1 to September 30 each year. The equipment must be able to cool indoor temperatures to at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Previously, the county had no indoor maximum temperature standard, only requiring landlords to maintain air conditioning units in "normal working order" if they already existed in the unit.

The final air conditioning mandate was scaled back from County Councilmember Tom Hucker'soriginal proposal—which would have required landlords to provide working air conditioning in May as well.The final billalso exempted single-family homes and some historic buildings. Still, the law marked a significant shift in the community's perception of cooling: it was no longer a luxury but a necessity. "The purpose of this law is not to make living more luxurious, but to address health hazards," said Matt Losak, executive director of the Montgomery County Renters Alliance.

As communities from New York City to Los Angeles County follow Montgomery County's lead, the county's experience implementing this rule could offer lessons for local leaders nationwide.

Early bumps in the road

According to county officials and real estate industry representatives, Montgomery County has tens of thousands of multifamily rental units, most of which already have air conditioning. A 2020 estimate by the local Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors suggested the new law could affect 300 to 1,400 units. Still, the first summer after the county regulation took effect was "a bit bumpy." Tamala Robinson, code enforcement manager for the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, said landlords who had not previously provided cooling had to figure out how to install such systems in their buildings.

For landlords needing to install air conditioning, the county offered electrification and insulation retrofit funding to help offset costs, said Nathan Bovelle, community development supervisor for the county's Department of Housing and Community Affairs.

"In my estimation, the resistance before implementation was much greater than the actual impact after," said Earl Stoddard, the county's assistant chief administrative officer. "No buildings went out of business, and nothing major happened."

County officials are not sure how many tenants gained working air conditioning because of the law—it is not a metric they track. They assume landlords are largely complying, as they have not received feedback to the contrary. "If landlords were having trouble with retrofits, we would hear about it through tenant complaints," Stoddard said.

Losak of the Renters Alliance said that since the law took effect, landlords seem to be more attentive to air conditioning maintenance. "We haven't seen the same lack of response to complaints that we saw in the past," he wrote in an email. He attributed the increased landlord accountability to Montgomery County's regulation, but added that the improved response to air conditioning issues might partly be due to this summer's extreme heat—which can pose serious health risks to tenants, especially the elderly.

Robinson explained the complaint reporting process: after a tenant calls the county to report that air conditioning is not working, an inspector visits the unit that same day and measures the indoor temperature. If the temperature is above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the county notifies the landlord and recommends action within 24 hours—though technically they have up to five days to fix the problem. If repairs will take longer than five days, the county recommends the landlord provide temporary air conditioning, which Robinson said most landlords do. If the air conditioning is not repaired within five days, the county issues a citation with a $500 fine, which a judge can double or waive depending on the severity of the case.

Robinson said complaints rarely go through the entire process. To date, the few landlords who received citations resolved the issue before going to court.

Older buildings, more challenges

Brian Anleu has seen both sides of the debate over requiring landlords to provide air conditioning.

He worked on Montgomery County's bill as a staffer for Hucker, the bill's sponsor. Now he represents the local real estate industry as vice president of Maryland government affairs for the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington.

He believes a major obstacle to providing adequate cooling for tenants in hot weather is buildings with older HVAC systems. These buildings, built in the 1960s and 1970s, are often also the ones with affordable rents, housing "the county's least affluent, most in-need populations," Anleu said.

Anleu recalled that Hucker's office began working on the air conditioning requirement bill precisely because of persistent complaints from residents of several such older buildings. "Four years from now, will I tell you those buildings are always in compliance?" he said. "Probably not, because those buildings are really old, and the systems are old."

In some older HVAC systems in multifamily buildings, residents cannot simply adjust a thermostat to get heating or cooling as weather changes. The entire building must be switched from heating to cooling mode (or vice versa) at seasonal transitions, a process that can take up to a week. Officials explained: "If there's a week of hot weather followed by a week of cool weather—as often happens in April and May—that can be very tricky," Stoddard said.

Just this past April, Montgomery County saw temperatures near 90 degrees Fahrenheit, triggering a wave of tenant complaints about air conditioning not working, Bovelle recalled. A few days later, temperatures dropped back into the 40s and 50s.

If landlords turned off heating during those hot days and then the weather turned cool, "they would get complaints about being too cold," Bovelle said.

This dilemma prompted county officials to have lengthy discussions about how to better help landlords choose the optimal time each year to switch HVAC systems from heating to cooling—perhaps by referencing the National Weather Service or other reliable weather forecast sources, Stoddard said.

Owners can upgrade to more modern HVAC systems, but that can be costly, time-consuming, and disruptive to residents, Bovelle said. Additionally, owners often pass costs on to tenants through higher rents, Anleu said. Montgomery County's approvedbuilding performance standards(related to energy use or greenhouse gas emissions) add an additional burden on landlords—who are being asked both to reduce energy consumption and to upgrade cooling equipment, he said.

"We keep hearing... that there are billions of (federal) dollars available to fund these energy efficiency projects," Anleu said, but those funds must go through a cumbersome bureaucratic process involving multiple government agencies before reaching property owners.

"Better than 10 people dying"

Robinson said she often receives calls from other jurisdictions asking about the law. A common question: why did Montgomery County exempt single-family rental properties from the regulation? She explained that the intent was to keep these properties as affordable as possible for tenants. But she suggested other local governments consider laws that apply to all rental properties. "There should be no difference in residents' health and safety... whether you live in a single-family townhouse, a single-family home, or a multifamily unit," Bovelle added.

He also said Montgomery County could have considered including some historic buildings in low-income neighborhoods under the law, for example by working with historic preservation societies to allow structural modifications.

Stoddard suggested that jurisdictions that are not yet fully built out should strive to "get it right from the start," such as requiring new buildings to be energy-efficient and equipped with air conditioning. For communities like Montgomery County that are already highly built out, mandating cooling and other building upgrades without pushing up rents may be more challenging. He said governments in these built-out communities may have to subsidize retrofits.

Price, the tenant who advocated for the county's air conditioning requirement in 2019, told Smart Cities Dive in June that she has moved out of the building where she testified years ago. But she still remembers the various ways she cooled her 12th-floor apartment when it overheated—from closing all the blinds and running fans to covering windows with poster board. Sometimes she would leave her home and go to her brother's in a neighboring county, she said.

When asked if she thinks Montgomery County's air conditioning requirement has made a difference, Price said yes. Even if the law only helped 100 people, she said, "that's better than 10 people dying from extreme heat."

"Why would anyone oppose something like this?"