Posted on 06/17/2008 11:35:42 AM PDT by Graybeard58
The owners of the 300-unit Seabury Heights Apartments in Worcester, Mass., got in trouble last year when they turned on the building's air conditioning in early June. As reported in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, some of Seabury's elderly tenants complained, first to management, then to the city, about being cold. In the end, Seabury was forced to turn the heat back on because in Massachusetts, it's against the law — against the law! — for landlords to turn off their furnaces before June 15.
You see where this is going. Chastened by last year's run-in with the government, Seabury kept its furnaces on and its cooling systems off last week as temperatures soared into the 90s, not out of spite but because firing up the AC would require turning off the furnaces, which is against the law. Fire Capt. John M. Ford, director of the city's Emergency Management Team, said the landlord did the right thing: "It is not a switch-on-and-off system. You just can't turn a lever and go from hot to cold. You have to shut down the heating system before you can turn on the air conditioning. There are some code requirements." And don't forget the June 15 furnace law.
On Sunday, Seabury residents got their AC. But because of inflexible health laws and building codes, and an ordinance that bans window air conditioners in multidwelling housing, a complex full of elderly tenants, many with heart or respiratory conditions, sweltered. A few managed beat the heat, however, by moving into air-conditioned hospital rooms.
So tell us again how Big Government with its rigid, contradictory rules and aversion to common sense benefits the people.
You know, most of the people that die with heart disease and cancer are our elderly population, you know, and we all will probably die with something sooner or later. And we've been investing, certainly in cancer and in heart disease, and I feel that we should continue, I'm not downplaying that. But I'm saying that we are losing the people that's going to pay my Social Security and that bothers me.-Joycelyn Elders
Too bad it won’t happen then.
Interesting story, but what does subsidized public housing have to do with window AC units in 'upscale' communities?
The early heat wave that the NE had was to them, another indication of the arrival of global warming. They aren’t interested that it snowed in Washington state last week too.
Areas that once were known as middle class have been upgraded to “upscale” communities” due to an increase in property taxes.
Everything.
Don't you find it ironic that the people who pay for those subsidized A/C window units are prohibited from installing the exact same thing for themselves?
What makes more sense? Cooling a single room or an entire large house/apartment?
Whether the prohibition is by homeowners association, local, County, State or Federal law, it is a distinction without a difference.
The old "let them eat cake" argument.
Just like "free solar power".
< /sarc >
From an energy standpoint, probably cooling the entire house/apartment with zone temperature control. Internal walls are not insulated so that if you attempt to cool just one room you are endlessly fighting the rest of the house. If you don't have zone control you can shut of vents to unused rooms.
Would you please slap that woman for me? Thanks.
Get one of the floor units that has a duct you stick out the window. If your window is at least 5 inches square, it’ll fit.
We've GOT to get rid of this nanny government! Now, there's a congressman (didn't get his name) that's sponsoring a bill to allow the pharmacies to give out personal information, because, get this, his mommy was so dumb, she quit her medication because she was feeling better. So, now, he wants to protect all those dummies out there who will do the same thing by having the pharmacy mail out info to keep on taking the medication until it's all gone. To mail out this info, the pharmacies have to hire 3rd parties (mailing companies) to send this info out, thus, no more privacy. All because someone is too stupid to follow the doc's orders. Don't know what happened to his mommy - didn't hear. This nannyism has GOT to stop! Geez!
“We’ve GOT to get rid of this nanny government!”
We tried here in CA to change the law on eminent domain (remember Kelo?) but it went down (and one passed that does NOTHING to protect property) simply because there were enough jackasses in rent-controlled property that put their abuse of the property OWNERS over doing what was right. It was a shameful outcome. Nanny is alive and well. We may NEED to see BITS before it’s over.
I don’t know why I entered a “heat” thread, except that it’s somewhere between 112 and 117 outside right now, depending on which digital thermo I wanna believe...
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