Houston passes AC requirement for rental housing | What's Your Point?

This week, Houston City Council mandated that landlords provide air conditioning for any living space offered for rent. My hope is that we all look at the intent of this. The intent is to ensure that Houstonians live in humane conditions and ensure that all Houstonians, no matter who you are, no matter what your income level, have a basic self and health and safety reprieve from the heat. Landlords have 120 days to comply and install cooling systems capable of lowering indoor temperatures below 80 degrees. Panel, those who fail to comply now face fines of up to $2,000. A little bit of a lightning round here. Sue, your thoughts? Um, I'm glad they did it. We're not pioneers in this at all, and it's really a basic. It's a basic choice. You make it available, and then the family can decide how they want to spend their funds. Do you want to run the electricity? Do you want to give up something else? But they now have the choice of being able to have have air conditioning in their home. Jordan is a former council chief of staff. Why didn't this happen in the past? I think, you know, two words, Alejandro Salinas. So she's come on board, and now you're seeing all types of change like she really has been a dynamo. And as someone who ran against her, I'm glad she beat me. She's done a good job, Bob. So I think this illustrates again the difference between how Democrats campaign and how they govern. This is these people. There's about 400 homes, I think, in the city of Houston that fall into this category. It's the lowest of the lowest low income housing. They chose to be in there because that's all they can afford. And if you put air conditioning, make them put air conditioning in there, they're gonna use it. And then your their bills go up 50 to $100 a month. How are they gonna pay for that? Or who's gonna pay for that? Bill, you looked at some numbers. I don't think it's here or near that many. Matter of fact, I talked to Houston Department Association about what was their position. They said we didn't oppose it because we don't know of any apartments that don't have air conditioning in the city. This was based on a 2023 American Housing Survey. They're actually out of the entire Houston area. There were, like, 17 people that said they didn't have air conditioning, which is not statistically significant. I think the Chronicle tracked down one guy over in the Fifth Ward that had, like, six or eight units who made them bring their own, uh, window units because the people were stealing them when they moved out, and that was their big example. All right, thanks to this week's panel and thank you for joining us. The conversation continues on a national level next on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Green. More importantly, we'll keep talking here with what you point overtime streaming live on Fox26houston.com and on our free Fox local app for your phone or smart TV from all of us here. Have a safe and healthy week.