Press Hits

An anti-poverty activist in Moncton was hospitalized for heat exhaustion on Tuesday, just before NB ACORN launched a campaign demanding “A/C for all.” Peter Jongeneelen, co-chair of NB ACORN – a grassroots association of low-to-moderate income people – was recovering at home by Wednesday after being released from hospital. He told the NB Media Co-op that a clause in his lease prohibits window A/C units.

Michelle Arsenault and her family went to the splash pad in Centennial Park a day after the first scorcher of the summer. The world gets hotter every single year and it gets more and more difficult for low- and moderate-income people to just live, to exist in their homes without it being an active health risk,” said ACORN member Sawyer MacNaughton. The group would like to see barriers that prevent tenants from installing cooling devices in their units removed.

As the first summer heat wave hits around the country, a New Brunswick advocacy group (ACORN) is calling on the province to help low-income households access air conditioning. As Anna Mandin reports, the unhoused and elderly residents are facing increased risk from extreme heat.

Kayla Leet spent one of the hottest days of the year so far taping foil to her windows to reflect heat away from her already “baking” east-end apartment…The rest of her one-bedroom unit reached 30 C Monday by the time she broke out the makeshift aluminum sun block. “I remember seeing other people put (foil) up and thinking, oh, that is so ugly. But you know what? I don’t care if it’s ugly,” said the ACORN tenant advocate. “I don’t have any other affordable options to try to stay cool … A lot of people don’t.”

En pleine vague de chaleur au Nouveau-Brunswick, des locataires réclament que l’air climatisé soit reconnu comme un besoin essentiel dans les logements, notamment pour les personnes à faible revenu.

Une vingtaine de locataires de Moncton ont manifesté au centre-ville mercredi pour revendiquer des assouplissements en termes d’installations de climatiseurs dans les logements. Le mercure a monté considérablement au Nouveau-Brunswick mardi. À Moncton, une température record de 33,7 degrés Celsius a été enregistrée. Une situation intenable dans un logement sans climatiseur, selon un représentant de l’organisme ACORN NB, qui défend les locataires, Sylvain Comeau. “En réalité, c’est une question de vie ou de mort, dit-il. “Avec ces chaleurs-là, c’est bien trop chaud pour vivre [dans un logement non climatisé].”