MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's been a scorching summer, and that means air conditioners are working overtime, but not everybody can afford to stay cool. NPR's Scott Horsley has a report on new research that shows how some families sacrifice comfort and even safety to keep their electric bills in check.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: The temperature in West Point, Miss., has been close to 100 degrees this past week, and the humidity has been just as high.
GEORGIA RALEIGH: I'm telling you, it's been awful. It's just been hot, and I'm just trying to make it through and try to pay the light bill 'cause it's been several times I've been on the verge of getting turned off.
HORSLEY: Seventy-two-year-old Georgia Raleigh's electric bill runs about $200 a month. That's a stretch, on top of her $600 rent.
RALEIGH: I try to keep my temperature up high to cut down on the bill, but with these temperatures we've been having the last couple of months, it's been rough - especially, you know, when I'm on a fixed income. When you take it from a little, small fixed income, there ain't too much left.
HORSLEY: Electric bills across the country are projected to be nearly 8% higher this summer than last, mainly due to hotter weather. In Las Vegas, the mercury has been climbing well into the triple digits, and while yes, it is a dry heat, retired Marine Hollie Martin says it doesn't cool down much at night.
HOLLIE MARTIN: We keep the air conditioner pretty much at about 82 degrees, which is perfect for our family. Might be a little hotter for others, but that's to keep the bills down.
HORSLEY: Even so, Martin's power bill can go as high as $450 a month. Researchers at the JPMorgan Chase Institute wondered how people are coping with those big summer electric bills. Institute president Chris Wheat and his colleague studied bank records from thousands of customers in Houston, Los Angeles and Chicago.
CHRIS WHEAT: When the weather gets hot, you've got to make a choice of some sort - either you're going to spend less on other things or you're going to cool less and be hot, or some combination of the two.
HORSLEY: It turns out, most people don't cut spending elsewhere to offset higher air-conditioning bills, but lower-income families frequently do skimp on cooling, even though Wheat says it can be dangerous to keep the thermostat so high.
MARTIN: It's not just uncomfortable, right? You start to get into sort of health implications at some point, and so it's just kind of another dimension of inequality.
HORSLEY: In a recent Census Bureau survey, more than 1 out of 5 families said they'd kept their home at unsafe or unhealthy temperatures in the last year in order to save on energy bills, and with rising temperatures, heat-related deaths have more than tripled in the last two decades. Debra McCoy has diabetes, which makes her especially sensitive to excess heat. A federally funded nonprofit helped her install central air conditioning this year at her home in Macon, Miss. It's a big improvement from her old window unit, but running the A/C costs McCoy, who's on disability, about $200 a month.
DEBRA MCCOY: The next few days are going to be hot, hot, hot here, and I'm probably going to have to just run it around the clock.
HORSLEY: The federal government does offer low-income families some assistance with home energy bills, but Congress cut $2 billion from that program this year, and there's not nearly enough to go around. What's more, the lion share goes to cover winter heating expenses, not summer cooling. That's a challenge as more people settle in hot parts of the country. Hollie Martin says even with the triple-digit temperatures, he wouldn't trade Las Vegas for his old home in Syracuse, N.Y.
MARTIN: Absolutely not. I'll certainly take the heat of the desert over shoveling snow, without a doubt (laughter).
HORSLEY: The cost of staying cool is likely to keep climbing in future summers, though, along with the temperature.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
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