BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Amid another gradual warming trend this week, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau is shedding light on households without air conditioning, putting a spotlight on those most at risk of heat exposure.
While the Census Bureau’s Local Air Conditioning Estimates, or LACE, showed more than nine of 10 U.S. households have AC, it found areas where access is virtually nonexistent.
“As the scorching days of summer approach, state and local governments want to know which neighborhoods are most vulnerable to heat risk,” Chase Sawyer, a technical lead for modeled data product development at the Census Bureau, wrote on the Bureau’s website.
The release of the data also comes weeks after dangerous heat claimed the lives of two Lehigh County men.
LACE is an experimental Census Bureau dataset that estimates air conditioning access at the neighborhood level by combining information from the American Housing Survey and the American Community Survey.
The bureau then uses machine-learning models to merge the detailed housing information from one survey with the geographic detail of the other.
That produces tract-level estimates of air-conditioning prevalence.
What local data showed
The Census Bureau’s dataset measured the number and percentage of occupied households that have air conditioning and those that do not.
Here’s what the data estimated for the Lehigh Valley:
At first glance, both counties appear to be very well air-conditioned:
- More than 97% of occupied households in both counties were estimated to have some form of air conditioning.
- Only about 3% of households were estimated to lack AC.
- The two counties are nearly identical in their overall rates.
However, the raw percentages mask a significant number of households:
- Roughly 3,900 households in Lehigh County were estimated to lack air conditioning.
- Roughly 3,500 households in Northampton County were estimated to lack air conditioning.
- Combined, that's about 7,400 Lehigh Valley households without air conditioning.
Why the data matters
The Census Bureau developed LACE because heat vulnerability isn't just about temperature — it's also about whether people can adequately cool their homes.
Areas with higher shares of households lacking AC may face greater health risks during heat waves — especially among seniors, low-income residents and people with medical conditions.
For the Lehigh Valley, the county-level numbers suggest the region overall is better positioned than many parts of the country regarding AC access.
However, about 7,400 households without AC represents a population that local governments, emergency management agencies, health departments and nonprofits may want to target during prolonged heat events.
On May 19, the Lehigh County Coroner’s Office responded to the death of a 78-year-old Washington Township man at his residence.
A 76-year-old Allentown man also died in the emergency department at St. Luke’s University Hospital-Fountain Hill less than an hour later.
In both cases, the coroner’s office said the men died of hyperthermia from extreme heat conditions in their homes, and both deaths were ruled accidental.
Biggest concentrations of households without AC
Based on the LACE data, these are the tracts with the largest estimated numbers of occupied households lacking air conditioning:
Highest percentages of households without AC
Looking at tracts with at least 500 occupied households, these have the highest shares of homes lacking air conditioning:
What stands out
Lehigh Valley counties appear well air-conditioned overall, but several census tracts were estimated to have 7% to 10% of households without AC, creating pockets of elevated heat vulnerability.
- The countywide figures (about 97% of households having AC) conceal substantial neighborhood-level variation.
- Several tracts were estimated to have three to four times the county average rate of homes without air conditioning.
- Tract 53.02 (New Tripoli) in Lehigh County has an estimated 10.4% of occupied households lacking AC.
- Tract 160.01 (a part of Lehigh Township) in Northampton County has the largest raw number estimated — about 237 households without AC.
Forecasters and climate scientists say dangerous heat events are becoming more frequent and intense as the climate warms, with many U.S. cities experiencing more extreme-heat days and longer heat-wave seasons than in previous decades.
New projections from the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization also indicate global temperatures are likely to continue reaching record or near-record levels over the next five years, with the planet expected to repeatedly exceed international climate benchmarks.
