It’s a sunny Saturday morning at the Friendly Village of Orangewood, a mobile home park in North Phoenix for residents 55 and older. In the park’s community center, a group of volunteers have gathered for an event hosted by the American Red Cross.
After a brief orientation, the volunteers put on red vests with the words “disaster relief” across the back.
The Red Cross often provides assistance after fires, floods or hurricanes, but in this case, the organization is responding to extreme heat.
“You’re not thinking of it as a disaster, you’re just thinking of it as a really hot day, it’s just a dry heat, those are the comments that we tend to hear,” said Edgar Olivo, CEO of the Red Cross Arizona and New Mexico branch.
Summers in Arizona have always been hot. But studies show human-caused climate change is driving longer and more extreme heat seasons. The last two years have been Phoenix’s hottest on record.
And, Olivo said, as far as the Red Cross is concerned, extreme heat qualifies as a disaster.
Heat kills more Americans annually than any other weather event. And some populations face disproportionate risk, especially lower-income people and older adults.
“If you fall into the vulnerable categories, extreme heat does become very deadly and very serious very quickly,” Olivo said. “Senior citizens are exposed to a lot of the risks that come with extreme heat, especially if they’re on medication, if they live in isolation, if they don’t know where to go should there be a power outage or some kind of emergency.”
But it’s not only age or health conditions that raise someone’s risk — their housing can increase their odds of heat illness or death, too.
That’s why the Red Cross for the past two years has been working with the city of Phoenix and other partners to organize volunteer door-knocking campaigns, which specifically target lower-income neighborhoods and mobile home communities like this one.
Mobile homes and RVs make up only about 5% of housing in Maricopa County. But in recent years, a disproportionate number of indoor heat-related deaths in the county have occurred in this type of housing — nearly 25%, according to data from the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.
“These manufactured housing residents have really fallen through the cracks,” said Mark Kear, an associate professor with the University of Arizona School of Geography, Development and Environment.
Kear said newer manufactured homes are typically well insulated. But this type of housing had no federal regulations before 1976.
"Oftentimes, those units did not have very much insulation,” Kear said. “Their electrical systems were not sufficient to properly power modern air conditioning systems in today's Arizona summers, and all kinds of other things that would make this housing type more heat vulnerable.”
The Urban Institute estimates there could be more than 1 million of those pre-1976 mobile homes still in use across the U.S. today, including more than 52,000 in Arizona.
The Arizona Legislature in 2024 passed a law barring mobile home park operators from putting restrictions on the types of air conditioning that residents could install.
But Kear said even if residents want to upgrade older mobile homes, they often cannot access the financing they would need to do so.
“Most manufactured housing is not titled as real estate, it's titled as personal property. And that makes it very difficult to borrow money to make investments in it,” Kear said.
Another disadvantage, Kear said, is that mobile home parks often have little foliage and shade, and a lot of hard surfaces that retain heat, making the environment hotter.
“It means that the amount of energy needed to cool your home is going to be a lot greater, which means that even if you have adequate air conditioning, it's going to be a greater financial burden for you to keep that home cool,” Kear said.
And many of these residents pay for electricity through their park, so they’re not direct customers of utility companies. Kear said that can make them ineligible for some forms of energy assistance.
Kear said manufactured homes are an essential affordable housing option, but multiple factors make them more vulnerable to climate threats.
"The ones that are on the landscape today have over time been made more and more heat vulnerable because of how this housing type is treated in law and in policy, and the people that suffer are the residents,” Kear said.
For now, the Red Cross and partners just want Arizona’s manufactured home residents to be more aware of their risks.
Back at the canvassing event, volunteers are passing out packets with information about how to recognize heatstroke, where the nearest heat relief sites are, and other resources for coping with heat.
“Hi, it's Red Cross! We’re doing a heat walk today,” volunteer Sarah West calls as she knocks on doors. “We just want to make sure you stay hydrated, check on a neighbor and know that there’s cooling centers nearby.”
It’s just after 10 a.m. and it’s already above 90 degrees. When volunteers knock on Joyce Craven’s door, she says her home is getting hot.
“It’s like a tin can,” Craven says.
She points to the bedroom where there’s one small window-mounted air conditioner. It’s the only AC she has and it doesn't cool the whole home.
Her plan for the summer?
“Just stick back there in the one room that has the window air conditioner,” Craven says.
The volunteers pass along their information packet.
“There are a lot of programs out there that are available to help,” David Hondula, with Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation tells Craven. He encourages her to call the city’s Neighborhood Services Department to find out about options for emergency home repairs or other possible assistance to keep her home cooler.
Craven thanks the team and the volunteers head off to knock on more doors.
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