There was an article in today’s paper about the challenges facing homeless people during heat waves. Of course, one of the issues raised was the fact that there is no air conditioning in the shelter at Grace. While I’ve never been homeless, I have lived in cities without AC. I know how hot it can get in third floor apartments. When I lived in Boston in the 80s, I quickly learned where to go to beat the heat. It wasn’t easy back then, because most of Harvard’s buildings lacked AC. Sure bets were movie theaters and super markets. For $2.50, you could get a double feature in the somewhat effective air-conditioned space at the Harvard Square theater. I saw lots of movies in the summer.

Yes, it would be expensive to put AC in the shelter at Grace. Even more expensive would be the bill from MGE. What people don’t know, even most members of Grace, is that while Porchlight does pay us rent for the space, we pay for utilities. We don’t know how much of our utility usage comes from the shelter, but it’s likely to be substantial. Our annual budget for utilities is a little less than 10% of our total operating budget. That’s a chunk of change.

There’s no AC in the shelter. We do have it in the offices, but we don’t have it in the church itself, the guild hall, and the kitchen. It gets hot in all of those places, too, unbearably so in the kitchen.