California is throwing serious money at extreme heat, with hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to cooling and heat resilience projects. Yet public health leaders say the overall effort still feels like emergency management with a grant program stapled on. The result is a patchwork system where shade trees, retrofits and cooling centers show up in some neighborhoods and not in others, depending heavily on local budgets and political will. As the state steers more bond money toward heat programs, counties and cities are quietly writing their own rules to protect tenants and people living outdoors.
Where the money sits
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced an $800 million commitment to tackle extreme heat in 2022, according to the Governor’s Office. His 2026 budget proposal would redirect roughly $241 million from the new climate bond into heat programs this year, including grants for local heat action plans and community resilience centers, per the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Much of that cash is still competitive and one time only, a design that advocates say makes it tough for health departments to build lasting infrastructure or long term staffing.
The human toll
The stakes are not theoretical. A California Department of Public Health analysis found that the September 2022 Labor Day heat wave produced about 395 excess deaths, roughly a 5% jump over expected deaths during that 10 day stretch. State environmental health tracking shows emergency department visits for heat related illness climbing as well, with OEHHA indicators citing an age adjusted ER visit rate of about 14.4 per 100,000 residents in 2023. Public health officials say those trends underscore the need for prevention programs that run year round, not just urgent responses when temperatures spike.
Local governments fill the void
With the state offering guidance but relatively few mandates, local governments are stepping into the gap. Los Angeles County has adopted an ordinance requiring rental housing in unincorporated areas to maintain an indoor temperature no higher than 82°F, with compliance phased in beginning in 2027, according to county board documents. Inside the City of Los Angeles, a proposal to trim the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office under budget pressure briefly put heat planning on the chopping block. After public pushback, city leaders kept the work alive by shifting heat planning duties into the Emergency Management Department, according to the mayor’s office and reporting by LAist.
Legal implications
State law passed last year recognizes a resident’s right to a cool living space, but it does not actually force landlords to install or maintain cooling systems, CalMatters reported. The Department of Housing and Community Development has recommended a maximum indoor temperature of 82°F as a policy target, yet those HCD recommendations are advisory, not a statewide code requirement, according to the agency’s guidance. That legal gray zone is one reason cities and counties are moving ahead with their own binding tenant protections, while most of the state’s response stays locked in a grant funding model.
Why experts say heat needs a home
“This is really a well known public health emergency that should be thought of under public health,” Dr. David Eisenman of UCLA told CalMatters, arguing that heat response should live squarely inside health departments instead of being treated as an occasional emergency operation. A national survey of public health professionals has found that many local health departments lack the staff and funding to move beyond heat alerts and short term outreach. Public health advocates say only steady, predictable funding can close that capacity gap, supporting long running work like surveillance, cooling outreach for people living outdoors and upgrades to older, poorly insulated housing.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office notes that the governor’s bond proposal would significantly ramp up spending on extreme heat mitigation. The real test, analysts say, will be whether the Legislature and local agencies translate that money into durable public health capacity instead of another round of short lived projects. Until that happens, the work of keeping Californians safe from extreme heat is likely to remain uneven, landing on a mix of counties, city governments and community groups that are trying to hold the line as temperatures rise.
