Grant-funded cooling room helps seniors beat heat, build community

When temperatures spiked in Lane County during this week’s heat wave, residents of a manufactured home park for seniors in Springfield didn’t have to go far to cool down.

They walked a few blocks to Filbert Grove Cooperative’s clubhouse-turned-cooling space, where a ductless heat-pump system, installed last year, kept the room at least 20 degrees colder than outside. For the 108 low-income residents over age 55 who live at the co-op, just off Game Farm Road, the space — once too hot to use in summer — has now transformed the season.

The cooling room, tucked inside a larger communal building in the park, is accessible with a keypad lock. On Tuesday, the final day of the National Weather Service’s three-day heat advisory for the Willamette Valley, it reached 100 degrees outside. Inside, it stayed a comfortable 77.

Residents lounged on armchairs and couches as ceiling fans circulated cool air from the wall-mounted unit, which also produces heat in the winter. 

The co-op received $7,000 for the project from the nonprofit Energy Trust Oregon, which launched a program in 2021 to encourage landlords to provide cooling rooms in Oregon multifamily properties and manufactured home parks.

“Two years ago, before this was put in, our AC went out, and it was two weeks — the hottest days of the year — and we suffered,” resident Kay Simon said. “Had this been here, we could have spent our days over here.”

The idea for a cooling space emerged about 4-1/2 years ago, when residents raised $15 million to buy the park from its former owners and formed a board to run it. 

Operations manager Philip Renshaw — a former firefighter and ambulance driver —  said most homes in the park have individual AC units, but they struggle to combat extreme heat. When those units break, residents often wait weeks or months for repairs, which Renshaw described as a regular occurrence for any sort of maintenance in Springfield.

“Safety is really important to me, and it is to the rest of the board,” Renshaw said. “Luckily, they’re all in agreement that we need to do everything we can to make these people safe. They’re paying space rent. They deserve it.”

During summer, board members and other residents check in on pets and neighbors vulnerable to heat exposure because of old age or medical conditions. They said they often drive around the park to hand out cold water or make sure people sitting outside are safe.

“It’s not my job as treasurer to drive through the park, but you do because this is the place you live,” said board member Chris Rivera. “This is the place you love.”

Energy Trust Oregon first reached out to Renshaw by email in February 2024 to gauge the park’s interest in the program. The co-op and the nonprofit worked for months to resolve questions about the clubhouse’s size and the cooling needs, as defined in the agency’s cooling system capacity guide.

After seven or eight months, the co-op received Energy Trust Oregon funding for the indoor wall-mounted unit and ductless heat pump system. Residents covered an additional $5,000 for an electrician to wire up the outdoor compressor, Renshaw said. The installation was completed in June 2024.

“There are tons of multifamily and manufactured home parks across the state of Oregon that simply just don’t have good insulation or any type of cooling systems,” Energy Trust Oregon spokesperson Ashley Bartels said. “This was really designed to help fill that gap.”

The Oregon Department of Energy received a federal grant for the cooling space program after the state’s triple-digit heat dome in June 2021, which killed more than 120 people. 

A majority of those people were from vulnerable populations, like senior citizens and low income residents, Bartels said. A list identifying 96 Oregon residents who died from the heatwave, released by the state’s Medical Examiner’s Office in August 2021, does not include any residents from Lane County. 

A 2023 Oregon DOE study found that about 50% of the state’s manufactured homes — roughly 39,500 residences — lacked cooling systems. In Lane County, 58% of households vulnerable to extreme heat lack air conditioning or cooling equipment.

As of July 2024, Energy Trust Oregon’s program has helped fund 48 common-area cooling spaces across the state. But the funding will expire Sept. 30, leaving the nonprofit only weeks to connect with properties eligible for cooling incentives.

“We hope that in doing this, as we continue to see all the temperatures rise across the state of Oregon, that initiatives like this can really help to build climate resilience and equity in Oregon’s housing stock,” Bartels said. 

Filbert Grove board members are spreading awareness about the cooling space to residents on Facebook and in the park’s monthly newsletter “constantly,” Rivera said. 

More residents are taking advantage of the space, board members said, and they hope it will also become a place for community bonding, which has declined in the park since COVID-19. 

Before the pandemic, the clubhouse hosted bazaars, Bible studies, celebrations of life and even a wedding. It’s slowly regaining that role. Resident Marleen Kinney began hosting her weekly quilting group there, and a monthly coffee klatch meets in the room. A free pantry in a separate room also draws people in.

“They pick up a cookie or two, and they sit in here and nibble and chat with the other people who either they brought with them to the pantry or found here,” Rivera said. “A lot of it is happenstance.”

Manufactured homes are often called mobile homes, though the federal definition differs: mobile homes refer to a factory-built home constructed before June 15, 1976, and manufactured homes after. 

State lawmakers are weighing Senate Bill 54, which would require owners of large multifamily properties to provide cooling in at least one room when temperatures hit 80 degrees. 

In 2023, the legislature also passed a Climate Resilience Package, which includes a goal of installing 500,000 heat pumps statewide by 2030.