CHICAGO — If it were up to Jacques Wallace, no Chicagoan would find a loved one dead of heat stress, without air conditioning, ever again.
Wallace still remembers how hot it was a decade ago when he walked into the Near West Side building where his mother, Jacqueline, lived in a studio apartment. “It was over 100 degrees in there, in the building, period,” he said. “It was steaming.”
A senior with a disability, Jacqueline Wallace’s sole income came from a monthly Social Security check that covered her rent and little else, her son said. Air conditioners rested on the window sills of some apartments in the four-story building, but hers wasn’t one of them.
