In the summer it can get up to 120 degrees inside the un-air-conditioned home Agustin Pedro Pedro rents in the San Joaquin Valley city of Madera, so unbearably hot that he sweats, feels faint and gets headaches.
“I arrive tired from work, but I can’t even rest in my own home because the heat doesn’t allow me,” the 60-year-old farmworker told state lawmakers at a recent hearing in Sacramento. He has asked his landlord to install something to cool the rental unit, but he refuses.
“We don’t deserve to live like this,” Pedro said.
