Your local ecohealth Gossip Guru

Spotted: Your Landlord, Quietly Hoping You Don’t Read the Coroner’s Report

by Carla Hamilton

June 23, 2026

 

Six hundred and nineteen individuals died in their apartments in one week in 2021 (BC Coroners Service, 2022). Hello, Lower Mainland. Did you miss me? Let's talk.

Let me set the scene. It's the second-to-last week of June. The sky over Vancouver is milky white with a cloudless blue behind it. Your bedroom, the only room that you have, is 38 degrees and climbing. You open the window. The air outside is hotter than the air inside. You close your window. Your landlord, who lives in Point Grey with a beautiful shaded yard and a heat pump, will never face this problem. You, dear reader, are living it. Unfortunately, the province has had four years to fix it. But here is the thing no one wants to admit: the 2021 heat dome wasn't just a weather event. It was a housing event. And the next one is already on the calendar. Environment and Climate Change Canada is forecasting that 2026 will be among the hottest years on record and that the period from 2026 to 2030 will likely be the hottest five-year period ever recorded (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2026).

The proof is public. 619 deaths were deemed attributable to the 2021 heat dome (BC Coroners Service, 2022). Most of those who passed were older adults with chronic health conditions who lived alone. Ninety-three per cent had no air conditioning. Seventy-six per cent did not even own a fan. All but two percent of deaths occurred indoors, with roughly a third living in marginalized communities and three-quarters in Fraser Health or Vancouver Coastal Health regions, making this issue local to you (BC Coroners Service, 2022). The killer wasn't the heat. The killer was the building. This is precisely what ecosystem approaches to health are trying to highlight. The ecohealth framework incorporates systems thinking, transdisciplinarity, equity, sustainability, multi-stakeholder participation, and the belief that knowledge should drive action (Charron, 2012; Webb et al., 2010). Ecohealth creates a bridge between the environment and human health, as well as between the climate crisis, the housing crisis, and the public health crisis. These are all one crisis. Climate change produces the rising temperatures. Decades-old housing policies supply the buildings. Income inequality fosters the people who could not afford to leave these conditions. Ageism, ableism, and isolation produce the framing that lets us see these as "vulnerable populations" instead of "us, in thirty years."

The theme this gossip blog centres on is Collectives of reciprocity: land and health. Reciprocity remains the aspect that we continue to leave behind. The land continues to give back and support us through the rivers, the rain, and the cool winds that travel in from the ocean. We took the shade and canopy that the land has supplied and distributed it unequally: in Vancouver, tree canopy is far sparser in low-income and racialized neighbourhoods, with some Canadian communities having 20 to 30 percent less canopy cover than wealthier ones (Nature Canada, 2022). Tree canopy becomes a privilege, while asphalt becomes a burden placed on our most vulnerable. That is not the land's choice. That is ours. And it wasn't only humans who suffered. An estimated one billion intertidal animals, mussels, clams, and sea stars were cooked to death along the Salish Sea, where shoreline temperatures climbed above 50 degrees (CBC News, 2021). Swifts, herons, and soil microbes were all in this crisis with us. Ecohealth challenges the belief that only human deaths count as a health emergency (Charron, 2012). Here is where the gossip gets juicy. The BC Building Code was silently updated in 2024: all new homes are now required to have at least one space that will not exceed 26 degrees (Government of British Columbia, 2024). However, the update only applies to new buildings, which is a detail that has been quietly buried. It excludes the existing buildings where vulnerable low-income renters already live, leaving them at risk unless their homes are retrofitted (Metro Vancouver, 2025).

Landlords say retrofits are too expensive. The province says it cannot create change as quickly as needed. Both of these opinions have merit. But retrofits are still less expensive than 619 funerals. Ecohealth refuses to let knowledge sit in silence (Parkes et al., 2019), so here is my stand: cooling is public health infrastructure, and the province needs to recognize it as such. That means a maximum indoor temperature standard for all rentals in BC, new and existing, must be implemented. It means tenant rights should allow individuals to install cooling measures without landlords' objection. It means heat pumps should be subsidized in low-income buildings and social housing. It means recognizing tree canopies, wetlands, and ecological restoration in neighbourhoods in need as cooling infrastructure too, not just as amenities. The low-income neighbourhoods with the highest heat-related mortality rates rarely have the green space and tree canopy that would give them a chance against rising temperatures. We should not overlook the tenants in SROs, the disabled community, our elderly, and vulnerable populations. They should be included within the decision-making processes that directly impact them. They represent the lived experiences that the coroners' reports cannot illustrate. Ecohealth fosters the belief that knowledge flows in both directions, between the community and the researcher (Charron, 2012). Any cooling policy that doesn't begin with their needs isn't policy. It's paperwork.

The heat is already returning to Vancouver. Tell me in the comments: What is the temperature in your apartment right now? Tag your MLA. Send this blog to your landlord. Or don't. Either way, we must address this climate and housing issue; otherwise, we will face the same situation again and pretend to be surprised once more.

You know you love me.

XOXO

Gossip Gurl, Public Health Edition 

 

References

BC Coroners Service. (2022). Extreme heat and human mortality: A review of heat-related deaths in B.C. in summer 2021. Government of British Columbia. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/death/coroners-service/death-review-panel

CBC News. (2021, July 6). More than a billion seashore animals may have cooked to death in B.C. heat wave, says UBC researcher. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/intertidal-animals-ubc-research-1.6090774

Charron, D. F. (2012). Ecohealth: Origins and approach. In D. F. Charron (Ed.), Ecohealth research in practice: Innovative applications of an ecosystem approach to health (pp. 1–32). International Development Research Centre. https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/handle/10625/47809

Environment and Climate Change Canada. (2026, January 19). Canada forecasts 2026 to be among the hottest years on record. Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2026/01/canada-forecasts-2026-to-be-among -the-hottest-years-on-record.html

Government of British Columbia, Building and Safety Standards Branch. (2024). Information bulletin B24-08: Protection from overheating in dwelling units. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/construction-industry/building -codes-and-standards/bulletins/2024-code/b24-08_overheating.pdf

Metro Vancouver. (2025). Thermal safety in existing multi-unit residential buildings. https://metrovancouver.org/services/air-quality-climate-action/Documents/thermal-safety-in-existing-mult i-unit-residential-buildings.pdf

Nature Canada. (2022). Canada's urban forests: Bringing the canopy to all. https://naturecanada.ca/news/press-releases/new-nature-canada-report-addresses-inequality-in-cities-tree-c over/

Parkes, M. W., et al. (2019). Preparing for the future of public health: The ecological determinants of health and the call for an eco-social approach to public health education. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 111, 60–64.

Webb, J., et al. (2010). Tools for thoughtful action: The role of ecosystem approaches to health in enhancing public health. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 101, 439–441.