It's a hot day in Perth and inside Charles Pratt's home, it's 33 degrees Celsius.
"You're sweating all the time," he said. "I'm often exhausted. I don't sleep well at all. I'm always dehydrated."
Even though it wasn't a particularly hot summer in Perth, Mr Pratt recorded temperatures as high as 39C inside his rental, and an entire week that hovered above 30.
Last summer he had to move out of the house for two weeks because it was too hot.
He also noticed his ADHD medications weren't working like they should.
"And it took me quite a few weeks to realise that it was because they were being kept in a house and it was too hot," he said.
He sometimes brings home a thermal imaging camera from work, and can see most of the heat is coming from the ceiling.
There's nothing illegal about the conditions Mr Pratt is living in. Like most Australian states and territories, landlords do not need to provide heating or cooling in Western Australia.
At his own expense, Mr Pratt has installed a portable air conditioning unit and shade sail.
He also uses pedestal fans and has covered some windows with cardboard to try to keep the heat out.
But he can't afford to run his air conditioning overnight.
"I know that running the big [air conditioning unit] in the lounge room can cost me more than 30 cents an hour to run, which doesn't sound like a lot," he said.
"But you add it up over the course of a summertime in the evenings and you've got to weigh up whether you're expecting a huge power bill at the end of the three months, or whether you can justify that."
The tight Perth rental market means he doesn't want to move out of his home.
"I do feel powerless," he said.
"It just makes me frustrated with the system. The system's set up to look after landlords and real estate agents and there's absolutely nothing that a renter can do."
He's paid by rental advocacy group Better Renting to speak publicly about tracking temperatures and humidity at his home.
They tracked 77 private rentals and social housing properties across the country and found that temperatures were above 25 degrees, 45 per cent of the time, with some homes reaching maximum temperatures well into the 40s.
"What we found is that heat was an oppressive presence in a lot of these people's homes – affecting their sleep, affecting their cooking, affecting when they could have friends around," Better Renting executive director Joel Dignam said.
A recent survey of 200 people on low incomes by the Australian Council of Social Service also found two-thirds were struggling to keep their homes cool.
Power bill stress 'not conducive to good mental health'
Barbara Giardina has had an uncomfortable summer.
She lives in Wallaroo, about two hours north-west of Adelaide, an area where temperatures have been known to get into the mid-40s.
The disability pensioner lives in a public housing unit managed by South Australia's Housing Authority. The single-storey unit shares a roof and wall with an adjoining unit.
"The heat gets in through the brick, through the roof … it just gets the heat as long as the sun's awake," she said.
"If [the neighbours] aren't putting in any cooling on their side, then my unit suffers."
She's installed her own small reverse-cycle air conditioner, which cost about $700, as well as a ceiling fan.
She's also put temporary tinting on the windows.
"I sleep out in what would normally be the lounge room because that's the closest that I can get to the air conditioner and the ceiling fan," she said.
Last summer's power bill was more than $650, and Ms Giardina is bracing for this year's.
"If you're sitting there debating whether to turn on heating or cooling, and you're concerned about your electricity, that's not conducive to good mental health," she said.
"And for myself, I suffer from chronic depression. And it gets extremely stressful around this time of the year trying to debate, do I have it on? Or how am I going to pay the bill?"
Ms Giardina said there had been no improvements to the home's insulation during the 18 years she had lived in her unit.
"I think heating and cooling should be a basic necessity," she said.
"It makes me angry. It's not big ticket items that I'm asking for."
Mr Dignam from Better Renting said it was "particularly galling" to see public housing tenants having to pay out of their own pockets to make their homes liveable.
"And the fact that we do see such heat in social housing properties, issues with humidity and mould as well, is certainly an indictment on the governments that haven't been addressing this," he said.
In a statement, a spokesperson said the SA Housing Authority had no current requests for improvements to windows, cooling or heating for Ms Giardina's property but that type of work might be considered under a maintenance program being rolled out for 3,000 of the 33,500 homes it managed.
They said tenants were supported with air conditioning if they were living with a disability and had recognised medical conditions, and some on low incomes were eligible for state government medical cooling or heating concessions.
Ms Giardina said she had suffered a stroke, has diabetes and liver issues and peripheral nerve pain, but her application for a medical cooling concession was not successful a few years ago.
She said she would like to see the SA Housing Authority inform public housing tenants that they might be eligible for improvements under the maintenance program.
SA Housing Authority also said it installs air conditioning in homes in remote communities in the hottest parts of the state.
Hot homes can 'exacerbate existing health conditions'
It's more than 20 years since the Australian Bureau of Statistics undertook a national housing condition survey.
According to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), the average energy rating for the 6 million Australian homes built before 1995 is only 1.5 out of a possible 10 stars.
AHURI managing director Michael Fotheringham said social housing dwellings were among the least energy efficient and most had a "very low" energy efficiency rating.
"Less efficient homes mean higher energy bills, effectively adding to the cost of living in that dwelling. But beyond that, there's also a health dimension here," he said.
Professor Emma Baker from the Australian Centre for Housing Research at the University of Adelaide agreed.
"Hot homes affect people's health, generally on those extreme weather event days, and it tends to just exacerbate existing health conditions, things like cardiovascular disease, or respiratory problems," she said.
Three-quarters of homes not meeting WHO winter standards: study
While Australian winters are mild by international standards, for renters they can be just as tough as summer. Professor Baker collected data on cold homes over winter.
"You'd be surprised how many Australians actually live in cold homes," she said.
"We've just got the first results from 500 homes, and that suggests that 75 per cent of Australian homes in the study never got to World Health Organization healthy temperatures over winter."
Uncomfortably cold homes aren't just affecting tenants' physical health.
"We have cardiovascular disease effects and respiratory effects, but also a whole lot of problems with contagious diseases, things like coughs and colds exacerbating pre-existing medical conditions," Professor Baker said.
"But the mental health impacts seem to be the really big one in Australia.
"Imagine when you've got a house that's cold, and it's cold for, say, four continuous months. You've got the drudgery of living in that and never really been comfortable. But you've also got the worry of, 'Do I put the heating on or not?'"
Professor Baker said often Australia's sickest people were living in homes that were going to make them the sickest.
"In Australia, we tend to put the lowest income people in the poorest quality homes that are then the most expensive to heat," she said.
New guidelines coming
For private rentals, Victoria and Tasmania have minimum standards requiring some form of fixed heating in a main living area, but no jurisdiction mandates minimum cooling standards.
In 2019, state and territory governments agreed to establish a national framework for minimum energy efficiency requirements for rental properties.
The Victorian government is developing the framework on behalf of all states and territories and is expected to deliver it in the middle of this year, but states and territories have only committed to considering implementing rental schemes based on the framework by the end of 2025.
Victoria and the ACT have, however, already moved to introduce minimum standards on ceiling insulation to improve energy efficiency and comfort.
Mr Dignam said governments needed to act quickly to introduce minimum energy efficiency standards for rental homes.
"We want a situation where renters can turn on the switch, can stay cool in their homes, [and] they don't have to worry about what that's going to cost them," he said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Jenny McAllister, said the federal government was consulting on a national energy performance strategy that would aim to make Australian homes healthier and more comfortable and reduce pressure on energy bills.
AHURI's Mr Fotheringham said all states and territories were moving to make sure new builds of social housing stock were energy efficient.
"But we also need to repair and improve the properties we have because we don't have the resources to build an entire new housing system," he said.
Watch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays 7.30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV
