Air conditioning is the new normal in Seattle.
For the first time, the majority of homes in our metro area are air-conditioned, according to data from a federal government survey. On top of that, Seattle is no longer the least air-conditioned major metro area in the U.S. — that title now belongs to San Francisco.
The data comes from the American Housing Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The survey is published every two years, and the most recent release is for 2021.
The first time I wrote about this survey, the most recent data was for 2015, and it showed only about one-third of Seattle-area homes had air conditioning, the lowest percentage of any major metro area. I revisited the survey when the data for 2019 was released, and the share of air-conditioned homes had jumped to 44%. At that point, though, we were still the least air-conditioned metro. The Seattle metro area includes King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.
The new data shows in 2021, the share of Seattle-area homes with air conditioning was 53% — that’s an increase of 9 percentage points in just two years. According to the survey, of the projected 1.6 million homes in our metro area, around 844,400 had air conditioning.
I see myself in this statistic, because after 20 years without air conditioning, I broke down and bought a room unit last year.
I recall when I moved to Seattle in 2002, locals told me not to get an air conditioner — it only gets hot a few days each summer, so why bother? And that was good advice at the time.
We’ve had some pretty hot summers in the past decade, but I resisted. What finally broke me was the end-of-June heat wave in 2021, when Seattle recorded its highest temperature ever: 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Before the start of summer last year, I bought a unit for my bedroom — and apparently, a lot of other folks in this area also decided they needed air conditioning.
Thankfully, we haven’t needed it much this summer so far, as temperatures have been relatively mild.
In the San Francisco metro area, 45% of households had air conditioning in 2021. Unlike Seattle, there was no increase in the share of homes with air conditioners between 2019 and 2021 in San Francisco. However, the percentage has increased there since 2015, when 36% of housing units had air conditioning.
Los Angeles was third-lowest, but much higher than either Seattle or San Francisco, at 84%.
These three metro areas were the only ones among the 15 largest where rates of air conditioning were below 90% in 2021. Houston was No. 1 at more than 99%.
In the Seattle area, a projected 469,000 homes had a room unit, and 375,400 had central air. Homeowners were much more likely to have central air than renters, and a little more likely to have a room unit.
As you’d expect, affluent people were more likely to have air conditioning than those with lower incomes. About 64% of Seattle-area households with incomes of $200,000 or more had it, compared with 41% of those with incomes below $50,000.