Officials asked people to stay home as smoke set last week. But many in poverty can’t afford running their AC all day.

As wildfire smoke from Canada polluted the air around Philadelphia last week, officials asked residents to stay indoors to protect their health. Even in the fairly nice spring weather, staying indoors can become uncomfortable for people who can’t afford to run their air-conditioning unit all day.

But during a heat wave, it can become an unhealthy danger and even deadly.

A new report suggests that a large number of low-income Philadelphians worry about paying the bills to keep their homes cool during the summer months. One recommended solution: expanding an energy assistance grant program that Pennsylvania currently opens only in the winter. The problem may affect more people as climate change makes the summers hotter in a city where some low-income neighborhoods are hot spots.

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The report includes the survey responses of 113 residents in low-income neighborhoods of North and West Philadelphia, who were asked between November 2022 and April 2023 about their summer energy use. Esperanza, a faith-based organization serving North Philadelphia’s Hispanic community, and Community Legal Services, a legal aid agency, carried out the survey.

The survey shows that nearly all respondents had an air-conditioning unit — most commonly a window unit. Still, three out of four residents responding said they cannot afford their energy bills in the summer. Nearly all said that they limit the use of the AC to keep costs down.

In community listening sessions, residents said that they had to choose which bill to pay in the summer months.

“Some people were going without food to pay for their energy bills to cool their houses,” said Jamile Tellez Lieberman, Esperanza’s senior vice president for community engagement, research, and health equity.

Esperanza’s work is centered around Hunting Park, one of the city’s hottest neighborhoods, where the median household income is $27,000. Half of the neighborhood’s residents are Black and 42% are Hispanic.

Summer heat can be uncomfortable without air-conditioning, but heat only becomes a health problem during periods of excessively high temperatures, known as heat waves. Conditions can become especially worrisome in “heat islands,” or urban areas with higher daytime temperatures that do not cool off much at night.

The burden of cooling bills during the summer months worries Tellez Lieberman, especially when it comes to vulnerable populations like seniors.

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During extremely hot weather — when temperatures climb above 95 degrees Fahrenheit for three consecutive days — the city will open cooling centers. But for many seniors and people with disabilities, that is not an accessible solution.

“It’s not feasible to expect them to come out and jump on a bus that has air-conditioning or go down to the public library, which by the way we don’t have one up here,” Tellez Lieberman said.

Every year, about 700 people die of heat-related illnesses in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, provides cash grants using federal dollars to assist households at or below 150% of the federal poverty level with their heating and cooling bills. In Pennsylvania, the Department of Human Services disbursed $300 to $1,000 grants in the winter months.

“Pennsylvania is unique among its neighbors, because it doesn’t have a cooling program,” said Lydia Gottesfeld, managing attorney of the CLS health and independence unit.

The CLS and Esperanza report includes a call to action for the state to extend LIHEAP to the summer months. Currently, at least 30 states accept applications for assistance in both winter and summer.

» READ MORE: Hefty heating bills leave some Philadelphians aghast

The nonprofit advocacy groups also want the Department of Human Services to streamline its application process and improve information about LIHEAP in languages other than English.

The state currently receives about $200 million a year from the federal government for LIHEAP, according to the report.

New Jersey, New York, and Ohio are among the states that supplement the federal funding, Gottesfeld said, so people can still access the support during hot summer months. Pennsylvania historically did not, though the General Assembly has sometimes provided funds on a temporary basis.