Lyon to include heat checks in home fitness tests
City plans to treat dangerously hot homes as unfit for habitation, giving tenants new protections against heatwave overheating
Published
Lyon has become the first city in France to call for excessive indoor heat to be considered when assessing whether a home is unfit for habitation, as part
of a wider plan to tackle so-called bouilloires thermiques (‘thermal kettles’) – homes that become dangerously hot during heatwaves.
Green mayor Grégory Doucet confirmed the plan on July 15, describing it as a campaign pledge now being put into action, although several details are still to be finalised. Currently, housing decency assessments in France, carried out by regional health agencies (ARS) or municipal health departments, consider factors such as damp, inadequate heating and unsafe electrics, but not excessive indoor heat.
Mr Doucet said homes that became dangerously hot indoors, particularly those without shutters or blinds to block the sun, posed a public health risk and should be covered by national housing decency rules.
Under the proposal, tenants would be able to report excessively hot homes to the city’s health department, which would inspect the property.
Rather than applying a single temperature cut-off, officials say they would look mainly at whether a home is capable of cooling down. Landlords who failed to make improvements could receive formal notices and potentially face fines.
Recognising that many affected buildings are old or protected (Lyon
has around 150 listed historic apartment blocks, mostly in areas such as Vieux-Lyon and La Croix-Rousse), the city also plans a support fund to help low-income owners and social landlords install equipment such as fans and blinds. Eligibility criteria and funding sources are still being worked out, with the fund expected to launch in spring 2027.
A study by tenants’ group Locataires Ensemble found that 62% of homes surveyed in Lyon’s Presqu’île district qualified as bouilloires thermiques. Energy renovation specialists have welcomed the proposal as a first for France, noting that similar overheating criteria already exist in Canada.
Mr Doucet hopes that Lyon’s approach will encourage the government to
update national housing decency rules, meaning that tenants elsewhere in
France could eventually benefit from similar protections.
