Houses - and especially high rise developments - are increasingly built according to global fashions or individualistic whims, divorced from regional styles which evolved with the local climate and available materials.
That's often called vernacular architecture and it typically innately includes elements of passive solar design. Such building styles were well-suited to local climate with a minimum of energy-intensive cooling or heating because people simply couldn't afford it.
Additionally, we had cultural practices rooted in staying adequately warm or cool without counting on an HVAC system:
Tapestries on castle walls blocked drafts and provided insulation.
A "three dog night" was a night so cold, the upper classes let three of their large hunting dogs sleep with them to stay warm.
Siestas were naps taken during the hottest part of the day in place of working in the heat.
Buildings routinely had windows positioned to create a cross breeze if you opened them.
Windows routinely were positioned to provide adequate light for essential tasks without having to turn on any lights during the day.
Etc.
Now we build some awful little cardboard box and slap an HVAC system on it as if tech makes up for bad design. It doesn't.
This is really infuriating. I lived in a small town which was full of houses built decades ago for workers building hydro plant close by. They were supposed to be temporary and really deserve to be knocked down these days. But they still function... with multiple split system ACs heating them up.
Even if they're money/energy sinks, people don't have enough savings to invest in a more efficient rebuild.
Poverty is always expensive. That's what keeps people trapped in it.
If it were cheap to be poor, it wouldn't be poverty. It's the fact that you get bled for your time, money, energy and anything else you've got that makes people poor.
I'm thinking here of "skills to survive on minimal pay" being very different from "skills of long-term financial management".
Building houses to be better insulated and able to tolerate extreme temperature events with just minor discomfort is possible[0], but it is also more expensive. If you spend $50,000 more to insulate a house to tolerate this, and it reduces the energy costs by $1,200/year, then financially it's not worth it [1]. Of course for the environment that's a big difference, but capitalism :-)
[0] I live in Northern Europe, in a house built to our pretty strict building standards, and we don't even turn on the heating until it goes below freezing outside. Yesterday we had highs of 32C (90F) - which is hot for here - and I was out so the AC was off. When I came home in the afternoon, our living room which directly faces south and has no shade other than decorative blinds was... 25C (77F).
[1] Average stock market returns over the last century are around 10% per year. Even if you conservatively half that, it still doesn't work out.
[1] See table at bottom of http://www.simplestockinvesting.com/SP500-historical-real-to...