No water for you! Detroit plans mass water shutoffs

[Honky Tonk]

In many cases where a home is being rented it is the tenant that is responsible for paying for the water utility.

I've got a home I rent in Warren and my tenants are responsible for paying the water bill.

Again, It all depends on what you agreement says. I've lived in places where I had to have the water turned on in my name, and I've lived in places where it was included in the rent/association fee.

[jackie5275]

Several years ago Dearborn stopped shutting folks water off who were behind in their bills. Instead, they tack delinquent water bills onto your property tax bill.

[Danny]

YAY DUGGAN!!!

It's pay for water rights, folks!

[Honky Tonk]

Several years ago Dearborn stopped shutting folks water off who were behind in their bills. Instead, they tack delinquent water bills onto your property tax bill.

We had this discussion @ work. That's fine if there's a working system in place to collect taxes. In Detroit, collecting overdue taxes is like collecting overdue waterbills.

[Hermod]

I'm sure DWSD has a hard time collecting money. There isn't much money here to collect. But as a municipal entity, the wellbeing of citizens should at least register as a concern, if not be relatively high on the list of priorities. 260M in unpaid bills sure seems like a lot of money, but A) they're going to get it eventually, since the bills are forever and B) how much of that unpaid total is at buildings that no longer exist, where shutting the water off is a meaningless threat? How much would they save if 90% of the gushing water mains and burned/scrapped buildings stopped gushing?

While DWSD may "get their money eventually" they have employee and infrastructure costs that have to be paid for "now" not "eventually".

Should the DWSD employees get their paychecks "eventually"?

[SWMAP]

Like Dearborn, Detroit City does tack on overdue water bills to Property taxes. From the DWSD website:
"In July of each year, DWSD notifies customers in writing that their
delinquent balance will be forwarded to Treasury for collection if they
do not pay by a stated date or make other satisfactory arrangements. In
August, DWSD removes the delinquent amount from the customer's account
and refers it to Treasury for collection.

The Treasury Department begins its collection process by mailing
letters to the address of the delinquent account in an effort to give
the customer one final opportunity to pay in order to prevent placement
of the delinquent amount on the tax bill. Any delinquent account
remaining unpaid after this deadline date is placed on the customer’s
Winter Property Tax Bill.

If still unpaid, the amount moves to Wayne County for late collection. However, As noted above, there is no longer a culture of paying utilities or property taxes in Detroit. Utilities are routinely stolen and even city council members don’t pay property taxes.

[preserve]

Several folks I know, including myself, got this month's water bill stating last month's was overdue. Bank statement confirmed check was applied. I wonder how much of the problem is in the bill processing. I thought the new water meters were supposed to eliminate meter readers. My bill is always the same. I have no faith that the water department can right itself.

[SWMAP]

Your bill is always the same because, steadily, you have the same number of people and same water habits in your house. You use either one or two or three or four "units of water pretty much the same every month. I don't think that the DWSD bills by partial units, so, even if you used fractionally less water one month, the unts would be rounded up. In summer, you would see more units used if you water outside. I always had the same bill and I complained when suddenly I was using more units than previously. I believed a scam - but DWSD showed me that I was using, steadily, a huge amount of water per day, every hour night and day via the computer readout. And I checked around and there was a basement toilet running for months. Fixed that and went back to two units per month, every month, usage.

[Honky Tonk]

Several folks I know, including myself, got this month's water bill stating last month's was overdue. Bank statement confirmed check was applied. I wonder how much of the problem is in the bill processing. I thought the new water meters were supposed to eliminate meter readers. My bill is always the same. I have no faith that the water department can right itself.

The "overdue" amounts people are seeing, even after you've verified that they've indeed received your payment, sounds more like an accounting issue, and not a meter reading issue.

[gvidas]

While DWSD may "get their money eventually" they have employee and infrastructure costs that have to be paid for "now" not "eventually".

Should the DWSD employees get their paychecks "eventually"?

Conflating an individual's cashflow [[when the employees get paid) with institutional cashflow [[when they collect the bills) is a false equivalence, and misleading.

Any utility provider is dealing with a large delay between when they have to provide a service [[the water itself; infrastructure improvements and repairs; etc) and when they collect money. In my opinion, this delay is fundamental to their business. They already have a large, heavy stick to beat people with: adding it to their tax bills. Pay us, or you lose your home or business.

Accelerating the cutoff process, in light of shoddy accounting and record-keeping, seems unjustifiably severe to me. If it is their only recourse, I would like to know that they've exhausted the alternative solutions to their cashflow problem. Notably unaddressed is the vast quantity of freshwater flowing into burned out basements and up out of the middle of streets.

Furthermore, I think it is very probable that they are inflating the severity of the situation [[mixing vacant lots with overdue bills in with occupied structures) to justify coming down hard on a relatively small number of impoverished people, in a way which will rapidly force them to leave. It is hard, nevermind illegal, to live in a house without running water.

[Honky Tonk]

Conflating an individual's cashflow [[when the employees get paid) with institutional cashflow [[when they collect the bills) is a false equivalence, and misleading.

Any utility provider is dealing with a large delay between when they have to provide a service [[the water itself; infrastructure improvements and repairs; etc) and when they collect money. In my opinion, this delay is fundamental to their business. They already have a large, heavy stick to beat people with: adding it to their tax bills. Pay us, or you lose your home or business.

Accelerating the cutoff process, in light of shoddy accounting and record-keeping, seems unjustifiably severe to me. If it is their only recourse, I would like to know that they've exhausted the alternative solutions to their cashflow problem. Notably unaddressed is the vast quantity of freshwater flowing into burned out basements and up out of the middle of streets.

Furthermore, I think it is very probable that they are inflating the severity of the situation [[mixing vacant lots with overdue bills in with occupied structures) to justify coming down hard on a relatively small number of impoverished people, in a way which will rapidly force them to leave. It is hard, nevermind illegal, to live in a house without running water.

I would like to know just how "vast" this quantity of "freshwater flowing" is, compared to the number of people who actually stiff the DWSD on their bill. As one of my co-workers pointed out earlier when we were discussing the story, "my sister never pays hers".

[Dumpling]

DWSD has been shutting water off for unpaid bills for some time now.
A while back, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, with efforts from
Ms. Marian Kramer and others, succeeded in adding an "affordable water"
fee for at least Detroit water retail customers [[not sure about suburban)
that was opt-in that people could choose to pay if they wanted to assist
people that needed assistance with their water bills.
This was in the Victor Mercado era.
The amount was fifty cents per month. The number of households that
MWRO wanted to help at that time was about 40,000. Apparently enough
people opted in so that 1,100 households could be helped, but I am not at
this time able to find exact figures on how much opt-in money there is
coming into DWSD currently and how many households are now being helped.
There is also, based on going through the DWSD website looking for this
information, another organization called "WAVE" which also exists to assist low income residents. Hopefully the FAQ on their webpage will be updated soon to provide information on funds currently donated and how many households are being helped. Although the water rates in Detroit are
affordable compared to other cities, there is still a poverty problem in
Detroit such that many households could use financial or other assistance
for their water bills.
Based on personal experience, a portion of the water bills will be
uncollectable. This scenario is as follows: A household is foreclosed
on and the residents are evicted, or they leave, or they die.
The billing for water service is not properly terminated. Next month,
there is a small charge for the water even if none is used. No one pays.
Next month a late fee is added. No one pays. Next month there is
another small charge, the previous small charge, the previous late fees,
and a new, larger late fee, and so forth, and eventually the bill can run
into the several hundreds.

[John]

And HOW THE HELL is it legal for Home Depot to sell those tools?! There is NO reason for civilians to own anything like this. Not one.

The tool does have legitimate uses. My uncle used that tool to shut off the water to an abandoned house on his street. He and another neighbor then drained the water lines & secured the house, which then sat empty for 5 years before going up on the tax auction. Today, that house has a new owner living in it. If it were not for the efforts of my uncle & his neighbor, that house would probably be an empty disaster today.

[Dumpling]

The tool is helpful if a contractor wants to dig around the
foundation of your house. There are fines [[$1000+) for
illegally tapping the water supply. I don't know if anyone
has ever been fined. It is also theoretically possible to tamper
with meter radio transmissions about water usage, so a
water department thinks you are using less water than the
actual amount.

[Wesley Mouch]

The tool does have legitimate uses. My uncle used that tool to shut off the water to an abandoned house on his street. He and another neighbor then drained the water lines & secured the house, which then sat empty for 5 years before going up on the tax auction. Today, that house has a new owner living in it. If it were not for the efforts of my uncle & his neighbor, that house would probably be an empty disaster today.

This is why you shouldn't let liberals run anything. They think they know what's best for everyone. They're wrong. Sorta like gun control. Let's control guns in Detroit because its so safe in our neighborhood in Ann Arbor who would need a gun. Nobody ever climbs in through bedroom windows. That just doesn't really happen.

[Gistok]

And HOW THE HELL is it legal for Home Depot to sell those tools?! There is NO reason for civilians to own anything like this. Not one.

Prepare to be enlightened....

In some parts of the country it is not only legal, but on occasion necessary to have one of these. But many municipalities do not allow their use.

This perspective from a "Mr. Fix It" website explains some of the uses and non uses....

http://www.instructables.com/id/quot...ter-Meter-Key/

[SWMAP]

I have a water key to turn off the water at a summer cottage.It used to be [[and may still) that the hardware store locally had keys for lending. It used to be that people were more honorable and that most users were paying their water bills and the keys had legitimate emergency use. Like stopping eater flow from a burst pipe.It used to be that Detroit was a law-abiding place once [[and I miss it so).

[jackie5275]

Like Dearborn, Detroit City does tack on overdue water bills to Property taxes. From the DWSD website:
"In July of each year, DWSD notifies customers in writing that their
delinquent balance will be forwarded to Treasury for collection if they
do not pay by a stated date or make other satisfactory arrangements. In
August, DWSD removes the delinquent amount from the customer's account
and refers it to Treasury for collection.

The Treasury Department begins its collection process by mailing
letters to the address of the delinquent account in an effort to give
the customer one final opportunity to pay in order to prevent placement
of the delinquent amount on the tax bill. Any delinquent account
remaining unpaid after this deadline date is placed on the customer’s
Winter Property Tax Bill.

If still unpaid, the amount moves to Wayne County for late collection. However, As noted above, there is no longer a culture of paying utilities or property taxes in Detroit. Utilities are routinely stolen and even city council members don’t pay property taxes.

True, like HT also said, few people are paying taxes too. However, the difference in Dearborn is that they tack them on your property tax as soon as you're late. There is no annual delinquent letter or Treas office collection effort. You're late, it goes on your property tax.

[jerrytimes]

YAY DUGGAN!!!

It's pay for water rights, folks!

Well, if you want it delivered to your home you should have to pay. If you don't, people are free to go get their own!