Around 750 households in the city of Detroit are at risk of having their water shut off starting next week.
For the last three years, a COVID-era moratorium on water shut-offs has been in effect. Prior to the moratorium ending in January 2023, The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department says they began working to enroll customers who were behind on their water bills in repayment plans.
One of the repayment options was the "10/30/50" plan which required homeowners to make a down payment of 10%, 30%, or 50% of their past-due balance. The remainder of the money owed is split up into equal payments over a 6-24 month period.
DWSD says they also began knocking on homeowners' doors offering the "Lifeline" plan for low-income earners. The department says 90% of the people who were eligible to enroll are on schedule to have their debt completely paid off via state relief dollars. It also lowered their monthly bill to $18.
The department says around 22,000 people have enrolled in the programs so far. They estimate 25,000 will be a part of the repayment programs by September.
The department says while nearly 60,000 people throughout the city are behind on their water bills, right now they’re only targeting 750 homeowners who live in affluent neighborhoods that they believe likely to be high to mid-level income earners and can afford the bill.
"Life gets in the way and all we’re asking them to do is let us know what circumstances they have because we have a program that will extend their payments to make it manageable for them," said DWSD Director Gary Brown. "What we can’t let customers do because it’s unfair to the mass majority of customers that are paying their bills, we cant let them ignore the situation."
Brown says before the COVID-19 pandemic the city of Detroit collected 92-93% of utility payments. After the pandemic, that figure dropped to around 70%.
"I have close to $450 million budget to operate DWSD, for operation and maintenance of the system. When we don’t collect that amount of money, that bad debt gets rolled into next year's rates," said Brown. " It’s not fair to those who are just getting by for us to increase rates because we can’t collect bad debt."
About a week ago, the city says they sent people to neighborhoods like Palmer Woods, East English Village, and Boston-Edison among others where they believe high-income earners are likely to reside posting door hanger notices. Brown says the door hanger is meant to make contact, not punish customers who are behind.
"Our intent is not to shut anyone off. Our intent is to get them to call us, work with us in order to design a program that will ensure there will be no service interruption," said Brown.
Monica Lewis-Patrick with We the People Detroit has been advocating for families who struggle to pay their water bills for years.
"I think that Detroiters have not only tried to help themselves in the process but there have been gaps in communication and (repayment plans) has not been well marketed," said Lewis-Patrick.
Citing studies from UC Berkeley, Lewis-Patrick says her greatest concern is that the water shut-offs will only exacerbate already existing health disparities among low-income neighbors. She believes the city should continue to water shut-off moratorium as state legislators work on a long-term water affordability plan.
"The thing that I find very concerning about just going to water shutoffs is no one calculates that Detroiters pay some of the highest insurance rates in the nation. Not the state, but the nation," said Lewis-Patrick. "This once again does not seem to be a remedy coming from the water department but a very punitive action that is going to create more health disparities, more health impacts."
The city says homeowners have 10 days from the date they received the door hanging notice to contact the department before their water is shut off. They say shutoffs are tentatively set to begin on Monday.
