This Man Would Pay for Water If the City Would Only Send a Bill from Zócalo Public Square on Vimeo.

California has water problems, but they pale in comparison to those of Detroit, where tens of thousands of residents have had their water shut off—not because of drought, but because of non-payment. More than 20,000 additional people could see their taps run dry beginning May 26. This video by Detroit-based photographer Karah Shaffer is part of Zócalo’s weeklong series on that city’s water emergency.

The post This Man Would Pay for Water If the City Would Only Send a Bill appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Water Doesn't Have to Be Free, Just Affordable from Zócalo Public Square on Vimeo.

California has water problems, but they pale in comparison to those of Detroit, where tens of thousands of residents have had their water shut off—not because of drought, but because of non-payment. More than 20,000 additional people could see their taps run dry beginning May 26. This video by Detroit-based photographer Karah Shaffer is part of Zócalo’s weeklong series on that city’s water emergency.

The post Water Doesn’t Have to Be Free, Just Affordable appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

According to our best estimates, over 53,000 thousand Detroiters, residential customers of Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), have had their water and sewerage abruptly terminated since January 1, 2013, with the biggest wave coming in the spring of 2014. Of the 33,000 shut-offs that occurred last year, only approximately 18,000 thousand homes were restored to service by the end of the year.

The city has responded with “payment plans” and other measures to address the problem. None have worked. Detroit began shutting off the water of another 25,000 people this week.

These shut-offs have caused enormous misery. I know because I am representing 10 families pro bono in a civil and human rights lawsuit that was filed on July 21, 2014. And the people taking part in the Lyda et al v City of Detroit lawsuit are just a drop in the proverbial bucket of Detroit’s water issues.

One mother of three, Nicole Hill, had her water cut off twice without notice. After the second cut-off, she developed a severe viral infection and had to be hospitalized for over a week. She had been receiving wildly inconsistent water bills, ranging from $27 to $900 monthly; she also received water bills during the time when her water was shut off.

Denise Donaldson said in a declaration that she lost her water service while her mother was bedridden and required tube feeding, even though rules are supposed to require medical waiver.

Maurikia Lyda, the lead plaintiff in the case, had her water was shut off after her landlord didn’t pay the bill. She sent her four children to live with relatives because lack of water makes a home uninhabitable under Detroit ordinances. She feared that protective services would take children away because state law gives agencies the right to remove children living in uninhabitable homes.

Other testimony has come from a senior citizen on fixed income who had had her purse stolen. She was trying to get on one of the Water and Sewerage Department’s “payment plans” that allow residents to pay their bill in installments to get their water turned back on. But she couldn’t—even though she had the money to pay—because she couldn’t produce a current I.D.

Among the common themes in the testimony: Water was shutoff without notice. High bills were often the product of irresponsible behavior by landlords. And leaky, aging water infrastructure contributed to the high bills.

I don’t know exactly how many of Detroit’s children, elderly, disabled people, or others who are at risk are living in houses without water. No state or local government has made a comprehensive count and assessment of everyone who has been affected.

What we know is that the shut-offs—and the “payment plans”—haven’t resolved the problem. The department may need money to operate its system and recover from a staggering load of debt, but paying no attention to how much people can afford only produces pain and suffering, not a solution to anybody’s problem. Public and private sanitation risks are magnified where no water is available in the home.

The water shut-offs of 2014 were so harsh that fear, humiliation, and embarrassment were common. In mid-2013, a contractor, Homrich Wrecking, was hired to perform the shut-offs at a cost of $5.6 million. The work was done without following due process requirements, which call for notices and medical waivers. The contract trucks simply started at one end of the blocks and shut off water to half or three-fourths of Detroiters on the same blocks. The contractor left a blue stigmatizing mark, spray-painted on the water cap and many sidewalks.

In April 2014, the DWSD shut-off policy required shut-off if the bill was 2 months late or over $150.00. A majority of Detroiters were at risk for water shut-off. The 2014 water shut-offs occurred in a city facing a constellation of other economic and social hardships. Nearly 40 percent of households lived below the federal poverty level. Unemployment stood at more than 12 percent, twice as high as other Michigan cities.

This year, there have been tens of thousands of foreclosures, on top of 52,000 in 2014, and 42,000 in 2013 and 2012. In this context, the big increases in water and sewage rates have hit hard. In June 2014, water and sewage rates went up 8.7 percent. More hikes—including a 16.7 percent increase in sewer rates—are scheduled for July 1st of this year.

Detroiters have responded. Various non-profit organizations have organized. In addition to our lawsuit, a complaint about the water shut-offs was filed with the United Nations.

George Gaines, the former deputy director of the City of Detroit Health Department, has said that the shut-offs create a public health emergency: “You also don’t have any water to wash your hands, and so you begin to think immediately about what diseases that would result from insanitary ways of defecating.” That includes hepatitis, Salmonella poisoning, and carditis (inflammation of the heart). All of these diseases are communicable.

What are solutions to this crisis in Detroit—and to the threat that water shut-offs can cause anywhere?

First is the national legislation—in effect, a federal mandate establishing a uniform policy on water and sewerage affordability, based on each residential customer’s ability to pay. There should be a dedicated source of federal funding to the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund that could be used to address aging water and sewage infrastructure, a significant contributor to high bills and water waste around the country.

In Detroit, what’s needed is an immediate assessment of the number of Detroiters living in homes without water, including a survey of the number of children, disabled, elderly and other at-risk citizens, with a review of public health and safety issues. This idea is part of legislation now being considered in Lansing, the state capital. In the meantime, all water service should be restored and it should be determined which customers are eligible for assistance programs.

Detroit also needs an immediate amnesty stopping criminal prosecutions of alleged “water thieves,” which is how the city has characterized people who have received water but not paid for it. Why not evaluate these Detroiters for financial assistance—turning alleged criminals into contributors?

The policy should be: water and sewage services should be terminated only if it is determined that the person has the ability to pay, but has not. An expert named Roger Colton has developed a Detroit Water Affordability Plan that would tie bills more closely to people’s ability to pay. It would also include improved procedures for managing and conserving water, protecting consumers against late fees, and collecting from those who haven’t paid but can.

It should be implemented as soon as possible.

The post How Detroit’s Water Problem Became a Humanitarian Crisis appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Maybe Detroit Will Start Charging for Air from Zócalo Public Square on Vimeo.

California has water problems, but they pale in comparison to those of Detroit, where tens of thousands of residents have had their water shut off—not because of drought, but because of non-payment. More than 20,000 additional people could see their taps run dry beginning May 26. This video by Detroit-based photographer Karah Shaffer is part of Zócalo’s weeklong series on that city’s water emergency.

The post Maybe Detroit Will Start Charging for Air appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Like many American cities, Detroit struggled through the Great Recession. By late 2011, one in four habitable houses was in foreclosure. As the city’s residents struggled with rising bills, Detroit’s Water and Sewerage Department struggled with debts of its own. Two years ago, the department started turning off the taps of residents who were delinquent on their bills, including a massive wave of shut-offs about a year ago. The department explained that they were trying to address the “behavioral problem among those who can pay, but are choosing not to.” They began marking homes where the water had been shut off.

Shaffer says most of the houses she saw with blue spray paint were abandoned when she came upon them. The homeowners could very well have walked away because they couldn’t keep up with a range of costs—not just the rising water and sewage rates.

In some cases, landlords neglected to keep the bills current and residents left after water and other services were cut. Sometimes the residents who are still living inside the homes couldn’t afford to pay. There are many reasons in this city why residents struggle with the bills—Detroit’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average and its median income is around a very modest $26,000.

The blue spray-painted houses have become an embarrassment—both for the people who live in the houses and the neighbors. It’s as if they represent a collective defeat. Many people associated with these buildings didn’t want to be photographed because of the stigma.

The impact of the water shut-offs has turned many Detroiters into their own brand of FEMA in the absence of any substantive federal intervention in the water crisis. Kevin Hatchett, for instance, has been one of many members of his family who have brought bottles and pails of water to his grandmother when her water was shut off.

But people like Antonio Cosme, who is a member of the People’s Water Board, an organization that is protesting the shut-offs and trying to get the taps turned back on, says residents can’t be the only ones helping each other get out of this mess. The city needs to do more to help its hurting residents, as well.

“No one wants water to be free,” he told Dalondo Moultrie, who wrote about the water crisis for Zócalo. “What we’re asking is that it be affordable.”

The post Behind Detroit’s Grim Blue Graffiti appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

These days, the water bill comes monthly and you have to brace for it. My neighbors’ bills and mine typically run between $130 and $150. That’s higher than gas or electric bills. And it’s a burden for everyone. I’m really worried about this summer, when my kids—I have five of them—will want to play outside in the water, and people get hot and sweaty and take more showers than they regularly do.

I was born and raised in Detroit, and have lived in the city nearly my entire life. I’ve done different kinds of work, but now I have my own small business—I’m mechanic and work from the home I’ve owned for seven years in a working-class neighborhood on the east side, a diverse place that includes some of the city’s best known attractions (like Eastern Market) and some of its most dangerous areas.

I’ve seen a lot of things during my life in Detroit, and I realize that life isn’t fair. But I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite as unfair to people as how water is handled here.

The worst thing is not the higher bills. Or that landlords, who used to pay the water bills on their property, are now putting it in leases that their tenants must pay. It’s the city shutting off the water when you don’t pay.

And that’s not a rare thing, especially in the last few years, with the water bills so high and the economy not so good. Tens of thousands of people have had their water shut off.

On one block not far from my neighborhood, 14 of the 20 people have had their water shut off.

One of the people whose water was shutoff was my grandmother. It happened last year, and it was a puzzle. She’d lived in the same two-story, three-bedroom house in a neighborhood known as the North End for almost her entire adult life, since my parents were children. It’s the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, though it’s changed since I was a child—you now see some vacant houses and empty fields.

She’d never missed a payment on the house, and she was careful about paying the bills. But she’s 86, and she was having some repairs made on the house, and somehow she missed the bill.

They shut her water off—and it stayed off for a week and a half, even after we called. It was so crazy. Now she was lucky—she has 40 grandchildren and 20 great grandchildren, and I think we all brought her water—in bottles and pails. So she had water to flush the toilets and cook until the situation was under control.

Before that experience and others I’ve seen here in Detroit, I never knew they could turn your water off. That’s like air. How can a person go without water? Why are we being charged for water? I can understand that water can’t be free because pipes have to bring it to you and it has to be treated, but why does it cost so much when it’s a necessity?

Even if you’ve never had your water shut off, water here involves plenty of hassles. There are always problems with the bill, and you get used to calling up and negotiating for changes. You really have to call and negotiate. Most people I know have done this. And when the bill is very large, you can usually convince them to delay it to spread payments out or push them back. But if you’re doing that and you don’t pay the next monthly bill, you could have your water shut off.

I’ve also done a number of things to try to reduce my water. You won’t catch me watering my lawn much. I had a water-efficient sink put in. And it’s cheaper to go to the car wash than to wash my car at home.

You would think that someone like the state attorney general would step in, and fix this situation. We’re talking about water. There has to be some way, to make sure people have what we need. You’d think that something that falls from the sky wouldn’t be so hard to share.

The post Detroit Cut Off My 86-Year-Old Grandmother’s Water appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

So I got involved with my local Democratic party here in Detroit, then in fighting for school reform. After that, I began speaking out as a volunteer advocate for people who face water shut-offs because they couldn’t afford to pay their bills. This issue is finally making national headlines, but the city previously shut off Detroiters water 10 years ago, when large numbers of Detroiters began to struggle with the city’s high water rates. The city council passed an affordability plan that adjusted water rates based on a percentage of income.

Unfortunately, that plan got cut before it could have much effect. Instead, water problems have only gotten worse in a city where at least 60 percent of the population live on a fixed income, low income, or no income. I’ve gone into neighborhood after neighborhood and found myself saying, “Wow, what happened here? The last time I was here, this was an intact neighborhood.” In both the east side neighborhood where my mom lives and the west side where I live, you’ll see blocks and blocks of vacated homes. Meanwhile, our water rates continue to increase to pay the bond debt the Department of Water and Sewerage has been carrying.

I do a lot of door-to-door canvassing to address water shut-offs both on my own and as part of a group called We the People of Detroit, an organization that informs and mobilizes residents to improve their quality of life. We visit people at home, try to assess what’s wrong, and then find resources to help get emergency water deliveries or have service restored.

When I talk about my work, I hear a lot about, “deadbeats” and people who “won’t pay their water bills.” I’m sure there are some people like that out there. But the ones I’m seeing aren’t. The average age of the people I visit whose water has been shut off is over 70. Their incomes are around $500 per month, which makes it hard to pay water bills that can come in at 20 percent or more of their budgets.

It’s not just an issue of whether residents can pay. Many of the people I’ve talked to are renters whose names aren’t on their water bills. Instead, the landlords get the bills. When renters fall behind on payments, they need the property owner to contact the water department before they can make arrangements to pay in installments to get their water turned back on. But many of these landlords live out of state—even out of the country. They’re not willing to go to the water department and prove that they own the property. That forces a lot of renters to live without water or to give up their housing and move into a shelter.

I encountered a horrifying example of this kind of situation in the Greenfield Road area between West Chicago and Plymouth on the west side. One disabled senior lived in a home without water with her mentally disabled 40-year-old daughter. Every morning, the mother had to put her daughter in the car and drive to McDonald’s so her daughter could have a bowel movement. This was one of those cases where the senior had kept up their payments to the landlord, but the landlord hadn’t paid the water bill. When the family moved out, they had to give up their security deposit.

A few blocks from where that family lived, I met a single mom with seven children who had been living without water for three months. She had to hide the fact that she had no water from the authorities in order to keep the family together, because living without water is a serious health risk. If you can’t wash your hands, you can’t prevent disease. The family has since moved out of the home and found a place with water last I checked.

Last October, I was part of a group from We the People of Detroit who took United Nations human rights investigators on a tour of the city to show them the effect of the shut-offs. I instructed the driver to take us to the same area off Greenfield and we encountered a mother with three teenage girls who had been without water for five months. Being a teenage girl is hard enough; I can only imagine how awful it would be to have your menstrual cycle and not have access to water, and not to be able to take regular showers. Their mother had bought a house at auction without realizing she was responsible for the last owner’s delinquent water bill. So while trying to fix up the house for her family, she also had to try to save money to pay on the astronomical water and sewage bill someone else had racked up. We the People pitched in by delivering water for three weeks and so did a neighbor across the street from the family. That woman would carry water across the street to the family of four and sometimes allow them to shower in her home.

I’m continually amazed by the resiliency of the families I visit. On the north end of Detroit, I’ve seen water hoses go from one house to the next as people try to make sure their neighbors have water. They’re making a way out of no way.

But, still, they need substantive help. We the People and I can only make so many emergency water deliveries on our own. That’s why we need public policy: the real implementation of a water affordability plan, where water rates are determined and assessed as a percentage of a water customer’s income. Instead, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Board continues to increase rates and recently announced another round of mass shut-offs is pending.

Shut-offs don’t get people to pay their bills. They just create a devastating cycle, one that’s been going on for 10 years too long already.

The post Battling the Indignities of Detroit’s Water Shut-Offs appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I dry heaved. Spit the toothpaste out of my mouth. Wiped my tongue with a towel.

What was wrong with the water?!

I let the water run for a while. Ten minutes turned into 20 turned into an hour turned into four turned into the day. Sure, the water changed color during that time. Urine yellow to a tree bark brown to a heavy gray fog. Back to yellow.

It stunk, too.

I was disturbed. You see, I live in Detroit. A city surrounded by the largest source of fresh water on earth, and the birthplace of an industrial revolution that left the city polluted and her people dehumanized and mechanized.

Worse, despite being the center of the world’s industry two generations ago, there is little infrastructure compared to other U.S. cities. It’s not like you can call 3-1-1 or text to report a problem like bad water, and it’s not like the water department notifies people when they or their subcontractors are doing work and drinking water might be affected. I’ve lived in other cities where broken water lines were immediately addressed; where a broken water main was immediately news; where contamination, even so slight that the lines needed to be flushed and things would be clean within an hour, was made public.

In Detroit, not only was my water changing color, but it wasn’t news. “What?” a friend from the media asked me when I told him what was going on. “You’re too good for brown water?”

He was mocking the general attitude of the city, echoing around the Twitterverse in response to a picture I posted of my faucet spewing yellow water.

Later that same afternoon, I called Antonio Cosme, a local artist and urban farmer, and member of a coalition of environmental justice organizations called the People’s Water Board.

I told him what my water was doing. He said I was lucky to live in Clark Park, where the city is good about maintaining services (it’s an area known to be “gentrifying”). In his neighborhood, near McGraw and Lonyo, a tree’s root had grown into a sewer line. Raw sewage bubbles up to the surface. His neighbors burn it off when the smell gets overpowering.

He showed it to me a few days later. Children were playing right next to the burned stump and roots. The faint smell of sewage wafted in the air.

It’s been like this for almost two years.

And yes, he says, the water department and the city know about it—he and his neighbors have complained—but nothing has changed.

Yet, when I made my complaint to the water department (a complaint that they initially didn’t want to take down because I am not the account holder, my landlord is) the response was different. When they finally did take my complaint (it seems the person I spoke with wrote it down, on paper), I later in the day received multiple follow-up phone calls, first explaining they were flushing the lines and that as a result the water might be “rusty” and then that the water should be clear within 24 hours.

They called again the following morning to confirm the water was clear. Then the water quality testers showed up, to check for bacteria, though they dismissed as silly my concerns about heavy metals and industrial contaminants. (I live close to a now demolished Cadillac plant. On a tour of the city, a local politico explained to me that the land was left toxic. On another vacant lot a few blocks away, trees have been planted to leech the heavy metals from the soil. Signs warn of the contamination. I’ve also become nauseous on more than one occasion drinking unfiltered water at home and in the neighborhood.)

Still, it was nice to see the follow-up from the water department. But it’s hard not to notice—and feel uneasy about—the disparity between neighborhoods perceived to be more valuable than others.

Worse, while I received a call back from the water department (problem, apparently resolved) and Cosme’s neighborhood has sewage bubbling to the surface (problem not resolved), tens of thousands of Detroiters citywide are having a different experience:

The city is turning their water off for past due bills.

And it’s not as simple as ‘Oh, you didn’t pay your water bill so you’re losing service,’ though that’s what many people in the region will tell you.

To understand the current situation, you have to back-peddle a bit. You see, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department lost more than a half billion dollars in a bad interest rate swap deal. DWSD had to borrow another $537 million to terminate the deal.

Currently, according to those following the crisis closely, DWSD now spends more money on debt service than on operations.

Water rates skyrocketed as DWSD tried to cover its losses, and many of the citizens of Detroit, already poor and reeling from the 2008 mortgage crisis, are paying 15 to 20 percent of their income for water bills. “No one should pay that much for water,” says Cosme.

(A side note to further illustrate the state of Detroit’s affairs: The Federal Government is currently suing Quicken Loans for its role in selling bad mortgages, while Quicken founder Dan Gilbert has been buying up cheap Detroit property.)

But it gets worse: In Detroit’s bankruptcy, the city’s emergency manager and bankruptcy attorney, Kevyn Orr, came to his position from a law firm called Jones Day. Jones Day represented some of Detroit’s creditors. And Orr never investigated potential misconduct in the swaps deal, nor did he try to recoup any of the DWSD’s losses in those potentially illegal deals.

It was on Orr’s watch that residential water shut-offs began—a pursuit of unpaid bills of as little as $150. Meanwhile, Ford Field, where the Detroit Lions play, owed more than $55,000 in back water bills, and Joe Louis arena, where the Detroit Red Wings play, was at the time delinquent by over $82,000. Their water was left running.

Last summer, amid a startling amount of residential water shut-offs due to non-payment of bills (more than 80,000 accounts were delinquent), the United Nations visited Detroit, and urged the city to keep the water on. By not doing so, the representatives asserted, the city was violating basic human rights.

Later, in order to keep some residents’ water on, nearly 25,000 Detroiters were put on a payment plan. As of February 2015, only about 300 people were able to stick to it.

The city is now starting another round of up to 25,000 water shut-offs—many of them residents who failed to stick to a plan that was, arguably, set up to fail. Some speculate that while 70,000 accounts are currently delinquent, the 20,000 to 25,000 scheduled to be shut off represent simply what DWSD can afford to pay a subcontractor to do.

In addition, outstanding water bills are now getting rolled into county property tax bills, and subject to further penalties and interest. Then, when people fall too far behind, Wayne County forecloses and seizes the home. Cosme describes it as a land grab—a way to drive out more of the predominantly poor, black Detroiters who have stayed in the city through thick and thin, clearing way for gentrification. Two Detroits, it seems, are emerging—rich and white with access to resources; poor and black and denied resources.

Whether it’s the water shut-offs, the tax foreclosures, or the sewage bubbling to the surface, Cosme says, “The water is a symptom of a disease that is deep, and no one wants to talk about.”

I have friends who are optimistic about the situation, subscribing to the mantra “say nice things about Detroit” and cheerleading every new bar and restaurant and café and tweak to the city as proof Detroit is in a renaissance. Yet Detroit has been heralding itself as in a “renaissance” since the 1970s when it built a set of skyscrapers called the Renaissance Center.

And the disease Cosme refers to might just be rooted in greed. Too many people here relish the city’s dysfunction and corruption, champion the plans of the very wealthy without question, and blame the poor for being poor—refusing to look at the embedded systems that propagate that poverty.

The result: Detroit is entering a new age of feudalism.

Historically, the Renaissance was a time of leaving feudalism behind and moving into Enlightenment. As long as people lack access to clean, fresh water—and powerful people are OK with that, nay, enjoy telling them they don’t have a right to it —Detroit won’t see a renaissance, no matter how many new bars, restaurants, or cafés open.

Besides, who knows what’s in their tap water, anyway?

The post The Muddy Ethics of Detroit’s Water appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Why Can't We Share God’s Resources? from Zócalo Public Square on Vimeo.

California has water problems, but they pale in comparison to those of Detroit, where tens of thousands of residents have had their water shut off—not because of drought, but because of non-payment. More than 20,000 additional people could see their taps run dry beginning May 26. This video by Detroit-based photographer Karah Shaffer is part of Zócalo’s weeklong series on that city’s water emergency.

The post Why Can’t We Share God’s Resources? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Before that international condemnation, the city had backed off a little —the Department of Water and Sewage put a moratorium on the shut-offs over the summer to allow more customers to catch up on their bills and offered a payment plan to those who couldn’t pay the full amount. But that hasn’t resolved the fundamental problem: even as it emerges from bankruptcy, Detroit remains a struggling city full of economically struggling people. A new round of water shut-offs is scheduled to begin on May 26, with more than 20,000 people potentially affected.

What does it mean to live without water? Over the last two weeks, Detroit-based photographer Karah Shaffer set out to document how locals are dealing with the shut-offs. She attended church meetings where people discussed their fear of being unable to keep the faucets and toilets flowing. She heard about people bringing buckets to their neighbors’ or relatives’ houses to tide them over until a payment plan could be worked out.

Gloria Irizarry and Aaron Barkley have been living without water (or electricity, for that matter) in a house just a few miles from Detroit’s downtown. Shaffer met them in front of the old Packard Automotive Plant, which once churned out luxury cars and is now infamous for being one of the largest abandoned buildings in Detroit. Armed with buckets, Irizarry and Barkley were just across the street from the plant, collecting the water that ran out of a broken water hydrant (one of hundreds around the city). They agreed to let Shaffer follow them to their home to see how they managed with so little water.

The images by Shaffer show a city twitching with discomfort and uncertainty. And desperate to wake up from the nightmare to a long, hot shower.

The post What Life in Detroit Without Water Looks Like appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.