NAACP: Practices hurt African American water customers

Research by CLEVELAND — the NAACP into public water services takes aim at the use of liens and service shutoffs that it says disproportionately hurt the black population in Greater Cleveland and across the country.

Cleveland officials, though, dispute any suggestion that actions for non-payment taken by the city’s water department target any specific population and contend that some of the data made public by the NAACP is presented in a misleading fashion.

“We’re not oblivious to this whole social equity issue,” said Darnell Brown, Mayor Frank Jackson’s chief of operations. But water service, as a public enterprise, must be able to pay its bills and break even.

“What does it cost to deliver that water to you?” Brown said. “At the end of the day, even though we’re a public utility, we’re a meter to cash business.”

The NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund this week made public a summary of a study that looks at water affordability and its availability as a basic right. The full version of the report is expected to be released in June.

The report is highly critical of the use of property liens and shutoffs for delinquent accounts, particularly as water rates across the country have climbed to a point where many people find them unaffordable.

In the Cleveland water department service area, the overview says, twothirds of the liens last year were placed on properties in neighborhoods that are dominated by African-American populations “which may lead to a devastating loss of home ownership in these communities.”

“We do think that there’s discrimination at play,” Coty Montag, a senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and author of the study, told cleveland.com.

The report recommends a variety of remedies, ranging from advocacy to litigation. It also suggests policy changes including bans on lien sales based solely on unpaid water bills and service shutoffs for nonpayment.

Cleveland utilities Director Robert Davis said shutoffs can occur for non-payment and on occasion liens are placed on properties.

“Liens are always a last resort,” Davis said. “We never want to place a lien and we’d rather never shut you off, either.”

But the city will not foreclose on a property because of an overdue bill, Davis said.

Another area in which the report’s data is misleading, according to the city, is when it cites cases before the Water Review Board, a panel that hears consumer complaints.

The report says that only 33 of 207 complaints received in 2018 were heard by the board and that just 28 percent received some form of relief.

Cleveland utilities spokesman Jason Wood said 112 other cases were resolved before going to a hearing. Other cases involved commercial properties, which aren’t eligible for the hearing process.

And 72 percent of the cases were resolved with some form of relief to the customer, such as an installment-payment agreement or bill adjustment.

Cleveland is aware of the challenges low-income customers can face, Brown said. Cleveland is one of six cities in the Great Lakes region that formed a task force to look at equity issues, he said.

In Greater Cleveland, the average water bill runs $50 to $60 a month. And while shutoffs and liens do not occur before the city seeks to work out accounts with customers, Davis said.

Before service is terminated, a customer must be $400 or more in arrears.

At $300, the customer gets a letter warning they need to address their account. At $400, a notice is hung on their door knob. Only after that will a shutoff notice be sent.

Discounts are available for low-income customers, for senior citizens through homestead exemptions and for others based on income of up to 40 percent.

The water department switched from quarterly to monthly billing in January 2017. That helped spread out payments for customers.

At the same time, the city upgraded its water meters.

The new meters feed data to a system that customers can access on the Internet. It shows nearly-up-to-theminute consumption and can reveal problems such as a leak in the system, that could drive up a consumer’s bill.