1.4 million New Yorkers behind on utility bills

[Soontir C'boath]

Just a post as a reminder to myself and others that the pandemic isn't just the amount of people dying. It's the people who rather be dead than have long Covid and other things like many people not being able to even pay the heating bill.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- At least 1.4 million households and other residential customers in New York are behind on electric and natural gas bills - a number that soared during the pandemic - and consumer advocates are calling on the state to pay off their ballooning debt with federal funding.

In the spring of 2020, New York passed the nation's only utility shut-off moratorium protecting heating, power water, cable and telephone customers. That moratorium expired Dec. 21, though existing state regulations restrict utilities from shutting off heat and electricity until April 15.

New Yorkers could see shut-offs in coming months.

Electricity and gas customers in New York owed nearly $1.8 billion as of January 2022, according to data reported by utilities to the State Public Service Commission.That's more than double their debt to utilities before the pandemic.

Caroline Ourso, 30, a Brooklyn freelance photographer who lost work in the pandemic, said the state's rental assistance program approved her application for over $1,400 in electricity and gas bills last year.

But the state has yet to release that money, and utilities warned her about potential shut-off over the winter. By early December, a state representative told Ourso that New York would release the utility payment in the next few weeks.

"That never happened," Ourso said.

New Yorkers can avoid shut-offs by setting up payment plans with utilities. But only a fraction of customers - about 250,000 - have done so, according to the state data.

Ourso signed up for a payment plan but doesn't know whether utilities will reimburse her payments when the state releases the aid. "It's definitely been very frustrating," she said.

Consumer advocates say federal and state governments must address utility debt that surged in 2020 and has continued to increase as fuel prices soar and inflation rises.

Debt could have severe consequences for society's most vulnerable. New York's utility data doesn't have breakdowns by race or ethnicity, but advocates warn shut-offs and debt collection practices will hurt Black, Latino and Indigenous communities disproportionately.

"People end up unable to keep their home or apartment or dwelling because they lose electricity or they lose water, they end up homeless," said David Springe, executive director of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates.

Groups including the AARP and the Public Utility Law Project are calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to dedicate $1.25 billion in this year's budget for unpaid energy bills and $400 million for water bills. Advocates also want $200 million in tax credits to forgive water, telephone and internet bills.

Hochul's budget proposal includes $2 billion in COVID-19 relief, but she and lawmakers are deciding where exactly that money should go. Lawmakers face a deadline to have a budget in place by April 1.

California set aside $1 billion in federal COVID-19 aid last year for electricity and gas bills. Advocates there are now asking for $3 billion more for utility and water deb relief.

"In the next few months, hundreds of thousands of people are in danger of being disconnected again," said Mark Toney, executive director of the San Francisco-based Utility Reform Network.

New Jersey has spent about $30 million of $250 million lawmakers set aside last year for residential utility debt, which has also more than doubled in that state during the pandemic.

"There are some people who have been caught in this pandemic who have never had the necessity to apply for assistance programs," said Joseph Fiordaliaso, president of New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities. "But I hope and I implore them to really reach out, because we want to help."

New York has taken steps to help consumers, including expanding eligibility for bill discount programs.

It used $188 million in federal Home Energy Assistance Program funds to cover utility debt for about 115,000 low-income households since September, and sent $28 million to households in danger of shut-offs or exhausting propane or other fuel supplies. The state also dispersed $4 million of $70 million in federal water utility relief.

New York also has a $2.4 billion, federally funded rental assistance program, which promised up to 12 months of relief for rent and electric and gas bills.

Tens of thousands of people applied for utility aid, but New York's program only provided 359 households with utility assistance through December - the nation's lowest amount, according to an Associated Press review of U.S. Treasury data.

Texas, in contrast, has helped over 120,000 households pay utility bills.

Major utility companies in New York agreed to protect about 77,000 applicants from disconnection while their applications are pending, according to state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance spokesperson Anthony Farmer.

New York's rental assistance program has run out of money.

But Farmer said the state will dip into other federal funds to cover all 77,000 applicants once the state verifies how much they owe.

About 6% of those applicants have received such help so far this year. New York has used $4.1 million in Home Energy Assistance Program funds to pay utility arrears for almost 3,500 households. The state has used an additional $1 million in tax credits for utilities to settle arrears for over 900 households.

Farmer said the state is making "considerable progress" on one bureaucratic hurdle: cross-checking information that tenants provided about their utility debt.

Farmer declined to estimate when New York will finish verifying all 77,000 applications.

But Farmer expects the pace of utility payments will "pick up over the coming weeks."

Some lawmakers have proposed prohibiting electricity, gas and water shut-offs until June 30 for people with financial hardships stemming from the pandemic.

Richard Berkley, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project, said his group works with low-income people who are worried about how long New York will continue to delay releasing aid, despite promises.

"Utilities are busily sending them termination letters every couple of weeks," Berkley said.

[LadyTevar]

MAYBE if the Gas, Electric, and Water companies weren't "For Profit" and raising their rates every 6 fuckin' months, this wouldn't be a problem.

I have been wanting to go strangle the State Utility Board for years because they Rubber-Stamp any and all rate raises whenever anyone comes to them. Suffer a major Water Crisis because a pollutant got into the water supply and you didn't know it for over 24hrs? Why Yes, Give them a 5% rate raise across the board to 'pay for the damages' when they get Sued and lose.

Electric Company gets a rate raise to 'clear the access lanes', but the SAME FALLEN TREE is STILL LEANING on the Power Line on US Rt 60 since the year 2000!!!
And now there's NEW ONES that's hanging on the power lines and pulling them down!!

Fuckin' corps greedy as fuck and doing jack shit but raising rates to get more money to sit on their asses.

[Solauren]

I've always been of the opinion the utilities should be non-for-profit.

[Gandalf]

I've always been of the opinion the utilities should be non-for-profit.

Indeed. Why they should even be privatised is a big question, especially in an environment where a lack of heat in winter can prove fatal. Ideally it would all just be state run infrastructure.

But I know that's politically unfeasible because communism is when you inconvenience a billionaire apparently.

[Solauren]

Easy enough to nationalize them;

Have the IRS (since we're talking the United States) go in, and do a full level audit on them, with orders to be 'super nit-picky and asshole about it'.
Same with every other agency you can think of. If asked why, acting on a 'anonymous tip'. (I'm sure they get lots of those they just ignore...)

You'll probably find a ton of issues, and lots of reason to issue fines and legal actions.

Use that for justification of nationalization, and then pay the shareholders fair market value of stock just prior to the audits starting.

[Esquire]

I've always been of the opinion the utilities should be non-for-profit.

Indeed. Why they should even be privatised is a big question, especially in an environment where a lack of heat in winter can prove fatal. Ideally it would all just be state run infrastructure.

But I know that's politically unfeasible because communism is when you inconvenience a billionaire apparently.

What governments are really good at, in the realm of services, is subsidizing things which aren't economically viable - rural mail deliveries in the US, for example. What they tend to be pretty bad at is everything else; a Department of Utilities is almost certainly going to be at least one of more expensive, less effective, or more annoying to deal with than private industry outside of, maybe, Switzerland and Singapore.

Now, it's certainly not a good thing that people can't pay their bills. One solution to that might be to not turn off huge sections of the economy via executive fiat for years on end. If we really do need to do that for some reason, another might be for the government to replace lost income in some kind of systematic way. A third might be to make the parts of the government that have everyone's tax information and the parts that run the various local, state, and Federal energy subsidy programs like this one talk to each other and the utility companies so that this kind of thing gets sorted out automatically. We don't need yet another army of unaccountable bureaucrats typing up more forms we'll all have to fill out, I'd say.

[His Divine Shadow]

Hell we love to privatize that shit even in europe.