affordability

Water bill woes part 2: What can Philadelphia learn from Cleveland’s water department?

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Exploring what can be done to help cities’ poorest residents who struggle with water debt

This is part two of a three-part series looking at the state of water affordability in Cleveland, Philadelphia and beyond, authored by the Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative in partnership with Resolve Philly in Philadelphia. You can find Part 1 here. Robert Ballenger’s office in Center City Philadelphia is filled to the brim with stacks of paperwork. It’s just one small sign of the complexity of the assistance programs his low-income clients need. Ballenger, an attorney who deals with utility issues at the nonprofit Community Legal Services, has helped dozens of people apply for Philadelphia’s Tiered Assistance Program (TAP), which provides residents with low incomes a major discount on their water bills.

Poverty

Sidebar: Why compare Cleveland and Philadelphia, and why does this matter?

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Across the U.S., the cost of water and sewer has only gotten more expensive over the last several decades, with the average water bill increasing by 30% between 2012 and 2019, according to a utility bill index conducted by Bluefield Research. 

As of 2019, low-income households spent an average of almost 10% of their disposable income each month to pay for basic monthly water and sewer services, according to a study out of Texas A&M University. 

And in both Cleveland and Philadelphia, the pandemic and the cities’ high poverty rates mean there are thousands of people behind on their water bills. As of November 2021, almost 10% of all Cleveland Water customers – about 40,000 customers – were behind on their water and sewer bills by six months or more, a rate that’s far higher than non-pandemic years. More than 1 in 4 Cleveland Water customers were behind on at least one bill that month, and in Philadelphia, nearly a third of customers were at least one bill behind in March 2021. Despite a significant difference in population size, the city of Cleveland isn’t so different from Philadelphia. The water systems that serve both cities are municipality-owned and serve a wide geographic area, with the Cleveland Water Department servicing about 440,000 accounts and the Philadelphia Water Department servicing almost 500,000.