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What About Renters?

Published: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 7:57 PM PDT


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Respondent Catherine writes:

Any discussion of water pricing structures designed to change individual behavior has to look at the implications for rentals. I never see our water bill so I have no idea how much water I use or how I stack up against the average. All I know is that I’m careful about my water usage because I care about conservation. But I can’t judge how I’m doing without seeing the bill. I could be one of the worst in the neighborhood and think I’m a great some conservationist because I am one in my head.

I would guess that a lot of renters are in a similar position. We have a lot of rentals in San Diego and quite a few dilapidated rental homes with absentee landlords who do little to maintain their properties. With that, you get leaky faucets and poorly maintained, outdated irrigation systems that spill water all over the sidewalk.

If the property owner doesn’t feel the pain of wasting so much water through negligent property ownership, and the tenant has no way to measure water consumption or never feels the effects because he/she doesn’t pay the bill, it’s going to be difficult to reduce consumption.



Respondent raises valid point about rental units. Some renters of homes and apartments pay their own water bills, but in other cases, the owner pays. In cases where the rent paid includes water, individuals conserving water are often subsidizing heavier water users as the landlord may base rents mainly on the size or amenities of the unit. A major cause of this problem is the lack of water meters on individual units.

The major solution to this issue involves the installation of water meters for individual units for apartment and condominium complexes. The cost of meter installation could be subsidized by some of the water revenues devoted to conservation. Whereas this might not be feasible for some older units, where a common water heater is shared, this approach would certainly enhance the move to a more efficient use of water.

-- LYNN REASER




7 Comments so far on this story...

Full disclosure: I'm the web editor here at VOSD. Had to comment because I'm in a similar situation - not with leaky faucets or absentee landlords, but with ridiculous neighbors. I rent at a large complex, and just got my expected notice that my water bill was going to rise. I nearly choked on the water I was drinking when I got the next bill, so I went to the leasing office in a huffy to ask about the situation. We are billed by the whole complex, but what made me cranky was that we are also billed by how many people live in the apartment. They told me that a lot of the people in the complex lie about how many people actually live there. 1 person on the lease - 5 deadbeats on the couch. I also asked about individual meters. I think I heard a chuckle.

Posted by Sarah | reply to this comment
October 27, 2009 7:13 pm

Individual meters would be handy . Even if I don't have to pay the bill, I can at least see it so, if I care, I can measure my progress. But after looking at the Equinox primer, it seems fairly obvious that without a tiered pricing structure there is still little incentive for conservation on the part of landlords or tenants. We're moving and our new landlord is going to charge us a flat monthly rate for water. That must mean the current rates are so low that we could leave the shower running all day long and it wouldn't make a difference to the property owner, or to us, financially. Given the high rate of renter-occupied housing in San Diego, I'd say that's going to be a problem until the consumption-based costs are significant enough to trickle down to the user.

Posted by Catherine | reply to this comment
October 28, 2009 9:10 am

For more than a hundred years, real estate development has been the largest industry in San Diego County. We have been more dependent on the real estate industry for jobs than any other county in California, including LA. Water agency boards have historically been dominated by development industry representatives, and have traditionally based their rate designs on whatever worked best for developers. Typically apartment and condo developers did not want to pay the higher cost of installing individual meters on units of their new projects, since installing one master meter was cheaper for the developer, even thought it didn't send price signals to the project buyer or future occupants. It is time to require individual water meters on all new multifamily buildings built in the County, like SDG&E does with electric meters, and to retrofit existing ones.

Posted by Watcher | reply to this comment
October 28, 2009 9:42 am

I own a condo in San Diego. We have one water meter for the entire building. When I divide the number of units into our water bill I find we are paying over $75. per unit. I understand that individual home owners get a tiered rate...in other words the first segment is the lowest rate...the more they use, the higher the next segment.. Condo's pay the following with no tiered rate: The total bill for multi-family domestic customers is a combination of the monthly meter base fee (which is based on the size of the meter) and the amount of water used. These customers pay $3.229 per HCF. We also pay a meter fee. Why can't tiered rates be made available to condo associations?

Posted by Richard Nelson | reply to this comment
October 28, 2009 11:03 am

As Lynn Reaser correctly points out, retrofitting to install individual meters would be physically impossible at some older condo highrises because the water flows continuously through many separate stacks involving many units. Although conservation would likely increase if people knew how much water they were using, it hasn't typically worked well (except for short periods of time) even in single family houses where separate meters are the norm.

Posted by hillcrester | reply to this comment
October 28, 2009 11:51 am

I just got rid of my condo and all the nonsense bills to go with it. Between water, sewage, property tax, hoa and whatever else they decide to come up with I say adios. If anything breaks I dont have to fix it either, I can live without the "tax break."

Posted by morgino | reply to this comment
October 28, 2009 3:08 pm

The fault lies totally with the bureaucracy of the City of San Diego. The same company that makes the new power and gas meters for SDG&E makes water meters. These meters can transmit information to each other and to the Internet. SDG&E could then do the billing for the City. Instead, the present cost of each of multiple water meters for a property is a prohibitive $3,200.

Posted by Robert C Leif | reply to this comment
October 29, 2009 7:33 am


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