If You Rent An Apartment And Pay For Water Your Being Ripped Off! (Denver: lawyer)

[honest mike]

And here's why; if you pay for water under what is called Community Watering, which means your rates are based on the number of units in each building as well as the number of people in each unit so your paying for not just your usage but the usage of the other tenants as well so you can never save any money under this type of billing. I live at Conifer Creek apartments in Aurora and until recently I payed my bill to a company called,National Water and Power a company located back east. I went away for a week vacation and came home to a higher then normal water bill and I don't even have a washing machine. I called to file a complaint with the state of Colorado Public Utilities Commission and was told that National Water and Power isn't a utility company even tho they call themselves one so they don't have to be registered with the state. That's like calling yourself a doctor and operating on someone even tho your really not a doctor at all. I also called the city of Aurora attorney's office only to be told to get use to this type of billing that that was the way it was. I also called all the major news media's,tv stations,newspapers,political leaders and nobody seems to see anything wrong with the fact that I as well as thousands upon thousands of apartment renters in Aurora and Denver paying for water under this so called Community Watering are being ripped off. I even called the water department to complain only to have the guy on the phone tell me,"Well don't conserve why should you conserve if nobody else is". Can you believe this when we are so short on water and I'm being told by the water department to NOT conserve water. I have checked around and there are apartments that charge a flat fee of twenty dollars and some even have meters on each unit so your paying for the water that you use and not everybody else in your build. And I put the city of Aurora, the news media, my political leaders, the state public utility commission right up there with what your dog leaves on the lawn of your local park,CRAP! Thanks a lot Aurora for letting me get ripped off.

[steveindenver]

I make all of my tenants pay for water. Deal with it or buy a home.

[honest mike]

But I want to pay for the water I use not what others use that's all I'm saying here, water that I use!

[Mikieo415]

Most apartment complexes don't want the added expense of metering individual apartments usage. That may never change.

[nelumbo]

Have you checked the landlord-tenant regulations for your locality? Unless there is a clause about water metering in the regulations, or maybe in your lease, which requires submetering for each unit, there probably isn't much you can do, aside from moving elsewhere. Well, you could try and become active in local government and change the regulations to require metering for each unit....

I used to live in Massachusetts, where the state law now requires that landlords meter each unit separately if they want to charge tenants for water. (prior to 2004, landlords could not charge for water at all) So, this type of law does exist in at least a few areas of the country...

[honest mike]

I complained to everyone in government and nobody cares but you take away all of the renters in Denver and Aurora and their income to the community and then they will care trust me without the thousands of dollars that go in to city the homeowners taxes would go up very fast! Mike Crow

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by nelumbo

...you could become active in local government and change the regulations to require metering for each unit...

I thought of that too. Anyone who tries will be swimming upstream - bigtime. Yes, pun intended.

1. The industry trade association has lots of money and lawyers on-hand to beat down such proposals. They see it as protecting their interests and not allowing unseen costs to pop up and bite them in the wallet.

2. Even if it passed for new construction, existing places are grandfathered-in, i.e., no changes required for existing structures. This is the way it's done almost everywhere. In Colorado Springs, old buildings don't even have to get sprinkler systems, even though new apartments have had to for many years. We had a disastrous fire here a year ago, entire block of old 1960's era, un-sprinklered apartments burned, with two deaths. Nothing can be done, the law didn't require retrofitting. If cities won't force a retrofit for safety issues like sprinklers, they sure won't make it mandatory for existing units to be retrofitted for water meters. If someone tries to force it, they'll be laughed out of the courthouse. There's no horror here that needs a remedy, ain't broke, nothing to fix.

3. Cities have more important things to do with their time and money than such trivia as this. Yes, it's trivial.

4. If you don't like it, move. We lived in apartments when starting out and found it so-so. It gave us the incentive to buy a place of our own, with it's own water meter. And garage. And peace & quiet. And no dumpster or dog dooty.

5. As cheap as water rates are, I can't imagine anyone paying more than $1 or $2 a month more than "their share" of water usage. This is trivial. Why are you wasting your time on crap like this. Imagine being a homeowner, paying property tax, 50% of which go to fund a school system, and having NO kids to use that school system. Should a refund be demanded? Hah! We've spent a good $100k on property taxes over the years, $50k of which went to school systems we never used. Same for police and fire departments, never called them either. Never called a dog catcher. Always paid for health, auto and homeowners insurance too, and rarely ever used it. If you get this bent out of shape over a water bill, I hate to see what happens when hit the big time.

s/Mike