Posted on 06/29/2014 4:54:35 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Nicole Hill holds up her past-due water bill at her home in Detroit. Her water has been off for about six weeks.
It has been six weeks since the city turned off Nicole Hill's water.
Dirty dishes are piled in the sink of her crowded kitchen, where the yellow-and-green linoleum floor is soiled and sticky. A small garbage can is filled with water from a neighbor, while a bigger one sits outside in the yard, where she hopes it will collect some rain. She's developed an intricate recycling system of washing the dishes, cleaning the floor and flushing the toilet with the same water.
"It's frightening, because you think this is something that only happens somewhere like Africa," said Hill, a single mother who is studying homeland security at a local college. "But now I know what they're going through — when I get somewhere there's a water faucet, I drink until my stomach hurts."
Hill is one of thousands of residents in Detroit who have had their water and sewer services turned off as part of a crackdown on customers who are behind on their bills. In April, the city set a target of cutting service to 3,000 customers a week who were more than $150 behind on their bills. In May, the water department sent out 46,000 warnings and cut off service to 4,531. The city says that cutting off water is the only way to get people to pay their bills as Detroit tries to emerge from bankruptcy — the utility is currently owed $90 million from customers, and nearly half the city's 300,000 or so accounts are past due.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
if they can afford cable TV, they can afford water.
End of story.
Go back to the picture and look at her nails.
Cable TV, yes. Water, no.
The United States of America, one step closer to third world status.
“Nicole Hill said she was told she owed $5,754, which she finds impossible to believe. She moved into her apartment five years ago, and right away the water bills seemed strange — $200 a month or more. When she called the water department to have it check on her water, she didn’t get anywhere, she said.”
Does seem a little high to me. The article states that guys living in houses only owe a couple hundred. Maybe they’re billing her for the whole building?
I agree but that is only part of the problem here.
Democratic policies and Democratic leadership.
No, I wasn’t. I was making a general comment. I do believe we are in a Depression, yes. This goofy woman is, unfortunately, the new face of America to be flashed around the world. What an embarrassment!
I don't think we can lay Detroit at his feets. Detroit has been decades in the making. Probably since they elected their first socialist Africanmerican mayor. Now they are reaping what they have sown.
I do see a couple of things in the story that I find interesting. 1) it seems to come as a shock to some that clean purified water is not FREE. 2) You cannot spell Detroit without a RIOT.
Let the utilities be able to directly deduct their bill from the homeowner’s welfare/SS payments. Problem solved.
Obviously, when I posted I didn’t realize that people would assume that I meant this woman in the photo. I didn’t. I do believe we are in a Depression and a lot of freepers are in denial.
5 years, a phone call to the water department, and the problem ain’t fixed
Imagine that
maybe writing a letter.. in cursive...would help
I have no sympathy for her or those hundreds of thousands (millions) like her. Nor do I have sympathy for a journalist that is too lazy and too stupid to come up with a worthy example of need-beyond-control.
They simply aren’t even going through the motions of standards and decency any more. Just plain whining to stir up trouble, WHICH by the way has had it’s desired effect with the UNITED NATIONS now weighing in on their petty third and fourth world crap hole opinions.
A sane answer would be to have a minimum use cost that's low and is just enough water to survive. Above that, increase the rates. Instead, around here, it's just the opposite. The "minimum use" is pricey and is paying for more than an adequate amount of water for people who conserve.
The only answer is inner city jobs...bring manufacturing back. Then people will have paychecks instead of freebies.
The cost in Detroit is extremely high ($75 per month on average) but there are reasons for it. Heavy unionization, mismanagement, and thousands of unpaid bills make up the bulk of that cost.
John Conyers naturally wants to make things worse. He sent a letter to Obama demanding that he write a check not only to pay the debt but for an extra hundred million so the people can continue not paying their bills.
Notice how shallow these ‘news’ reports are that completely fail to discuss the liberal causes of the problem. This is a a great example of a liberal run city that has completely been run into the ground. I would like to know the salaries of the water department employees. I bet they are all unionized, some sporting six figure salaries and retirees with overbloated retirement plans. No liberal news reporter will go there.
Water should be free? How is she spending her welfare check? On booze? The reporter never asks.
I did have to laugh that these stupid journalists pick an obese woman as one of the great deprived. And, you are right, it’s lazy beyond belief. I would have looked for the skinniest, most miserable person in Detroit. Of course, it might be the photographer, not the journalist who goofed up.
Still, to me, the idea of hundreds or thousands of people going without water (for whatever reason) is a ticket to disaster for this country.
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