“This woman might be stupid, lazy, self-indulgent and have a million other failings. That doesn’t mean it’s OK to rip her off.”
I’d’ really like to see a breakdown of that water bill. Certainly, a lot of that bill is a subsidy for OTHER non-paying customers and also for the bad planning of Detroit, in trying to maintain water for 700,000 people in a distribution system designed to handle two million. This is clearly NOT her responsibility.
Speaking of “not her responsibility”, I pay a rather high water bill in an area blessed with torrents of fresh, clean water. I live in a new subdivision with very considerable state-of-the-art water and sewage infrastructure that was built into the (high) cost of my home. I am paying (by EPA mandate, by the way) to upgrade the older, poorer parts of the city that the city didn’t maintain and the citizens didn’t spend any money on for 75 years.
Better yet a payment record. Water probably should have been turned off 4 years, 10 months ago. Mine would be shut off after the second bill was not paid.