By Kiara Doyal, The Seattle Medium
Tens of thousands of vulnerable and low-income households, previously protected from utility disconnections during and after the pandemic, are now at risk of losing access to power and heat due to the recent approval of a request from PSE by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC) that would allow PSE to resume sending disconnection notices to customers who have high past-due balances of 90 days or more, and gradually moving to customers owing as little as $250.
In late 2022, PSE voluntarily agreed to only disconnect customers with past-due bills over $1,000 and not threaten disconnection to customers it knows are low-income. This arrangement was to continue until the Commission completed its open Credit and Collection Rulemaking docket. However, in August of 2023, PSE brought this new request to the WUTC, a request that has received opposition from some anti-poverty and environmental justice groups.
“By granting PSE’s request to walk back its commitment and shut off power for customers who are behind on their utility bills, regardless of whether they are known to be low income and struggling, this Commission missed an opportunity to act on equity rather than just talk about it,” says Mariel Thuraisingham, Clean Energy Policy Lead for environmental justice advocate Front and Centered, a diverse and powerful coalition of communities of color-led groups across Washington State.
“We are surprised and disappointed in the commission’s order to allow shutting off essential services for vulnerable residents,” says Jeff DeLuca, executive director of the non-profit anti-poverty advocacy group Washington State Community Action Partnership (WSCAP), a human dignity over profit, and an anti-racist organization. “We’re talking about households facing serious poverty-related challenges. The commission’s order turns a blind eye on energy justice and equity, despite state law’s direction to consider these factors when evaluating investor-owned utilities’ requests to change policies and practices.”
With this new plan, PSE hopes to decrease the number of customer disconnections for non-payment to levels not seen since before the COVID-19 pandemic. And according to PSE, they will continue to be proactive in their efforts to work with customers who fall behind with their utility payments.
“When a customer falls behind on their payment, we reach out to develop a collaborative solution,” says a spokesperson from PSE. “We will begin contacting customers during the month of June and no customer is disconnected without multiple outreach attempts.”
Despite the ongoing efforts of PSE, WSCAP feels that the decision to disconnect power for residents who have past-due statements was rushed and can potentially add to the homelessness problem that we are currently facing.
“We are very troubled by the commission’s decision here to move toward disconnecting people because we know the impact that it is going to have on low-income and vulnerable populations, medically fragile seniors, and families with children,” says Shaylee Stokes, director of The Energy Project, a program of WSCAP.
“We have always tried to work in good faith at the Commission to present reasonable alternatives, and unfortunately, the commission went in a different direction in this case, and we think it is going to have a very negative impact on families and communities and put people at risk of potentially losing their housing at a time when we have just seen huge increases in homelessness already,” says DeLuca.
“From our perspective, you could say that the commission kind of jumped the gun here,” continued DeLuca. “It just seems premature that they would move forward so aggressively with disconnections before folks actually might have the resources to cover their debt.”
According to WSCAP, BIPOC communities get disconnected up to three times more than white communities, which presents a huge equity concern. The organization believes that it is time to make the shift away from traditional methods and try other methods of collecting past-due balances instead of using disconnections as the primary driver to get people to pay their bills.
“Research demonstrates that utility disconnections disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, and People of Color households, even after controlling for income,” says Yochi Zakai, attorney at Shute, Mihaly, and Weinberger LLP, who represents WSCAP’s The Energy Project. “Research also highlights the extreme consequences disconnections have on vulnerable and low-income customers, including not being able to afford other necessities like food and medicine or even being evicted from rental properties. The commission granted PSE’s request to break its disconnection protection agreement despite being presented with this research.”
“Instead of resorting to punishing customers struggling to afford their bills, we need utilities to implement models that increase communications with residential customers behind on payments to help them take advantage of available financial assistance programs or get them into payment and budget plans. We have serious equity and public health concerns about using the threat of cutting off power as a primary tool for addressing late payments,” says Stokes. “We are still pushing this issue, and this decision does not close the book on it; however, we are going to continue to be loud about it,” she continued.
Despite the concerns by advocates, PSE believes that the ability to resume sending disconnection notices to households that are behind on their bills will prompt them to address the issue before they get too far out of hand.
“We know from historical experience that more than half of customers take action once they receive an urgent communication or disconnect notice, such as making a payment, applying for one of our assistance programs, or enrolling in a payment plan. This significantly reduces the number of potential disconnections,” says the spokesperson for PSE in correspondence to The Seattle Medium.
Although households with high past-due balances of 90 days or more are at risk of being sent disconnection notices, PSE says that there are a number of options available to people in order to avoid being disconnected from their power.
“We partner with non-profit community organizations that serve low-income and historically underrepresented groups, [and we also make] customers aware of financial alternatives and helping them access payment plans and bill assistance,” says the PSE spokesperson.
Regardless of the controversy surrounding the decision to resume disconnections, according to PSE their overall goal is to reduce the debt they are seeing but feels that misleading statements are taking away from their overall message of helping customers.
“It’s disappointing that some of our partners choose to make misleading statements instead of working collaboratively with us. It is clear from the comments from customers in our filing with the UTC that customers who are working hard to pay their bills expect the company and the Commission to make their best efforts to collect money that other customers owe. We are here to help our customers and will continue to do so,” the PSE spokesperson concluded.
