Jim Wilcox, who works in real estate and is a landlord in The Dalles, spoke before the city council March 8 regarding the city’s water billing and notification practice in regards to the unpaid utility bills of renters, and the landowners ultimate responsibility to pay unpaid bills.
Wilcox noted that there is a document you sign when a tenant moves out and you want to pick up the water bill, to avoid shutoff. That document holds the landlord, owner or property manager responsible for unpaid utility bills, but there is no mechanism for notifying a landlord if a tenant’s bill is going unpaid.
“If you are a landlord, and a tenant leaves and you want the water left on, you have to sign a document with the city. I didn’t realize this before, but it also says that if the tenant hasn’t paid their water bill, you the landlord are stuck with it,” Wilcox told the council. “I don’t want an unpaid bill by anybody, but there is no provision to let the landlord know if that bill is unpaid, if that bill is supposed to be paid by the tenant.”
He noted he recently had a tenant move out, leaving the last months rent unpaid, and he then found there were more than seven months of unpaid water bills as well. “Seven months of that is ugly,” he said of the cost, with bills averaging over $100 a month.
“If you look at what is happening, it’s very possible for a landlord in our community, in any community in Oregon, to go 15 months without receiving any rent if a person says it’s COVID related. And if the tenant is supposed to be paying the water bills, you could have 15 months of unpaid water bills,” he said.
State help for landlords is minimal, he said, and they have to give up 20 percent of their income to get any help from the state.
“The landlords are getting beat up ferociously, and I can tell you, there are a lot of homes in The Dalles that are now going from rentals to unoccupied. That does not help with the rental situation, it does not help our housing situation at all,” he said. “Any time you add a disincentive to being a landlord, you have fewer rentals.”
Wilcox suggested that the city, if a tenant goes for a certain amount of time without paying a city utility bill, notify the landlord. The way it stands now, when a tenant moves out you have to call the city to see if they owe anything, he said. “That’s wrong,” he told the council. “If you expect us to pay it, let us know so we can do something about it before it gets out of hand. If you don’t do something to collect (from the tenant) and put that on the landlord, that is just not right.”
Wilcox said yes, the bills need paid or the other rate payers will eventually have to pay those bills. “I don’t want to have that happen either,” he said, but encouraged the city to work more closely with landlords and find a way to let them know when a tenant’s bill was going unpaid.
He said when there is an unpaid bill, “there may not be a lot (landlords and property managers) can do, but at least they could have the knowledge up front as to what is happening,” he said, rather then having to call the city when a tenant moves out to learn what is happening.
“I think that is a courtesy and a service that we can give, to encourage more landlords to continue to be landlords, continue making rentals available, rather than keeping it in the dark until it’s a big bad bill and then springing it on them, surprising them with up to a 15-month water bill.
“I’m just asking for notification, as a reasonable way to work through this,” he said.
Kathleen McFarlane, who manages a duplex with metered utilities, also spoke to the council, saying that she would have to raise the security deposit immensely to cover potential unpaid water bills. Wilcox noted that, "If you have to increase your security deposit by more than $2,000, and also ask the renter to pay first and last rent, you are taking people out of the market because they don’t have the cash to rent.”
Councilor Darcy Long-Curtiss asked city staff if things had changed regarding unpaid water bills, noting that in the past, people had their water turned off after a couple of months when a bill was not paid.
Angie Wilson, finance director for the city, responded that the notice regarding landlord responsibility for unpaid water bills was put in place a few years ago. “As we do try to collect from all customers, property owners, landlords or tenants, we do door hangers, we do phone calls, we do late notices, and then we do shut offs,” Wilson said. “Even at this time, we still do shutoffs.”
She said at the point of service shutoff, the responsible party can still call to seek assistance, noting the city can give out grants for assistance, or put them on a payment plan. They can also refer them to outside agencies offering assistance.
“The city works really hard not to shut off the service of any tenant or owner, we do whatever we can do to help them,” she said.
She added that a landlord can also request copies of city billing to a tenant. “We can send out landlord copies (of billings), that is something they can request to have. They then receive that bill on a monthly basis.”
Wilcox responded that they were not looking for a monthly notice, but would like to work with Wilson to find a way landlords and property managers can receive notification when a tenants bill is approaching the point of shutoff, “before it gets completely out of hand.”
Winter shelter ends
In an unrelated report, the council also heard that rental availability was a significant issue as emergency housing sponsored by the city prepared to close for the season.
Winter warming shelters in The Dalles will be closing March 31, Long-Curtiss reported to the full council March 8.
“We did have some housing vouchers come in, as a response to COVID, so we can get people into housing — if we could find housing. That is a problem right now, I’ve got a bunch of people with vouchers, but no place to move them into." She said the shelters worked exactly as intended, and thanked the council for their support.
“The winter warming shelters worked just like we wanted them to, we had quite a few people in there with serious medical issues that probably wouldn’t have made it through the winter. And we’ve got some other people that were able to get their lives together, either with medical things taken care of, or finding housing, or just basically having a place to be.”
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