(PIC)Laurinburg City Council is proposing to give <strong>Housing Authority</strong> residents a <strong>Waiver</strong> from having to pay the City Utility's 'Electrical Connection Fee'.

This 'connection fee' is actually a Security Deposit designed to help protect the Utility from irresponsible ratepayers who skip out without paying bills.

Is it right that those clever enough to qualify for subsidized housing, food, healthcare, utilities and Obama phones now won't even have to pay a Security Deposit for electric service? If it's such a great idea, why not waive the Fee for all utility customers? Oh that's right, then everyone would just skip out without paying their bills.<strong>
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Housing Authority residents who qualify for 'utility assistance' would of course continue to receive money to pay utility bills, they just won't have nearly as much incentive to actually do so. Some may instead choose to spend this money on more pressing needs like cigarettes, alcohol and drugs.

It's already too easy for Housing Authority residents to stiff the City's Electric Utility. Other than 'promising to get caught up sometime in the future and (supposedly) not to do it again', there are few real consequences. Far too many have learned how to 'work the system', and Council's proposed Waiver now threatens to turn what's been a small but thriving cottage industry into a full blown avalanche of irresponsible behavior, the cost of which will ultimately be paid by those who actually do pay their utility bills.

This isn't about withholding or even scaling back assistance to those who are struggling and truly in need, it's about getting hosed once again by an irresponsible City Council that's totally out of touch with those who actually pay the bills.
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LE ARTICLE TEXT:

<span style="color: #0000ff;">LAURINBURG — In upcoming budget talks, the Laurinburg City Council will discuss a possible waiver of the city’s electrical connection fee for Laurinburg Housing Authority residents.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">Director Nancy Walker brought council up to date this week on the housing authority’s plan — part of a conservation initiative from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — to shift the responsibility for utility payments to its tenants.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">“This is really, on HUD’s part, a conservation tool because right now, with our system, the residents never ever see the utility bills,” said Walker. “The philosophy is, if you give an allowance and reduce the rent, that there will be incentive for the resident, once they know what the utility bill is, to conserve.”</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">Walker said that the change should have minimal impact on the bottom line for housing authority tenants, whose total rent and utility payments are capped at 30 percent of their income. Under the new system, tenants will receive a rent deduction to compensate for their utility payments.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">“If they use less than the amount allotted for utilities, they keep the difference,” Walker said.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">The housing authority is waiting for direction from HUD before formulating that allowance.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">Last week, council discussed how it might handle the addition of 464 housing units to the city’s list of electrical customers, and the feasibility of expecting housing authority tenants to pay a $230 electrical service deposit.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">“We proposed a plan to the city when we first started this that if they would waive the deposit when they turn the power over, we would for our existing tenants, if for some reason they moved out and didn’t pay, we would guarantee that the city would get its utility money,” said Walker.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">Waiving that deposit for all current Laurinburg Housing Authority tenants would mean forfeiting around $105,000 in fees.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">Tenants were notified in January of the change, which will not likely take effect until August or September. Walker said that tenants will receive at least 60 days’ notice before they are expected to assume responsibility for their own utilities.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">“We talked about this in meetings so people would have time to prepare and to make arrangements for this,” Walker said.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">Council took no action on Tuesday night, but will discuss the proposed waiver — and how to work with tenants who have outstanding utility bills from prior addresses — as it works on the 2016-2017 budget.</span>

<span style="color: #0000ff;">“There is the matter of the deposit and there is the matter of old bills, but for our public housing residents that is sort of an advantage that they’ve had over all other low-income people in assisted housing, because they don’t get that advantage,” said Walker. “They have to take care of those things before they move in.”</span>

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