Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez isn’t known for sticking her neck out on emotional policy debates. But you’ve got to hand it to the quiet commish for waiting nearly four hours into the night on Feb. 9 to speak to the City Council about the daily struggles of the people she represents in South and Southeast Austin, home of some of the city’s poorest ZIP codes.
It should be noted straight away that Gómez isn’t up for reelection this year, and her rare appearance at a council hearing earlier this month can’t be easily dismissed as just another campaign stop for an incumbent who too often stays inside her buttoned-up comfort zone until she’s on the ballot. So give the Precinct 4 commissioner credit for coming before the council to address the stressful decisions that thousands of families a must make on a daily basis – choosing between buying food or paying for utilities, or paying for utilities and foregoing medical care or school supplies.
“The city of Austin and Travis County have always considered the effects of our decisions on those who can least afford living here,” Gómez told the council. “I look forward to all of us maintaining that commitment.” The commissioner was referring to Austin Energy‘s ongoing rate case, but her message seemed to suggest that too many times the big decisions made by our elected officials also carry a host of unintended consequences for the city’s poorest citizens. “Before adding on to the burden that many families already have, I would tremendously appreciate you considering … the future needs that come with growth,” she said.
Recent U.S. Census figures show that one in five people in Austin are living in poverty. And according to a 2011 Travis County report titled “Focus on Poverty,” figures reported between 2005 and 2009 show that 43% of the households with incomes below the poverty threshold are “food insecure.” The report goes on to state, “People living in poverty report difficulty meeting basic needs at about three times the rate of those living at or above the poverty threshold.”
Cost of Survival
Meeting basic needs includes paying the household bills to keep water and electricity working. Even as the city continues to weigh an electric rate increase, city officials are also looking ahead to more water rate increases by 2016, according to researcher-activist Paul Robbins, who last week released a new report – “Hard To Swallow” – on the affordability of Austin water. Robbins’ report, which was funded in part through a $5,000 grant from the Save Our Springs Alliance, claims that the city’s water and wastewater costs are already the highest of the 10 largest cities in the state in all rate classes and are also quite a bit higher than those of our burgeoning suburbs.
Austin residents have seen a steady upward trend in their water bills over the last 10 or 12 years. Austin Water officials have defended the utility’s rates, stating they are reasonable when compared to benchmarked utilities in other parts of Texas and the U.S. Robbins counters that the rates of these other cities were not studied in full context. This is where Robbins’ report takes us on a more technical journey that lays out his methodology and conclusions – which can be considered more fully and carefully online at www.environmentaldirectory.info.
In the meantime, people can draw their own conclusions on how electric and water rate increases will affect the poor based on Austin Energy’s own studies. By AE’s count, 46,000 households in the utility’s service area are living on incomes at or below the poverty level. Additionally, of the 1,245 homes that received federally funded weatherization work last year, the vast majority of those households were living at or below the federal poverty level ($22,000 for a family of four). Residents in more than half of the homes targeted for weatherization were also paying unusually high energy bills, spending more than 11% of their income on electricity, AE reported. And of the residents whose homes qualified for the program, 455 were elderly, 388 had disabilities, and 242 households included children under the age of 5.
It bears repeating (again and again) that raising utility rates on Austin’s most vulnerable citizens would threaten to create an even larger population of poverty-level households. As several speakers pointed out during the Feb. 9 hearing, many people with disabilities must rely on heavy equipment or machines that require a good deal of recharging juice. Members of ADAPT Texas, a disability rights group, turned out in force at the hearing.
“For all the talk … about affordable housing, you can build all the affordable housing you want, but if you can’t pay your electric bill, your housing still isn’t affordable,” said ADAPT rep Sarah Watkins. “So when we talk about utility increases,” she went on, “I think it’s really unfair and really immoral that the majority of these proposed increases are going to fall on people who can’t afford to pay for them in the first place.” She added: “If utility increases have to go up, you should start with the large corporations. If you want to start somewhere, start with Dell. Don’t start with the poor people.”
This article appears in February 24 • 2012.
