In the past few years, the residents of Detroit have seen more than their share of crises: The city went bankrupt, unemployment is more than 14 percent, tens of thousands of homes sit vacant in formerly vibrant neighborhoods. And this summer, residents were dealt another blow: more than 17,000 households in Detroit had their water shut off due to unpaid bills.
The shutoffs are just one small part of a larger human rights issue regarding poverty, health and access to utilities.
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is a not-for-profit entity overseen by the city of Detroit. When the city declared bankruptcy in July 2013, Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, JD, made it clear nothing was off the table when it came to balancing the city’s budget. That included the almost 200-year-old water department, which provides water for the city of Detroit as well as many of the surrounding suburbs.
Demonstrators protest against the Detroit Water and Sewerge Department in July in Detroit. The department shut off water to thousands of residents, raising concerns about public health.
Photo by Joshua Lott, courtesy Getty Images
But when it came time to collect on unpaid water bills, only households in the city limits were affected. The water department began shutting off water this summer to delinquent customers, affecting nearly 100,000 people, including seniors, children and people with disabilities.
The shutoffs have brought the issue of utilities as a human right and public health issue to the forefront, said John Armelagos, RN, president of the Michigan Nurses Association and vice president of National Nurses United. Armelagos joined with local advocates and attendees of the Net-roots Nation conference in a July protest against the shutoffs, drawing attention to the situation in Detroit.
“Water is just fundamental to basic human rights,” Armelagos told The Nation’s Health. “The city contracted an outside firm at the cost of about $6 million to shut off water on folks who may have been delinquent by only a couple of months. Some of those folks who are being targeted have as little as $150 due in bills.”
The shutoffs have gained international attention. United Nations experts have called them a “violation of the human right to water and other international human rights.” The city was listening: Mayor Mike Duggan put a 30-day moratorium on the shutoffs, and extended it for an additional 20 days in August. But the amnesty period did not turn water back on for those who had lost it
At risk for families without water: hydration, hunger and basic hygiene, said Emily Carroll, Midwest region director with Food and Water Watch.
“There are all kinds of issues around being able to feed yourself,” Carroll told The Nation’s Health. “And there are real hygienic concerns: You can’t shower, you can’t wash your hands. Similarly, there are all kinds of health issues for which you really need running water in order to not sicken your family.”
According to the United Nations, adequate housing and other human rights are linked. Detroit is no exception: More than 57 percent of the city’s children lived below the poverty line in 2011, according to a report by Data Driven Detroit. And 82 percent of the city’s residents are black, compared to 14 percent in the rest of the state, according to 2010 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
While some Detroit water customers have taken up the issue publicly — residents make up the bulk of the leadership of the Detroit Water Brigade, a nonprofit organization raising awareness in the city and beyond — others are staying quiet, relying on neighbors, schools or local businesses for their drinking water and showers. Some families are not speaking out, Carroll said, because Child Protective Services might take children living without water from their homes.
Amnesty International Executive Director Steven Hawkins, JD, noted in a statement that “deprivation of this basic right can not only cause a sanitation catastrophe for these families but could result in their children being removed due to an inability to pay for water.”
The shutoffs raised questions among public health advocates: If people cannot afford food, they can get public assistance or visit a food bank. But there are few options if residents cannot pay for water, heat or electricity. The issue also raised questions about whether utilities are something businesses — or in this case, a municipality — should be able to deny access to.
A UN fact sheet notes all housing should include “more than four walls and a roof.” At a minimum, homes should include services and infrastructure that are affordable. A home without safe drinking water, sanitation and energy for cooking, heating, lighting, food storage and refuse disposal is not safe nor healthy, according to the UN.
Peter Hammer, PhD, JD, professor of law and director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University in Detroit, has been at the forefront of the Detroit water issue since before the city declared bankruptcy. He says the long road to the shutoffs started well before then: the loss of industrial jobs and an aging water infrastructure system have contributed to the city’s problems. Another factor is the shift in demographics, Hammer said. The city has moved from one that was once majority white to one that is now majority black, and median household incomes have dropped.
Detroit’s water company has no exceptions for its most vulnerable residents.
“It’s devastating, as you can imagine,” Hammer told The Nation’s Health. “I don’t know of any other city that doesn’t have an exception for the elderly, disabled or children. If people can’t pay their bills, the difference has to be made up by those who can pay their bills.”
Other utilities companies across the country have programs in place to keep the lights on and water running for their most at-risk customers. Duke Energy, a power company serving several states, including Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and the Carolinas, provides neighborhood energy-saving programs at no cost to its low-income customers.
It also offers energy assistance programs, in which business, nonprofit or other customers can opt to pay a few dollars more. That extra money goes to pay for customers who could not pay their own bills, said Kristina Hill, MS, a spokeswoman for Duke Energy. Duke Energy, as well as other heating companies, does not shut off power to its delinquent customers during the winter months, either.
While the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department does not offer that option — and does not charge its wealthier suburban customers more to offset the debts of its poorer Detroit customers — other organizations are taking up the mantle. The Detroit Water Project, founded by two programmers not living in Detroit, helps anonymous volunteers give donations to the water department, with the stipulation that the funds go directly to helping delinquent customers settle their debt and get their water turned back on.
Meanwhile, thousands of Detroit residents remained without water as of late August, and thus without sanitation. In a study published in January in Health Science Journal, public health and social work advocates examined the role of sanitation in women’s health and education in India. Their findings: When women had access to sanitary toilets, they were better able to access education and were overall healthier. Armelagos said the same is true of the people of Detroit.
“It’s well known when there’s not clean water, and proper disposal of waste that’s associated with water, your exposure to diseases dramatically increases,” he said. “It’s not a far stretch to talk about the impoverished women in India and their struggle to take care of their basic biological needs, and the water shutoff in Detroit.”
For more information on the Detroit Water Project, visit http://detroit-water-project.herokuapp.com.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
