The board of directors of the Helix Water District expressed disappointment last week that its customers were not taking advantage of a program to help them pay their bills.
Home Start, Inc., which has been running the “Helix Helps” customer assistance program since last April, reported that it had reached out to about 600 customers offering a one-time credit of up to $300 for eligible single-family residential customers who were behind on their bills because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but had not had a large response.
The board in March approved Helix staff’s request to use $500,000 from surplus land sales to fund the program.
Home Start is being paid $80,000 to manage the Helix Helps program through February.
Helix Water District Director Mark Gracyk told the group’s representatives that he was not impressed that of the 600 households that were on Home Start’s radar, the group had received only 222 applications. Of those, only 131 customers were assisted. Another 55 persons had applications that are currently in progress, Home Start staff said.
Customers who apply for help are asked to provide documentation their household experienced a loss of income directly related to COVID-19. The full list of criteria and required documentation is on Home Start’s website at home-start.org.
Director DeAna Verbeke said she knew the district had been advertising the program, but Helix can’t force people to “step up” and ask for assistance.
“It’s hard to help them, like people on the street,” Verbeke said. “Not everybody wants help. I appreciate that we have it available for the public.”
Board President Joel Scalzitti said he had heard from two Helix customers who told him they reached out to Home Start and left messages, but were frustrated their calls were never returned. Home Start officials at the meeting asked Scalzitti to share that information and they would look into responding to those individuals.
Gracyk said the low number of people being assisted troubled him.
“It just to me doesn’t make economic sense,” Gracyk said. “I am serious in considering we find another way to help people. We’re elected to be good stewards. Maybe you can say that it’s great to help people with rental and food assistance, but the issue is that we’re not responsible for that. We’re here to make sure people have safe water at an affordable price.”
When it rolled out, the board had been told that the Helix Helps program could provide relief for unpaid water bills for almost 1,400 Helix customers.
The board was told that the district’s average single-family residential customer using 20 units of water during a two-month billing cycle generates a bill of about $155. During the pandemic, staff said that the average unpaid balance for customers who have avoided shutoff has been roughly 2 1/2 times that.
“I was looking at some figures we received as of (Nov.) 15 and we had assisted 132 people of 222 applicants, a total amount of about $32,000, an average of $245 per household,” Gracyk said. “When we started this program, we didn’t know the depth of the pandemic and we didn’t know what resources were available. It’s been a year basically and to know we’ve only helped 132 households is a little disappointing. We serve 250,000 customers.”
Helix staff said that when water shutoffs start again for non-paying customers early next year, they expected that the district would start hearing from more people about needing help paying for water.
In August, the board voted to delay the resumption of shutoffs for nonpayment until Jan. 1.
Home Start representative Andrea Castellanos told the board that people may not have been reaching out for help because they were being helped by other government programs covering utility costs and suggested the board consider changing its eligibility criteria to be more broad so that more households would be able to take part in the program.
“I really like that suggestion,” Gracyk said. “We should maybe take it into consideration. I wish we would have heard that six months ago — maybe we would have been more successful helping people.”
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November 21, 2021 at 07:00AM
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