Big Win! Delinquent GSO Water Bills No Longer to Fall on Landlords

At the request of TREBIC, TAA and GLA, last Tuesday the Greensboro City Council voted to stop filing liens on properties for water bills that go unpaid by tenants, effective July 1, 2010.  Property liens will still be filed on owner occupied properties, a positive policy that means that owners  can get water service without paying a deposit.  
 
Tenants, do pay deposits.  But too often, due to a variety of factors including insufficient incentive for the water department to aggressively collect from tenants, residential and commercial landlords find themselves having to pay large, delinquent bills with late fees.  Since the city’s water is not their product to sell and they have no control over the provider/customer relationship, the lien practice was straying into the territory of “unjust enrichment” to the city.  
 
The city claims a stellar collection rate, with a delinquency of only $12K/year instead of the $800K/year they would predict if they didn’t have the lien policy.  But our landlords know that the city does indeed have a collections problem, at least among tenants – it has just been pushing those delinquencies onto the back of landlords.  
 
The new policy will take effect July 1, 2010 for the new fiscal year.  We estimate the savings to our landlord community to be around $200,000 annually in payments to the city and at least another $200,000 annually in administrative costs.  Thank City Council members when you see them – this is a concrete step toward helping small business!