Guest Opinion: Don’t let the Rental Housing Commission dump water conservation down the drain

Mountain View’s Rental Housing Committee (RHC) has cooked up a proposal to radically change how costs for utilities, like water, are charged to some renters in Mountain View. Their plan will give residents in some apartments the unlimited use of water for free, regardless of how much they use each month. This will increase Mountain View’s water consumption as we recover from the historic drought.

Most of rental housing in Mountain View has a master water meter for the building. Currently, renters living in buildings with a master water meter typically pay a share of the water they use based on occupancy and size of the apartment. For example, an apartment home with one person and one bathroom pays less for water than an apartment home with five people and two bathrooms. This method of sharing costs based on usage is called ratio utility billing system, or RUBS. It’s been shown to encourage conservation.

Some argue that replacing master meters with individual water meters is the solution. Installing a meter for each unit is prohibitively expensive and requires residents to be displaced while the internal plumbing within the building is removed and replaced. RUBS is the most fair, cost-effective, and efficient method available for housing providers to inform their residents about water usage and encourage water conservation.

The RHC is moving down a path to do away with RUBS entirely. They want to instead shift the responsibility of paying for water from renters to housing providers, allowing renters to use an unlimited amount water without paying a dime or even knowing how much water they’re using. This removes any incentive to conserve, leading an unchecked consumption of our precious and volatile water supply. And it will shift the burden of conservation entirely to homeowners.

It’s bad policy, plain and simple.

Indeed, if past is prologue, we should be very concerned. San Jose adopted a similar measure in 2018, and based on data obtained from both housing providers and the companies that provide the billing services for housing providers, the policy led to massive increases in water consumption, sometimes as high as an astonishing 43%.

How can Mountain View possibly hope to achieve its goal to reduce water consumption by 15% if 58% of water consumption in Mountain View comes from residential uses? The RHC doesn’t seem to care.

One RHC member boldly declared at their August meeting that, “we are not a water board … any discussion on conservation … is not material to this discussion.” It is shameful that the RHC members are choosing to ignore our city’s sustainability goals as they make key decisions. This attitude borders on climate change denial.

At the risk of stating the obvious, California is parched. The western United States is the driest it has been in 1,200 years, and while this past winter gifted us much-needed rain, our past is an indicator of an uncertain future.

This policy would ultimately roll back the incredible progress the City of Mountain View has made to reduce its water consumption. Mountain View’s per capita water usage is below the average for all member agencies in the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency. This could easily change if the new proposal takes effect.

To be clear, housing affordability is a goal that everyone shares. However, the rent board is gravely mistaken if they believe this is the way to achieve this goal. More predictable utility expenses for renters based on their usage could be achieved by limiting any utility increase a renter might experience by the same amount as those utility rates increase each year.

The RHC needs to go back to the drawing board and reconsider this misguided and harmful policy. The future of our city, our kids, and our climate, depend on it.

Learn more about how you can stop the RHC from encouraging water waste at www.stopMVwaste.com

Steve Welter is a longtime property owner in Mountain View