You may have noticed on your latest Utility Tax bill from the City of Richmond, an information sheet with graphs showing potential savings for townhouses with a water meter.
The suggestion is that the average townhouse water bill in Richmond is $2,295 and that can be reduced to $1,535 with the addition of a water meter. This is a potential saving of $760, or 33% of the annual utility bill.
Looking at the breakdown of where those savings come from, the water use portion drops from $786 to $430, a saving of $356, while the sewer portion drops from $964 to $560, a saving of $404. Those two sections add up to make the total potential savings.
As a result, a few owners have been pushing for the strata to implement a water meter for the complex. It’s understandable. On the surface, this looks like a simple thing. The city installs a water meter and everyone saves money.
Is it actually that simple? Let’s take a closer look.
Comparing the savings for a single family dwelling, townhouses seem to be gaining an unusually robust benefit. Single family homes gain only a 19% savings when installing a water meter. The city seems to be especially interested in getting townhouse complexes on a shared water meter program.
Will we really save that much? One question that comes to mind is what the city is getting out of this. They are willing to expend money to install a water meter in order to reduce their tax revenue from the owners of Windsor Garden by some $100,000. That’s already a bit suspicious. Obviously they will gain some kind of upside, or it would make no sense. No government gives up tax revenue simply to feel good. There has to be a financial gain in order to justify an initiative of this kind. So what is their upside? Hard to know at this point, but there definitely is one. The city will provide savings for two years. What happens after that? As gamblers like to say, “The House always wins in the end.”
Shared water metering opens a can of worms
One of the big issues when a community installs a shared water meter is that of neighborhood dynamics. It dramatically impacts how the members of the community interact with one another. There have been countless examples of conflicts, lawsuits and vandalism stemming from a perception that one neighbor may be increasing the cost for the entire community by using more water than another neighbor feels is necessary or preferable.
The fact that you may use more water than they do already puts you at odds. You have teenage girls in your unit? How often do they shower? How often do you wash your car? Do you run the shower longer than the accuser? It makes you evil in their eyes, because it just might be perceived as costing them more money.
There are documented cases where shared utility billing (especially master-metered water systems) in condominium, townhouse, or HOA communities has created serious conflict among residents. The level of conflict ranges widely: accusations, harassment, lawsuits, and occasionally vandalism or threats. Most conflicts escalate into legal disputes, harassment complaints, or property damage rather than physical assault.
In 2015, a Toronto condominium complex sued an owner for causing excessive water consumption which affected the cost for other members of the building due to a shared water meter. The court ruled that the owner’s water consumption was “disproportionate” and unfair to other owners, ordering him to pay the excess costs.
That may have been an unusual case, but the fact is that these situations often produce hostility between neighbors and pressure on boards to identify the “culprit.” Many times it’s simply a perceived issue. The water bill goes up, and people start looking for the devil of an owner who must be responsible.
You can count on it: people will begin attacking other owners, verbally or otherwise, for simply washing their car. We would likely have to close the car wash station completely because of the risk of vandalism, or the potential that someone doesn’t fully turn off the hose. Conceivably, people would be attacked simply for being at the car wash station.
Equally shared, or based on occupancy?
Apparently some Richmond-based stratas have considered calculating a per-unit value based on occupancy, but this is absurdly complicated. Owners with a single occupant have argued that they shouldn’t be paying the same share of the total as another unit with six people. This has equally led to major conflict within the strata. Is it really possible to make this work?
What happens if you have teens and some of them move out? What if you have part-time occupants? Does the strata now need to keep a record of how many people are in the unit on any given day? Do you start checking how many times a week they run the shower? What about how often they wash clothing, or run the dishwasher? And what about washing the car? Do people with more cars pay more than people with a single car, just because they might wash those cars? What if they never wash their car? The whole issue is filled with controversy.
Landscaping is also affected
Even though our bylaws hold owners responsible if they don’t water their plants, the majority of owners will stop doing so completely for fear that they will be singled out. Do we still hold them accountable for plants dying out, or does the community take the hit and replace the plants through the annual budget allocation? Will the increase in landscaping costs offset the savings we gain in the utility bill?
We all pay for leaks
We live in an aging complex, prone to leaks due to the use of Poly-B plumbing. Currently, a water leak, though bad, involves the insurance company and will generally get resolved without a major cost except for the deductible. With a shared water meter, a leak means the entire complex pays for the additional water leak. This means potential lawsuits from other owners for something that could not even be avoided, simply because they face increased costs. In the real world, documented through HOA cases in the USA, situations like this often lead to accusations between neighbors over who caused leaks, hostility toward HOA boards, and legal threats or lawsuits.
A few years ago, we had a water main break in our complex. Tens of thousands of gallons of water poured through the driveways, flooding many parts and even damaging the roadways and walkways from underneath. With a shared water meter, we would have all had to pay for the additional water use, even though it was no fault of anyone in the complex. In that case, the cost may well have exceeded the annual savings for each owner.
The bottom line: it’s not so simple
Even when no court case exists, many strata/HOA communities report recurring disputes where neighbors accuse each other of driving up shared costs. For example, discussions among residents often involve public shaming about excessive water use, accusations about watering cars, watering lawns, running hoses, or leaking plumbing and more. There are heated arguments over who is responsible for any increase in the community bills.
These conflicts typically escalate into verbal harassment, complaints to boards or management, and even vandalism.
Another thing to consider is that the city has said it will eventually move to individual meters, as we currently have with electricity use. That’s the best of all options, as then each owner is directly responsible for their own water use. We can choose to wait for that step, or act now for the interim choice of a shared water meter.
In the meantime, we need to think about whether the savings the city promises would actually be realized, whether that is worth the additional issues we would face, and what other costs we might face if community water use is measured.
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