EBMUD considers helping renters in foreclosure EAST BAY Utility may keep water on when landlords fail to pay bill

In another sign of fallout from the foreclosure epidemic, the East Bay's largest water agency today will consider whether to ban itself from turning off water to rental properties where the landlord has stopped paying the bill.

Faced with reports of landlords and banks in foreclosure cases who stop paying water bills as a way to illegally evict tenants, the East Bay Municipal Utility District is considering a proposal to place liens on landlords' property to collect the unpaid charges.

At the same time, the district would keep the water flowing to the tenants of the building, said EBMUD board member Andy Katz, prime sponsor of the proposal.

Katz said the plan, which would apply to rental buildings where the landlord is responsible for the water bill, is modeled after the policy of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which uses liens to collect delinquent charges on rental properties where landlords are responsible for the bills.

The idea was approved by the board's finance subcommittee March 11, following appeals from the activist organization Just Cause Oakland, Oakland tenant Kim Isaac-Ray and others. The water was shut off in December at the foreclosed duplex where Isaac-Ray and her children live in West Oakland, according to Kim Ota of Just Cause.

Katz said that Just Cause asked him for help in the Isaac-Ray case and that he helped get her service restored. It was shut off for a day, Ota said.

"Landlords seeking unlawful evictions are using water termination to force tenants to move," the Alameda County director of public health, Anthony Iton, said in a March 10 letter to the board.

Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and Councilmembers Nancy Nadel and Larry Reid are among those who wrote the board in support of protecting tenants and holding property owners accountable when they are responsible for the bills.

An EBMUD survey of bill payment since February found 26 multifamily properties with delinquent water bills in the district, which serves 1.3 million customers from Crockett to San Leandro.

Three of the properties later had their bills paid, and the water remains turned on for the remaining 23 while the district pursues existing notification and warning procedures for those responsible for payment, according to a staff report prepared for today's board meeting.

A district survey of nine utilities found that eight of them have the same collection policy as EBMUD for unpaid bills, which is to stop service and refer the unpaid bills to a collection agency, according to a March 20 staff report. San Francisco was the only one of the nine to use liens.

"Everybody's watching this to see what we will do," said EBMUD spokesman Charles Hardy.

The proposed change in EBMUD policy comes amid what advocates for tenants call an alarming surge in illegal eviction attempts caused by the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crisis.

"It's really kind of an epidemic in Oakland and Berkeley," said Anne Omura, executive director of Oakland's Eviction Defense Center, a nonprofit legal-aid group helping poor renters. "I've never seen a time like this in terms of these foreclosure evictions. The cases are heartbreaking. We have a lot of elderly and disabled clients whose landlords have been foreclosed on."

Several cities - including Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco - have "just cause" eviction laws that allow tenants to remain in rental properties that are sold unless the new owner intends to move in or convert its use.

Omura said it's difficult to determine whether landlords and banks stop paying utility bills as a deliberate strategy to evict tenants, but her agency is seeing attempted eviction cases where the taps have run dry. A property owner is legally required to keep rental units habitable.

"It's definitely a trend we've seen," she said, mentioning "one in Hayward and one in Berkeley where they've cut off the water."

Oakland City Attorney John Russo said in a report Friday that property owners are using a variety of tactics to illegally evict tenants in foreclosure cases.

"Based on the evidence we are seeing in the city attorney's office, a large number of evictions resulting from bank foreclosure are deceitful, unjust and flagrantly illegal under local and state law," he said.

"An increasing number of renters are being kicked out of their homes after banks foreclose on rental properties. Many are families - good tenants who have never missed a rent payment. But they are being forced out because banks can realize more profit from a vacant property."