No one should lose their home over an unpaid water bill in Baltimore

While not discounting the place of incompetence in this whole water billing system — after all, billing errors are a perennial issue — Lawrence Brown, a Morgan State University professor in the School of Community Health and Policy, sees another factor. "A lot of intentionality had to go into making this system as bereft of compassion as it is," he said after attending a briefing Monday at which State Sen. Mary Washington, Del. Nick Mosby and Councilwoman Shannon Sneed drummed up support for a state Water Taxpayer Protection Act.

All this is on the eve of the Board of Estimates meeting this week to vote on a three-year, 30 percent rate hike in water bills. Since 2000, according to Rianna Eckel, the Maryland organizer for the advocacy group Food & Water Watch, water rates have quadrupled.

Yes, the city wants people to pay their bills; but what about when the bills are in dispute? Some, like the Rev. Alvin Gwynn Sr., president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, cave in. As his bills mounted at the Friendship Baptist Church while he challenged their accuracy, Rev. Gwynn finally paid thousands of dollars to avoid a tax sale. Though the city has acknowledged that it miscalculated the bill, he said, he has found no relief, and the church, which has only one person on site most days, is billed for 4,900 gallons of water a week.

For years scores of people have written in desperation to Mary Washington, from her days as a member of the House of Delegates to now, as she prepares to take her new seat in the Senate and press again for her Water Taxpayer Protection Act, first introduced in 2017. As she sees it: "Mostly this system in Baltimore seems to be set up to support the economy of tax sale foreclosure — not ending economic and housing insecurity in Baltimore."

Kimberly Armstrong has been fighting the water bill since 2014 when she began receiving what she describes as "astronomical water bills," from $200 to $1,000 for a house she lived in alone most of the time because her daughter was away in school. She hired a plumber to repair a minor leak in a basement bathroom. After following all protocols her house went into tax sale in 2016. Her mortgage company took care of that, she said, but then she received a bill for more than $3,000. "So, I don't know where to go, and I'm still fighting this issue to this day," she said at the briefing Monday.

Let's focus some outrage on Baltimore's water policies. Go to the Board of Estimates on Wednesday morning. Contact Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young, who is working on finding relief. Encourage the City Council to throw its support behind the Water Taxpayer Protection Act. Contact the Baltimore delegation to make sure that they are on board, too.

Del. Mosby says Baltimore is better than this. Why not show that this legislative season?

E.R. Shipp, a Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary, is the journalist in residence at Morgan State University's School of Global Journalism and Communication. Her column runs every other Wednesday. Email: ershipp2017@gmail.com.