When Ericka Yarborough fell behind on her utility bills last winter, Pepco shut off the power in her Columbia Heights apartment. It stayed off for nearly eight months.
No power meant living in the dark, showering with cold water, and having no refrigerator to store groceries. It also meant living with no heat during the coldest months of the year.
“It was rough during the wintertime,” said Yarborough, 34, who lives in subsidized housing and receives public assistance. “It’s freezing cold. You got to put on a million blankets, if you even have a million blankets… You’ll be freezing cold. You barely want to get up.”
“Just living and going through this, it’s really hard and it’s frustrating,” she added.
Yarborough is hardly the only D.C. resident to navigate extreme weather without power. Many District residents are struggling with the cost of utilities. In the first eight months of 2024, Pepco sent 113,105 disconnection notices to customers, including 23,181 to low-income customers, according to a company report to the D.C. Public Service Commission. In the same time period, Pepco disconnected residential customers for nonpayment 6,396 times, affecting 1,076 low-income customers.
A new proposal before the D.C. Council would expand utility protections for vulnerable residents like Yarborough by guaranteeing electricity and gas connection throughout the summer and winter months.
The bill, introduced by Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau and Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White in June, would prohibit utility companies in the District from disconnecting electricity or gas to certain at-risk households from Nov. 1 through Feb. 29, and May 15 through Sept. 15.
Currently, D.C. law prevents utility disconnections during weekends, holidays, and when the temperature climbs above 95 degrees or below 32 degrees.
“In the District, we have some safeguards in place so that people won’t have their power turned off when it’s extremely hot or extremely cold. The reality is — and what I’ve heard from residents who are struggling to pay their rent, utilities, food, and more — is that it’s not enough,” Nadeau wrote via a spokesperson on Oct. 8. The bill “is a way to ease at least part of that burden as residents work to get above water. And it’s a way to protect our most vulnerable residents from unhealthy living conditions,” she added.
Under the proposal, titled the “Utility Disconnection Protection Act of 2024,” the expanded protections would apply to households with children under 18, seniors over 65, individuals with disabilities, and recipients of certain public assistance programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The District’s Department of Energy and the Environment would be responsible for enforcing the new regulations.
If passed, the bill would require utility providers to offer payment plans to protected customers who are disconnected due to nonpayment year-round. It would also put a $25 limit on the amount a company can charge to restore a customer’s power or gas. Currently, companies can require that customers pay their overdue balance in full before the company restores service.
For Yarborough, easing the financial burden of getting reconnected would be a game-changer. “I think that would have definitely made a difference, because, you know, it’s three-hundred and something dollars” to pay the full bill and be reconnected now, she said. “And [it] should be like, ‘Can you pay $50 to $75?’ That’s reasonable.”
The bill also contains a provision requiring utility companies to file monthly reports on the number of disconnections and unpaid bills broken down by ward and ZIP code. Utility companies currently have to file reports quarterly and do not differentiate by area.
For disadvantaged residents, “The Utility Disconnection Protection Act could serve as a piece of legislation to provide pivotal consumer protections,” said Kintéshia Scott, assistant people’s counsel at the Office of People’s Counsel, a consumer advocacy group. Scott said many D.C. residents have yet to financially recover from the pandemic and “there are a number of consumers who face economic challenges and who are struggling to catch back up.”
Pepco, the District’s public electric utility, opposes the bill. In a statement, a Pepco spokesperson said that while the company “fully understands and shares the concerns that have prompted the introduction of the ‘Utility Disconnection Protection Act,’” implementing “a new moratorium on disconnections, while well-intended, risks creating unintended consequences. Such a prolonged measure could leave customers with insurmountable debt.”
The statement added that Pepco offers flexible payment options and only disconnects customers as a last resort.
A representative for Washington Gas, the District’s public natural gas utility, said that the company would comply with the bill if it passes. They added that Washington Gas does not disconnect customers when temperatures fall below 32 degrees.
Nadeau, however, believes the current temperature-based regulations are flawed, especially because companies don’t have to turn the power back on if temperatures hit extreme levels. “If Pepco turns off the electricity on Monday when it’s 89 degrees and on Tuesday the temperature rises to 95, they don’t have to turn it back on,” she wrote in the Oct. 8 statement. “With more and more 90-degree days as the climate changes, saying that electricity can be shut off in the heat of summer – just not on the day temps rise over 95, isn’t enough. Those are conditions in which nobody should have to live, much less children with asthma, struggling seniors, and other vulnerable populations.”
Selah Goodson Bell, an energy justice campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity and one of a group of advocates who pushed for the bill’s introduction said the proposed changes are an important step forward.
“One of the main things the bill is trying to fix is the fact that we’re seeing shutoffs still peak during the summer, but these shutoffs are most dangerous for particularly vulnerable households,” Goodson Bell said. “Residents like seniors, youth, pregnant or postpartum individuals, and also individuals with a disability. All these different groups are more sensitive than the average person to extreme temperatures.”
A resident of Columbia Heights Village, a subsidized apartment complex, Yarborough was ultimately able to get her utilities restored earlier this year with the support of community organizations like the Columbia Heights Village Tenants Association.
Cynthia Hall, the tenant association’s chief operating officer, said many residents of the property face similar challenges. Within the previous two to three years, she estimated at least three dozen residents there were disconnected, some for more than three months.
But with the safeguards in the bill, Hall said, “even if these [residents] fall into a financial hardship again, they don’t have to worry about sitting in their apartment in 30-degree weather without power.”
The bill has been referred to the council’s Committee on Business and Economic Development and Committee on Transportation and the Environment, which must approve the bill before it can go to the full Council for a vote.
Neither committee has scheduled a hearing for the bill, so it may not get heard before the council period ends this year. If so, Nadeau spokesperson David Connery-Marin said the council member plans to reintroduce the bill next year.
