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June 16th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
It sounds like the bill actually does nothing to encourage energy savings. If you the cost allocation isn’t based on energy consumption, why would you conserve energy?
June 16th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Or rather, if the “energy savings” are sorta spread around (because the allocation is by occupancy and square footage), what incentive is there to want to save energy when it benefits your neighbors as much as yourself? (ie you do not have 100% of the saving given back to you?)
It’s a great question, thanks for asking it (add it to the list for Panagiotakos).
I suspect (I don’t know) that Rep. Golden asked the Senator to sponsor it in the Senate, and maybe he didn’t study enough about it and just did it. If that’s the case, we have a chance to change his mind.
June 16th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
It may be worth contacting City Life/Vida Urbana (www.clvu.org) as they organize around tenant rights. They may know the latest on how this bill affects tenants and landlords…as well as what their plan of action is.
June 16th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Thanks for bringing more attention to this. The whole thing sounds kinda dirty to me.
June 18th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Forget about Panagiotakos, I’m more concerned about Golden’s role in all of this. It sounds as though he has several moitives behind passing this legislation, and I don’t think that it’s with his constituents or retners at mind. If you ask me, I think he’s gotten a pretty big chip on his shoulder. I’ll check out the clvu.org before passing too much of a judgment on the guy, but c’mon, to have most of his donations coming from lobbyists that represent that one company is disgraceful. There used to be a time that pols would actually try to cover up their discrepencies - does he think he’s that powerful down there now to do something so blatant and that no one’s going to hold him responsible? The politics in this town can be unreal sometimes!
PS - Great rally in Chelmsford for Deval on Saturday! Coverage or not, he’s out there with the voters!
June 19th, 2006 at 9:49 am
It is simple how this promotes energy saving. Let me speak from experience.
If you include heat in your rent, your tenant has no incentive to keep heat at even a reasonable level. I live in a 2-family, my tenants always had the heat at 73-75 degrees. In Spring they had it at this on 60 degree days with their windows open. I doubt they would do that if they had to pay for the heat, .
I had heating bills over $1000/month (their rent was $900) last winter and there was nothing I could do about it except plead that they be reasonably energy concious.
Massachusetts has mostly laws to protect the tenant, I am glad Golden is trying to even the playing field.
June 19th, 2006 at 10:16 am
First, most heating bills are paid for by tenants in apartments I’ve lived in (which is MANY), or it’s very possible to get this done if it’s not like that already. If you didn’t have yours set up that way that’s your issue. Spend the money to seperate the incoming gas and electricity wires if you feel you’ve been “had” by your tenants. Maybe you can also invest in better insulation too if it’s an old house which has not been upgraded in a long while. You’re the landlord, it’s your job to invest in your property to the best of your ability in order to promote better use of the building.
We pay for our electricity and natural gas usage (which provides heat/hot water BTW) and I am a renter in Lowell. They can make seperate meters for that. I get a seperate bill and have direct consequences if I leave my windows open in 20-degree weather.
It’s water utils (and is there something else too?) that are nearly impossible to seperate or seperately meter that is at issue. This bill isn’t so you can recoup your heating bill costs which you should be able to do anyway by metering seperately. It’s so you can calculate those utilities that the landlord cannot seperate.
Anyway, no one’s saying this is a bad idea on its principles, so you mistake me entirely. It’s that there’s not any protection for tenants in the bill such that an unscrupulous landlord’s fees can be appealed.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
The bill for water already went through, this bill is for heat and air conditioning.
Water bills are low anyway unless your tenant is doing something completely unscrupulous.
June 19th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
There is always protection for tenants,they can pick and choose where they live and who their landlord is.
June 19th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
I applaud Golden and Panagiotakos on this. With skyrocketing
energy prices this will definitely encourage conservation.
On top of that it’s about equity. Why should some college
students at ULowell and a senior citizen in the same three
family pay the same for heat if the students have the windows
wide open and the senior is walking around in a parker
all day.
June 19th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
It’s not a matter of who should pay for the heat, but rather that a computer program can allocate the tenant’s cost without directly measuring his usage.
June 19th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Again, my problem with this is how it was introduced. No debate, no discussions at all. And now its off to the senate for vote? If it is true that half of Golden’s campaign dollars last year were from Suffolk, and those are the guys responsible for promoting the only manufacturer of this product, I just find that in and of itself to be of concern. Landlord or tenant, I don’t really care. I just hate to see “democracy” in action like this.
June 24th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Well i lloked up this bill and it did have a public hearing..and it passed in what they call an informal session, which If I am not mistaken takes unanimous consent..Obviously no one had a problem with this bill.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I think you are not seeing the benefits of this bill - and I say that as someone who is a former renter and owns no rental units. I used to live with a roommate who would turn the heat in our apartment in somerville up to 70 in january, walking around in a t-shirt. (we did not pay for heat). People, wake up. The amount of coal that is stripmined from West Virginia hills just to power all our silly gadgets, videogames, electric blankets, and wide-screen t.v.s - should take a person’s breath away. over 700 miles of streams & rivers have been filled in by mountain-top removal mining. We are fighting a $10 billion/month war to guarantee us heating oil that is $2.75, not $4 a gallon. This bill would finally make people responsible for their actions, and make it hurt when they thoughtlessly waste precious natural resources. Yes, paying the true cost of wasteful, thoughtless use of our energy consumption is going to hurt - but it is absolutely necessary. Progressives, and I count myself as one of them - paying the TRUE cost of our energy use is going to hurt renters - but right now the cost is passed on to forests, lakes, streams, glaciers, coastal dwelling developing nations, etc. So, its time to make some mature decisions.