Water Affordability Bills Make Another Splash In Senate Housing

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 10/28/2025) Poor residents struggling to pay off their water bills could benefit from a new statewide "Low-Income Water Residential Affordability Program," under bills creating a rate discount and plumbing upgrade program that would be funded by a $1.25 monthly fee on water customers.  

Tuesday, the Senate Housing and Human Services Committee heard about one hour of testimony on SB 248 , SB 249 , SB 250 , SB 251 , SB 252 , SB 253 , SB 254 , SB 255 and SB 256 .  

The legislation's lead sponsor is Sen. Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit), who attempted to establish such a program last term, amid the two-year Democratic trifecta. The proposal received scrutiny from different local government leaders and city councils, who worried about being forced to charge residents more on water rates and possibly have the dollars flow into other communities.  

During the 2023-24 term, the proposed charge would have been $2 monthly, but Chang's latest package brought it down to $1.25, increasing by a quarter annually until after 2028. Following 2028, the bill charge will be adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation.  

But this year, local water providers will have four options on how to address the funding mechanism under the legislation. They could:  

- Collect $1.25 from customers monthly and forward it to the state's health department, where the funding will be limited to recipients in their region.  

- Collect the money and run their own water affordability program.  

- They could select the "Local Option," as Chang described it, where they run their own water affordability program, raising their own funds for it in a way not involving the $1.25 charge.  

- If there are 6,000 or fewer water meters in their jurisdiction, which are devices tracking water consumption in a building, they would be permitted to opt out. In exchange for opting out, the community would need to adopt policies against preventing water shut-offs, "aggressive debt collection" and against certifying any property tax forfeitures or foreclosures based on water bill debt.  

"This Legislature has acted several times in recent years, in a bipartisan fashion, to help Michiganders with shut-offs through appropriations several years in a row, as well as a temporary shut-off moratorium in 2020," Chang said. "Every corner of the state, villages in the (Upper Peninsula), suburbs in Macomb County, urban cities on the West side and in Southeast Michigan and everywhere in between, has people who are having trouble paying their water bills."  

One of Tuesday's supporting testifiers was Chief Executive Officer Louis Piszker of the Wayne Metro Community Action Agency, providing water and energy bill assistance, homeless services and family food support.  

Among the more than 75,000 residents across Wayne County the agency serves each year, Piszker said water affordability has become the number one request for help.  

In the past three years, his organization has administered more than $75 million in different direct water assistance programs. But now, at the start of the new fiscal year, the Wayne Metro Community Action Agency has $8 million available.  

"That's a pretty substantial statement, given that most of the time, every year it is housing-related matters, rent assistance and mortgage assistance. Water is now number one," Piszker said. "Last year alone we received 55,000 calls for water assistance and 31,000 calls for energy, showing how close these challenges are connected."  

He noted that Michigan already has the Michigan Energy Assistance Program (MEAP), a statewide program assisting low-income households with electricity costs. Last term, lawmakers expanded the program.  

It previously was funded by a $1 charge on customers' monthly electric bills, but will now grow by 25 cents annually until reaching a $2 cap in 2028 – similar to today's water affordability proposal.  

In a two-year period, Jamie Gaskin saw his monthly water and sewer costs in the city of Flint rise from $50 monthly to between $130 and $150. He was raising his elementary age son, wasn't running a sprinkler system and was in Flint while water was exposed to lead and other corrosive metals.  

"I couldn't drink the water I had to pay for every month. I'm fortunate that I could pay for that, right? And that's going back 10 years," said Gaskin, the head of United Way of Genesee County. "But think about living in a house without water. You have dental health, you have physical health, you have hygiene . . . you also have, quite frankly, when folks can't bathe, it's very difficult to go out in the community."  

In 2023, Gaskin said about 55 percent of senior-led homes in Shiawassee County earned under the Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) threshold – or working-poor – "meaning they didn't bring enough income to afford a bare-bones budget."  

He said seniors' fixed incomes did not rise with the cost of inflation, with rising water costs forcing them to choose between medicine purchases and water bills.  

Sen. Jonathan Lindsey (R-Coldwater), the Senate Housing and Human Services Committee's minority vice chair, addressed the concept of people paying for folks unable to pay their bills.  

"You can't provide water for free, so these systems have to figure out how they're going to set rates, etc . . . and some of the cost is already shared inside the system," Lindsey said. "If some steps were taken to prevent wasted resources (from) shutting off and bringing it back, and also mitigate some of the challenges of shutting people's water off who have no access . . . wouldn't the system already sort of self correct?"  

He questioned if water systems were already self-correcting and bringing in new revenue on their own, without there being a need for legislation creating a new special rate and funding for the issue.  

Also speaking on the legislation today were Sens. John Damoose (R-Harbor Springs), Rosemary Bayer (D-Keego Harbor) and Mary Cavanagh (D-Redford Twp.). 

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