Oppose Increased Electricity Costs that Harm the Disability Community
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:39PM
ACTION ALERT: Center for Accessible Technology in Berkeley
Southern California Edison is seeking approval to raise its electricity rates and change its rate structure in a way that is likely to hurt low-income people, including many in households with a person with a disability. Please help the Center for Accessible Technology in Berkeley (CforAT) collect stories and information to illustrate the harmful effects increased utility bills have on people with disabilities. The ILCs can help fight these proposed changes pending this month before the California Public Utilities Commission.
ILC clients and staff are likely to have personal human impact stories about how increased utility bills will be harmful to individuals with disabilities -- who are most likely to struggle living on fixed low incomes and rely on residential utilities for essential medical related purposes. Our state’s decision makers and public need to be given a complete picture of the harmful impact Edison’s proposed electricity rate increases and changes will cause.
Please help provide CforAT with information for the essential testimony it is preparing to reflect the real-world impact of increased costs of utilities on individuals with disabilities, when you are contacted very soon to ask if you have such information or any data.
More specifically, what is needed by CforAT as soon as possible is:
• General information regarding client’s utility issues. Do you regularly help clients with utility issues/cost concerns? Roughly how many or what percentage of your clients report such problems? How often? How does your ILC usually respond to these kinds of issues (e.g., refer out, help arrange payment plan, inform client of utility-specific low-income support plan, etc.).
• Individual stories. What kinds of stories, if any, have individual utility payers shared with your ILC? (In the past, ILCs have reported compelling client stories about not being able to pay their electricity bills, and about being faced with the horrendous choice between paying different utilities or between paying for either medication, food or their electricity bill.) Please make any effort possible now to also arrange permission for CforAT/DREDF to directly contact such individuals – especially if there are compelling stories.
This information is being gathered for CforAT by Nicolie Bolster who works at DREDF (Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund) in Berkeley.
Nicolie Bolster, DREDF