The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that 12 to 19 million low-income households (9.2 to 14.6 percent of all U.S. households) face unaffordable water bills.
Programs that provide ongoing water bill discounts for low-income households are a critical part of the solution. However, these programs often struggle with low enrollment due to barriers in the application process.
One uniquely effective way for low-income water discount programs to increase their participation rates involves sharing data with various income-based social services programs that are funded or administered by local, state, or federal agencies or by utilities. In some cases, low-income water discount programs have used data sharing to add tens of thousands of new participants in a single city in less than a year or to achieve participation rates above 70 percent of all eligible households across large regions of a state.
In this new report from the National Resource Defense Council and the National Consumer Law Center, we use case studies to explore how low-income water affordability and assistance programs around the country are using data sharing to increase participation by making the application process easier and faster—or even by eliminating the need for many households to submit an application. Additionally, for program administrators, we show how data sharing can reduce the staff time needed to review and approve applications and lower the amount of data that has to be maintained on program participants.
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