The Columbus City Council is considering legislation to regulate landlords and middlemen who resell utilities to tenants, a practice, that some have pointed out, can allow bad actors to misuse to inflate bills.
A proposed city ordinance would ban most utility reselling in multi-family buildings and penalize violations with a misdemeanor charge. Councilmember Chris Wyche reintroduced the legislation, which was first proposed in 2017 by former Councilmember Michael Stinziano, at the council’s Public Utilities and Sustainability Committee hearing on April 30 and has since held several public hearings to receive feedback and input from the public. While the first hearing included dozens of landlords speaking against the proposed legislation, the hearing last week was filled with advocates, residents, energy and environmental experts and our own CEO, Joe Recchie, speaking in support of it.
Nolan Rutschilling with the Ohio Environmental Council stated that “This is an energy justice issue.” He further explained, that “Currently a submetering and reselling company can dictate the cost in terms of utility service provided to customers. Sub metered customers lose access to some low-income payment plans, disconnection moratoriums, and billing protections enforced by the PUCO. They also are not able to submit complaints to the PUCO if they believe their bill or disconnection is not fair.”
Joe’s testimony, as a developer, property manager and development advisor, agreed. He said “This is a matter of equity, transparency, and justice. Renters should not be treated as a captive market for unregulated profiteering.”
Joe shared in his testimony that over the course of his career he has received numerous presentations from third-party submetering vendors and each time, the pitch has been the same: “free money” for multifamily housing operators—generated by charging tenants for sub metered utilities at rates above the actual cost paid to regulated providers. He has consistently chosen not to utilize or recommend the practice, because it results in increased charges for the residents.
From Accord Management and our property management team, to Community Building Partners and our development and development advising team, our housing efforts are always focused on the end users – our residents. From his years of experience as a landlord, property manager and developer, Joe shared that in order to preserve a fair and ethical landlord-tenant relationship, the property owner must be transparent about all charges and submetering utilities doesn’t encourage that level of transparency.
Joe was in support of Council’s legislation and has shared the following recommendations: regulate submetering practices within city limits; ensure transparency and disclosure of utility charges in lease agreements and extend consumer protections and eligibility for utility assistance programs to tenants, regardless of how their utilities are billed.
You can read his testimony as well as others, and the ordinance itself here.
