Water billing dilemma in Pr. George’s Coop boils over with eviction threats
Editor’s note
(about 1 hour later)
For more than a decade, members of the Village Green housing cooperative suspected they were paying too much for their water.
This file was inadvertently published.
They started asking questions, collecting records and demanding answers from their coop administration but the monthly bill kept coming — in some cases higher than before. When the answers didn’t add up, the residents stopped paying in protest.
Soon, the eviction notices began appearing on their townhome doors. Convinced they had uncovered impropriety, the residents sought help from county and state authorities. And it turns out they may be right.
This is the story of a group of residents resisting the powerful administration of their Landover coop community they argue has seized nearly complete control and forced residents to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in overpayments.
Their struggle has resulted in a civil lawsuit and has triggered an investigation into possible consumer protection violations, capturing the attention of the Maryland Attorney General’s office. But it has also put at risk the homes they’ve occupied for decades.
“I know I’m right,” said Pat Fletcher, a known community activist and the unofficial leader of the group. “If people look at what we’ve found, they would know that. If they set me out, I will put up a tent. I am not giving up.”
The Village Green mutual townhomes were built in 1968 along Sheriff Road as part of a federal Housing and Urban Development program for low-to-moderate income families. A private developer constructed the 231-home neighborhood backed by loans guaranteed by the federal housing authority.
The project was particularly attractive to people like Shirley Wallace, who was a single mother and moved in I the early 1970s. The coop had the semblance of homeownership, was convenient and most importantly, was affordable.
“I was young at the time and had three kids,” the 73-year-old resident said. “And it was a good way to have a home and raise my kids in the neighborhood with the school abutting the community.”
Residents are “shareholders” who don’t own their homes but are members of the cooperative nonprofit corporation. As long as they pay their monthly “carrying charges” — which are supposed to cover utilities and other shared maintenance costs — members have exclusive rights to their properties.
The monies and daily operations are managed by a site manager and a five-person board of directors that is elected from among the neighbors. Every financial decision is supposed to be vetted and voted on by the members as part of the coop’s democratic structure.
But for more than 15 years, the coop’s leadership has been dominated by one family that dissenting residents say have divided the community between those who support the ruling regime and those who don’t.
In 1999, the administration introduced a plan to move away from an estimate-based water billing system and install individual water meters to measure usage. Village Green attorney Bernard A. Cook said residents welcomed the change because it would keep their “rent” or monthly charges low.
But what the residents did not realize is that in addition to the carrying charges that are supposed to cover utilities, they would have to pay out-of-pocket to a third-party billing company, Yes Energy management, contracted by then-site manager Mary Williams.
“We actually paid the water bill twice,” said 73-year-old resident Allena Wesley. “When it first happened, we really didn’t pay that much attention because it wasn’t much money.“But then they started charging a much larger amount.”
Residents like Steve Brown started watching their bills closely, noting inaccurate readings and wildly fluctuating rates: “I live in a two-bedroom by myself and one month I had an $80 bill,” he said. When he called the coop’s business office, Brown said management dismissed his concerns suggesting there was a leak or he flushed too often.
“The next month, the bill dropped down to $40,” he said.
The irregularities spurred more questions. Members who had assumed the out-of-state bill collector was reading the meters, learned they did not. Cook asserts the company reads them remotely but email exchanges shared with the Washington Post show the front office likely does the reading.
They learned that after Yes Energy takes out an administrative fee, they reimburse the coop management to pay the bill from the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. During coop meetings, residents discovered that the corporation’s budget included line items for water and sewer (derived from monthly charges) and the reimbursement.
Outraged residents — up to about 50 — refused to pay the monthly Yes Energy invoice and attempted to vote out the board of directors. But interviews with disaffected coop members revealed the administration made delinquent residents ineligible to vote and has suffered other forms of retribution for speaking out.
Cook, the attorney, said that the charges are based on the flat fees that are evenly split among all the units and the consumption rates billed to units “using an average rate from all of the master meter invoices,” according to documents. But budgetary records still showed Village Green collecting far more money than what was needed to pay the bills.
The residents’ suspicions were confirmed when a Prince George’s County government auditor found the billing arrangement has resulted in more than $285,000 in excess billing between 2012 and 2013. The analysis revealed the bill collector charged higher rates of water usage than what WSSC billed for, prompting calls for a full forensic audit of Village Green’s bookkeeping.
Money was also missing. In March 2013, WSSC refunded Village Green more than $60,000 due to a separate billing error: “The expectation is that the refund would be given back to residents in the form of credits for future bills,” wrote accountant Hawi Sanu in her report. But the records give no indication of what happened to the money.
“I am so angry because I have seen people go to jail for less,” Fletcher said. “We are being taken totally advantage of and nobody seems to care.”
Residents took their case to the authorities but initially, the county Department of Environment, which oversees consumer protection, found no evidence of “double-billing.” However, they had not seen Sanu’s report.
They have since opened a second investigation looking at whether the Village Green board violated the occupancy agreement with “arbitrary or excessive water bills.”
The residents filed a lawsuit in Prince George’s County Circuit Court over the charges but the case was dismissed in October after an attempt to resolve the matter outside court failed. They are appealing but have limited funds, Fletcher said.
But with the dismissal, the Village Green board moved forward on threats to evict those longtime residents who had stopped paying their water bills. Fletcher is the first target. Her case was continued Tuesday and County attorneys are petitioning the court to stop the evictions and appoint a receive to oversee Village Green accounts while their investigation is ongoing.
“There is a high likelihood that the County will succeed on the merits of its request based on the public policy at stake and Village Green’s clear attempts to circumvent Maryland law,” the County wrote in their injunction petition. The court has not ruled on the matter.
Cook dismissed the allegations, saying . He said Fletcher, in particular, has been delinquent in years past and should have anticipated the consequences. The eviction “absolutely needs to go forward,” he said during a hearing in Hyattsville District Court.
“People who don’t pay cause a deficit for the entire community,” Cook said in an interview.
Fletcher returns to court in late January and if she is evicted, it could mean that her neighbors will either lose their homes or pay thousands in accrued charges.
“You almost feel like you must be quiet and accept what is going on or you’ll be next.,” said resident Alvena Winestock, adding she would not be able to find another home paying what she pays now and four years from retirement. “It’s like fighting a losing battle.”
