1. Water affordability must acknowledge that water is a public trust, the provision of water is a public good and water is not a commodity subject to privatization.
2. Water affordability must be situated within a broader commitment to ensuring access to clean, safe, affordable water for all.
3. Water affordability must be modeled along the lines of a sliding-scale, income-based rate system, such as that devised in Roger Colton’s 2005 Water Affordability plan prepared for the City of Detroit.
4. Water affordability must be centered within a framework of preserving and maintaining public health.
5. Water affordability must maintain a commitment to principles of conservation and providing assistance to low income residents to ensure they can be proper stewards of their water resources.
6. Water affordability must enshrine quality customer service as a central value along with a commitment to acknowledge the human dignity of all the people it serves.
7. Water affordability must find appropriate ways to deal with past consumer debt, such as the policies being implemented in Philadelphia.
8. Water affordability must eschew water shutoffs as a policy for being inconsistent with the values of public health and the commitment to acknowledge the human dignity of all the people it serves.
9. Water assistance plans are not the same as water affordability plans and must not be advertised as such.
10. Tiered water pricing plans, where water is priced by volume, are not the same as water affordability plans and must not be advertised as such.
11. To ensure community justice in this water affordability platform, provide training, employment, contracting and other economic opportunities for infrastructure design, construction, operations, and management to low- and very low-income persons, especially recipients of government assistance for housing, and to businesses that provide economic opportunities to lowand very low-income persons.
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