The mortgage crisis is affecting even more people than the 1%+ of U.S. households currently in some stage of foreclosure. People scraping to pay their mortgages are having to let other bills slide, and it looks like utilities are one place folks are slipping behind.
Not that it's worse when it happens to people who aren't used to it, but another new trend aspect of the problem is that increasingly, shut-offs are happening to middle-class households who have never experienced them before. This is cause for alarm, as it shows that more segments of society are getting into desperate financial territory than have been there in a long time.
According to the Wall Street Journal, PPL Corp. of Pennsylvania increased shutoffs by 78% in the first three quarters of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007. George Lewis, a spokesman for PPL, based in Allentown, Pa., said the utility had decided to "prevent people from getting further in debt" by cutting them off sooner now than in the past.
That's one way to put it. I'm not sure how helpful families will find it to have their utilities cut off just as winter is beginning.
Yet more bad news is that as power companies install new "smart meters" they are able to shut customers off remotely, saving them the cost of a crew going house-to-house, and enabling them to cut power when customers are only slightly behind for a slight amount. One company in California shuts off customers only $30 behind and plans to lower that figure as soon as their wireless technology is installed in enough homes to make it cost-effective.
While shutting off power may indeed prevent people from getting further behind, it doesn't do much to truly solve the problem of more and more families in financial crisis in the United States. Whatever the country decides tomorrow, let's hope the fiscal policies of the next president will do more for people than leave them in cold, dark houses, wondering how much longer they can keep the roof over their heads.
