document updated 14 years ago, on Oct 16, 2010
So, how do we decide who pays the water bill? Whoever does it will deduct it from their rent, which will really piss off the landlord. (more than piss him off, actually — it could push him into bankruptcy (if he isn't already there))
Nobody wants to piss off your landlord. He has keys to your apartment, he could be a raging menace if he really wanted to. There's a reason that landload-tenant law puts so many restrictions on the landlord — the landlord has many more opportunties to cause problems.
But somebody has to bite the bullet. Who should that person be?
- We play chicken. We all bluff and act like we don't care that the water will be shut off. But at the last minute, somebody blinks, and pays it.
- If someone doesn't blink soon enough, then the person who blinks has to pay the extra cost of having a utility-employee drive out here and turn it back on.
- We draw straws, and randomly decides who takes the hit.
- We discuss and decide who has the most "political capital" to spend, who would take the smallest hit by deducting it from rent.
- We split the cost evenly among us. Each person pays a quarter of the water bill. Instead of having only one messenger to shoot, he now has four.
The most equitable solution is to share the "blame" equally. However, there is a disincentive to do that. If three people share the "blame", while one person sits out, then that one person gets all of the benefit while facing none of the downside.
SO.... we need someone who will do coalition-building, who will really push everyone to do the right thing.
How does that leader make this happen? Simple:
- Each person pays 1/4 of the bill. They pay that money directly to the water company.
- Since that 1/4 amount is deducted from the rent, there isn't much risk. Even if the water still got shut off, they wouldn't have lost any money. The main risk is that they got some of the "blame", but still had the water turned off. But "blame" is not as important as money lost. And here, there is no money lost.
- So, there is an incentive for EVERYONE to participate. Unless ALL FOUR PEOPLE pay, the water will get shut off. Nobody wants the water to be shut off. So each person has an incentive to pay their part.
The leader still needs to make everything as smooth and easy as possible. These are the things the leader needs to do:
- figure out exactly (down to the penny) how much each person owes
- prepare a STAMPED, ADDRESSED envelope for each tenant, that way it's as "mindless" as possible for each person
- there still needs to be at least a little "coalition building", to make sure that there's buy-in from everyone, and once there's buy-in, to tell everyone that there's buy-in from everyone else, so nobody has thoughts about pulling out
BUT: what if someone DOES pull out? Is there any way to know WHO pulled out? Is there a way to point the blame if someone did?
PROBLEM: only the water company knows who paid (and thus, by inference, who pulled out)?
Answer: After paying, we give a copy of the receipt to the "leader", who shows it to everyone else.
Smooth-and-easy: After each person pays, they make sure to get a receipt. They TEMPORARILY give the receipt to the leader, who runs off and makes a copy, and then gives the original back to the person.
PROBLEM: What if one person REALLY DOES have a legitimate reason for not wanting to pay part of the water bill? Wouldn't that cause problems, if the leader has already drawn a line in the sand?
Solution: BEFORE drawing a line in the sand, the leader meets with each tenant individually, and finds out if they're provisionally on-board with the plan, if they likely are able to pay.
BUT... if they can pay rent already, they SHOULDN'T have a problem with paying, should they?