City of Twin Falls to transfer ‘bad-debt’ responsibility to landlords
The landlord will be responsible for the utility payments if the tenant leaves or the tenant has not paid their utility bill.
TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Beginning in January, the City of Twin Falls will be transferring the responsibility of utility fees to the landlord, instead of the tenant for rental properties within the city.
This is something that they had been looking at for years because the city was losing money on rental properties utility accounts.
The amount they were losing was more than $100,000 each year.
With this new ordinance, the landlord will be responsible for the utility payments if the tenant leaves or the tenant has not paid their utility bill.
Josh Palmer with the City of Twin Falls says 13 of the 16 surrounding cities have this ordinance in effect and has greatly reduced their bad debts that they have accrued. “For what we do to provide water and wastewater services, it takes money to provide and build and maintain those services so we can’t be losing over $100,000 dollars a year in bad debts and ultimately it’s taxpayers who support that cost, and we know that they don’t want to support that either,” said Palmer.
He says this is only a change for landlords and tenants who pay for their utilities in this manner. For many apartment complexes, the utility payment is lumped in with your monthly rent.
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