Some good news out of Seattle City Council: A proposal to automatically enroll people living in federally subsidized housing into the city’s Utility Discount Program passed through committees on Tuesday, KUOW reported. This follows Mayor Ed Murray’s plan, announced earlier this month, which he said would register 28,000 low-income families for the UDP. As of 2014, just one out of five eligible residents took advantage of the discount program.
The UDP, which, as Ansel noted, is notoriously difficult to navigate, can reduce eligible residents’ Seattle City Light bills by 60 percent and Seattle Public Utilities bills by 50 percent.
“Any household with an income falling beneath 70 percent of state median household income—$31,000 for single person, or $60,000 for a family of four—is eligible for the discount program,” Ansel reported.
Council members Kshama Sawant and Mike O’Brien came out in support of the proposed legislation – and then sought to enroll another 2,000 low-income people in the program, which would then be available to 30,000 residents, KUOW’s Paige Browning reported.
“This is great work, it’s great to help alleviate folks that are living in poverty, and I just think it’s going to be an outstanding step forward for so many folks that will benefit from it,” O’Brien said.
The UDP expansion would be funded by increased utilities charges – an extra “$13 a year to the average utility bill (an average 0.62 percent increase). Seattle City Light estimates a 0.5 percent increase,” KUOW reported.
The full council still needs to vote on the proposal.
