The Little-Known Secret of the Landlord-Tenant Energy Swipe

If I were a landlord and you were a tenant, you would have to pay the energy bills. And if I were a tenant and you were the landlord, I would have to pay the energy bills. Why am I writing this twice? Because the tenant gets the energy swipe no matter which way they go!

The Statistical Abstract of the United States lists that in 2005 in the

United States there were about 108,231,000 occupied properties. Of

those, about 33,678,000 were renter occupied.

That's a lot of people who don't have any control over their energy bills. Let's look closer at the situation.

If you were the owner of an apartment community that had 500 units, what possible incentive would you have to keep energy costs low? None, really, when you consider that all of the energy costs are passed along to the tenant.

Let me tell you a little story.

Last January a friend of mine was recovering from a spinal injury. It was the dead of winter. He lived in a two-bedroom average apartment. No luxury was involved. Not even a washer and dryer!

This man spent the entire month on his back. His meals were brought in (no cooking). His laundry was sent out, of course. He could not use his computer. He also found it impossible to watch TV for long, so most of the time he just slept. That's what recuperations are for!

At the end of the month he went through the sorry task of paying his bills and there among all the medical bills, junk mail, and sympathy notes, sat his missive from AEP.

Total: $198.00

Why did this happen?

The owner of the apartment community had no stake in keeping energy costs low. The apartments were old and had energy deficient appliances. Begging to get these appliances replaced was met with withering glances and silence-no action. Weatherizing was a word that had never been defined for the maintenance team- and there were no energy incentives from local, state or federal government to motivate the owner of this community to do better.

It can be even worse for low-income tenants. Here, the state may end up paying the energy bills or local charities might pony up. As certainly as winter follows fall, energy costs will rise in the winter, but if landlords had financial incentives to keep their properties energy efficient they might put forth the effort necessary to get their properties up to speed.

It's worth a try!