Water Allocation – Hillcrest House

In June 2025, it's Barnett & Hill's goal to begain water allocation at Hillcrest House.

The rationale:

• Allocation makes tenants self-report water leaks so they can be fixed.
• This cuts down on waste and expensive bills that ultimately affect rent
• Good stewardship of a valuable resource
• Our maintenance staff is busy.  Maintenance service is curtailed when they are chasing leaks.
• We are alerted to unreported leaks once a month - when we get the bill and have to scramble to find the leak.
• There is language in your lease (see ¶1.6) allowing a $100/event charge if staff discovers unreported leaks.  This take effort on the part of our already-busy maintenance staff to identify culprits.
• Water allocation makes people report their leak so we don't have to disrupt your day to check for your neighbor's leaks.

Cost:

• The Public Utilities Commission of Texas has explicit rules on how water allocation is tabulated - allocation is only for water or waste water fees - I can't charge for solid waste or other city fees.
• By law, I can only allocate what is classifed on the bill as Water Service;  Solid Waste or Fees and Other Services are my burden as landlord.  You can see this breakdown on the last four month's bills (hyperlinked in Column 1), the amount of Water Service per bill (Column 2), gallon usage (Column 3) and what would have been your allocated monthly charge for water service by unit type (Columns 4 & 5) summarized in the table below: