KC Water cuts service & leaves family without water for a month. They don’t owe a cent

Every two days for the past month, Jessica Martinez and her husband Alfonso López have made the six-and-a-half-mile drive to an empty house in south Kansas City.

This house, unlike theirs, has running water.

There, they take showers and fill huge plastic garbage bins with drinkable water. They then load the bins into their car and drive the water home to their two daughters, ages 11 and 13.

These containers provide the family’s water for drinking, cooking, washing and using the bathroom for the next two days. If it rains, they set out more buckets to collect water they can use to flush the toilet.

The Martinez family has dealt with this precarious reality since the end of April, when KC Water shut off service to their newly-rented home in the Marlborough Heights neighborhood of Kansas City.

“Why did they shut it off when I was (already) living here? That’s something I don’t understand,” Martinez told The Star. “It’s really sad. Sometimes my girls will say, mom, we want to have a normal life.”

When their water was shut off, the family had no outstanding debt to the city’s municipally-run water department, as confirmed by bills reviewed by The Star.

A month later, Martinez is still waiting for water — and for answers.

She’s not alone in her frustration with KC Water: A recent city audit revealed that the department often provides its customers confusing, inconsistent and inaccurate information, and customers have repeatedly criticized the department for issuing abnormally high bills with no options for recourse.

Last Wednesday, Martinez said a KC Water representative told her that a payment of $610 would put her in line to get her service reinstated.

She paid it in full on Friday afternoon, according to a receipt reviewed by The Star. But as of Tuesday morning, she said her taps are still dry.

New beginnings

At first, the Martinez family’s move from Independence felt like a hopeful new beginning. Martinez described her new southeast Kansas City neighborhood as safe and quiet, adding that her girls loved their new middle school.

Documents reviewed by The Star show that the family’s water service officially began on March 20. But problems began when Martinez called to ask KC Water for her first bill just a few weeks later.

“I asked for my bill — I just wanted to make sure that I had the water service in my name,” she said, adding that she needed the document to prove her address to her daughters’ school. “Then they said, oh, no, you should not have any water service because there is a problem in the house, with the owner of the house.”

A few days later, on April 27, Martinez said KC Water technicians came and shut the family’s water off by installing a lock on their water meter.

Martinez called KC Water repeatedly looking for answers, but she said representatives told her that the owner of the home had to contact the department directly.

“They didn’t say anything, they just came and shut it off. I don’t know what was the problem, they never explained to me,” Martinez said. “I called… and they only said, tell the owner to call, tell the owner to call.”

According to city and county property records, a group called PNC Series A Equity Trust owns Martinez’s home. And according to Martinez, as well as emails reviewed by The Star and interviews with the property manager, a company called Heartland Realty Investments Inc. (HRII Homes) based out of Lawrence manages the property.

In multiple phone interviews, the property manager from HRII Homes, who requested to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from KC Water, told The Star that he has asked the department what would be needed to reinstate service for the Martinez family. But he said he hasn’t gotten a clear answer.

He told The Star that all past water accounts at that address were set up in previous tenants’ names, and that neither he nor the owner have received any bills from KC Water related to past tenants’ water usage.

City 311 records show that someone requested an emergency water shutoff at the house in January because of burst pipes and flooding, and Martinez said that in the month before she moved in, workmen were making repairs to the home.

It’s unclear if that incident is connected to KC Water refusing water service to Martinez’s family.

In the meantime, Martinez said the property manager gave her the keys to another home he manages in south Kansas City so that her family could bathe and collect water there temporarily.

In the month since the shutoff, Martinez said KC Water technicians have returned multiple times to check that her meter is still locked. She said they have never given her any notice before arriving, or provided any information about when her service will be reconnected.

As she desperately searched for answers, she said one customer service representative even told her to uproot her family again and move to another house.

“She said, well, we’re not going to turn the water on, so I suggest you move,” Martinez told The Star. “I can’t move, I don’t have money to move. I work so hard, my husband works so hard — we don’t make that much money to move (from) one place to another.”

Mixed messages

Emails reviewed by the Star show numerous attempts by Martinez and her property manager to resolve this issue with KC Water during the past month. But the department’s reasoning for the continued lack of service has been inconsistent.

A May 3 email stated that KC Water couldn’t accept Martinez’s photo ID to restart service because it was expired, despite accepting the same ID to start her water service in March. She replied with a copy of her passport, which is not expired, the same day.

In a May 5 email, KC Water asked Martinez for a photo of herself holding up her ID. She promptly provided the photo.

Eventually, on May 10, the department told Martinez that an outstanding bill on the home’s account was preventing them from reinstating service.

“We are unable to complete your request for service due to an outstanding balance at this property that belongs to the owner,” a representative wrote in an email reviewed by The Star.

But Martinez’s property manager told The Star that when he asked KC Water for evidence of this debt, his request was denied.

KC Water’s policies prevent the department from holding Martinez responsible for paying another tenant’s bill.

“New tenants are not required to pay any existing balances or bad debt tied to their new rental property,” KC Water spokesperson Heather Frierson told The Star in an email.

Frierson added that the department does not comment on specific customers’ cases, but confirmed that it will establish new accounts for qualifying tenants at addresses where previous tenants still owe money.

A May 22 email from a KC Water employee, which The Star reviewed, added a new layer of confusion to the situation. The email suggested that HRII Homes is not formally registered in KC Water’s system to act on behalf of the house’s owner, and that the amount of alleged debt is more egregious than the department had alluded to in the weeks prior.

“This account has been offset due to theft of service. This will require payment to be applied to this account for the turn on of service. There has not been one payment applied to this account since the start date of 09/13/2018,” the employee wrote, without providing any records or bills to support this statement.

The property manager told KC Water in an email that he had sent a copy of the management agreement weeks ago. Frierson confirmed to The Star via email that KC Water accepts this type of document as an authorization to act on an owner’s behalf.

In another email reviewed by The Star, the property manager provided the names of the property’s three previous tenants, all of whom had received service from KC Water while living in the home as conditions of their leases.

“If theft has taken place, then Kansas City Water needs to pursue the person responsible for the theft. Payments owed by previous tenants (have) nothing to do with Ms. Martinez,” he wrote.

The price of service

On Wednesday, Martinez said the same KC Water employee called her directly and for the first time gave the exact price it would take to restart her water service: $610.

Martinez said the employee told her that this is the cost of getting KC Water technicians out to her home to remove the lock from her water meter. She didn’t mention the owner’s alleged debt or any specific reasons for this charge amount.

On Friday afternoon, Martinez brought the full amount in cash to KC Water’s offices. A receipt reviewed by The Star shows that that amount included a $237.88 charge for service between March 20 and May 18 — including at least 21 days in which she had no running water at home.

While Martinez said her property manager has agreed to deduct $610 from her upcoming rent to offset this payment, it still creates a burden on her family.

“They are making my family pay for a problem that has existed since 2018,” Martinez wrote in an email to KC Water, her property manager and The Star on Wednesday.

“They want me and my family, especially my little daughters, to suffer for a problem that has nothing to do with us.”

As of Tuesday morning, Martinez and her family were still without running water in their home.

Have you had a similar experience with KC Water? Do you have more questions about local utilities? Let the Service Journalism team know at kcq@kcstar.com.