The cold

This is a post I wrote back in January before my computer died. Now that I have a new computer, I finally found the file and can post.

I’m learning all sorts of information about Michigan with my new job. I didn’t know that Detroit had the largest Middle Eastern population out side the Middle East. I was unaware that most of the abandoned buildings in Detroit have been abandoned since the 60s. And I was unaware that it’s legal for energy companies to turn off the heat in winter. In Wisconsin, or at least in Madison area, no energy company can legally turn off heat in winter. Sometimes this can be a problem for folks who don’t pay their heat from November to March and rack up huge bills that they have no hope of paying off, but at least these people survived.

I read a report while I was at work one day that folks could loose heat over the winter due to an inability to pay their bills and I was sure it wasn’t true. How could you do that in the Midwest? So I called one of the agencies I work with. Apparently in Michigan, although the utility companies have policies against doing something as horrible as turning off heat, it still happens. My agency told me that a senior citizen freezes to death in their own home almost every winter in the Detroit area.

Agencies like those I fund or even the ones I work for don’t want to attack the companies because they are valuable partners to us in our work. So when someone dies in the cold no existing agency feels capable of addressing the problem, and public outrage dies after a few weeks.

That’s just wrong.