On June 24, 2021, the moratorium on all electric, gas, water, telephone, broadband, and cable shut-offs ended.

This allows utility companies to begin terminating service to customers behind on their bills. This is a crisis because there are more than one million New Yorkers who are still unable to pay their utility bills, which were unaffordable for many even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under the Parker-Richardson Act of 2021, people who are behind on their bills are eligible for an additional 180-day “grace period” from service terminations, but only if they notify their utility and “self-certify” to a change in financial circumstance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can learn more about how to self-certify at bit.ly/dpscovid19faq.

Our friends at the Public Utility Law Project (PULP) strongly recommend that any consumers behind on their utility bills contact their utility TODAY to avoid shut-offs. If the utility refuses to honor a request to self-certify, call the New York Department of Public Service’s complaint line at 1-800-342-3377 and request they order the utility to honor the grace period and issue an affordable deferred payment agreement.

Meanwhile, AGREE is fighting alongside our allies at the Energy Democracy Alliance for utility debt forgiveness, and we’re intervening in current utility rate cases to prevent further rate hikes. Even while the costs of generating electricity and extracting gas have been falling in recent years, utility bills have been steadily rising. This is because monopoly utilities continue to win large rate hikes from Governor Cuomo’s Public Service Commission to increase their profits and build out new fossil fuel infrastructure that we and our planet cannot afford.

If you’d like to help fight back against these proposed rate hikes, regardless of where you live, you can submit a comment here in the:

Upstate National Grid rate case
Downstate National Grid rate case

Our allies at the No North Brooklyn Pipeline Coalition are also organizing a utility bill strike for downstate National Grid customers who refuse to pay for this dangerous and unnecessary pipeline. Learn how you can get involved at nonbkpipeline.org/strike!