Awash in Foreclosure: In Detroit If You Don't Pay Your Water Bill, You Can Lose Your House.

• Author: Stelzer, Andrew

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Although Detroit sits on the edge of the Great Lakes, which hold a fifth of the world's fresh water, thousands of impoverished Detroiters are unable to afford that most basic necessity.

When Bobbi Thompson's water got shut off due to a delinquent bill, the state took away her children.

In 2000, Thompson fell about $200 behind on the water bill for her Detroit home. With steady work as a singer and choir director, she says she was planning to pay in a few weeks.

But before she could pay, the city shut off her water and lights. Soon after, a worker with Children's Protective Services came to check on her four daughters--aged eleven, nine, seven, and four.

"The lady came in and questioned each child on a Friday, and Monday she came and got them. That's how fast it was--seventy-two hours," says Thompson. "There's no kind of way to get yourself ready for that."

Thompson wasn't able to see her kids for twenty days, and although she says the utilities were back on soon after, it was two years before she was able to get custody of her children back.

"It was a horrendous experience," says Thompson.

"They divided my family into four, five equal pieces. They had two kids in one home and the other two were in two separate places," she says.

"One daughter was living in a house with a child abuser. She had to be moved. I don't know if she was touched or not. It was really bad."

Almost everyone in Detroit knows people who have had their water shut off. Advocates estimate around 40,000 households in the city are without water service. "Those are astronomical numbers," says Maureen Taylor, chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, which helps people avoid shutoffs.

In Michigan, an unpaid water bill can also lead to the loss of a home. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department eventually hands delinquent accounts to the city and county treasurers, who can add them as tax liens against the property. If those don't get paid, the house can be foreclosed on.

Taylor says a pattern of water bill-related foreclosures was halted in 2004, when Wayne County's chief deputy treasurer, Terrance Keith, refused to take action on those liens. But in December, Keith was given a judicial appointment, and it's yet to be seen if his replacement will take the same position.

"People may own their home outright, after living there for thirty or forty years, but because they can't pay a $1,200 water bill, they're going to lose their home," says Lou...