Shut Down RUBS!

(Your landlord is screwing you on utilities)

Em Smith

Earlier this year, more than half of the tenants at Qualman Apartments in Seattle went on a utility strike because their landlord, Cornell & Associates, had moved from a flat-rate utility billing system ($50 a month) to the so-called “RUBS” — Ratio Utility Billing System. 

As a result, utility bills octupled to as much as $429.

RUBS has wreaked havoc for renters in Seattle and around the country. So what the hell is it?

In the before-times, renters were charged a flat fee for utilities, or a metered rate based on usage. But with RUBS, utilities are split between all the building’s tenants using a formula made up by by your landlord

So instead of paying just for your share of the utilities, you pay a variable proportion of ALL the building’s utilities. You’re on the hook for the landlord’s utility usage as well. So everyone’s bills go up (except the landlord).

For example, if your landlord is vacuuming the carpet in the hallway, you pay for it. If they’re watering the grass, you pay for it. If there is a water leak or old heaters in the building, you pay for it.

Tenants are also paying for the water used in common laundry rooms. This means that if your building has a paid washer and dryer, you are paying for the water and electricity twice.

Tenants with RUBS are also paying for vacant units. If your building has a 10 percent vacancy rate (which is typical), you and your neighbors are paying for any heat, electricity, and water being used on those units. If your landlord is cleaning those units or doing renovations, you pay for it.

Sounds like a scam, right? It is.

RUBS has already been banned in West Hollywood, San Jose, and Mountain View, CA. North Carolina bans RUBS for hot water; Minnesota bans it for electricity; it is also illegal statewide in Massachusetts. Campaigns against RUBS have been launched in Seattle and Los Angeles.

In Connecticut, the Supreme Court declared RUBS to be in violation of state law, because it charges tenants for utilities that they didn’t use.

Landlords admit that RUBS is a rent increase in disguise. In a YouTube video, C&C Property Management warns landlords not to implement RUBS and a rent increase at the same time, or they risk violating the 10 percent cap on rent increases (in other words, you are definitely going to pay more with RUBS).

In Washington, RUBS is not counted as rent, so the landlords have gone on a RUBS-based rent-jacking bonanza. Hannah Krieg from The Burner has documented landlords openly bragging on LinkedIn about using RUBS to get around rent control laws.

So how do we ban it?

In Seattle, the utility strike at Cornell & Associates did not succeed in getting the landlord to back off. And the “Seattle Ban RUBS” campaign, backed by the Puget Sound Tenants Union and Seattle DSA, has made no progress in banning RUBS citywide.

Recently, the Democrats on the Seattle City Council introduced a bill to “ban junk fees” in the city, including banning pet rent. But this bill does not include a ban on the massive junk-fee scam of RUBS. 

Instead of exposing the Democrats’ silence on RUBS, the leadership of the “Seattle Ban RUBS” campaign praised the Democrats for their weak bill.

The so-called “progressive” Democrats on the Seattle City Council, including Alexis Mercedes-Rinck and Eddie Lin, have not said a word about RUBS. In Los Angeles, DSA mayoral candidate Nithya Raman has said nothing about RUBS (or basically anything else).

To succeed, the fight against RUBS needs a strategy outside the Democratic Party. It won’t be won with the leadership of the existing tenants unions or the DSA Democrats. It needs to be connected to the fight to build an independent, working-class party. It should also be connected to a broader program for housing, including rent control, public housing, and caps on utility bills. We need independent challenges against “progressives” like Alexis Rinck and Eddie Lin in Seattle, who are holding back the movement.

We can defeat RUBS, and we should. But we also need to understand the limitations of reforms. As long as capitalism is in place, no reform will solve the housing crisis. In every fight, our purpose should be to build up revolutionary consciousness, leadership, and organization. We need to overturn the for-profit housing model entirely, which means an all-out fight against capitalism itself.