Speaker: Anaruth Solache
Say your name and where in Florida you live. How have high electricity bills impacted you? What are your concerns?
Anaruth Solache: Hi, my name is Anaruth Solache and I live in Miami Lakes, Florida. I used to live in unincorporated Miami Dade, but last year in September, I moved in with my fiance into our one bedroom apartment in Miami Lakes. We got really lucky and found an apartment that the rent wasn't Crazy insane. Um, and we figured since the apartment complex was going to be paying for water, um, we could manage to pay for the light bill was fine. Our first month when we were paying for electricity, it was only $70 which seems like a reasonable amount. It's only two of us. I work from home and it was September. So later in the year when Florida starts kind of cooling down a little bit. Um, and so everything was fine. The next month it went up to $80. I was still like, ok, well, we can manage, but the following month it went up to $95 and that's where I started getting a little bit concerned as to what was happening. We hadn't had anything crazy plugged in. We were trying to be as energy efficient as we can when you're renting an apartment and so I enrolled in budget billing thinking, oh, my bill would stay relatively similar around that price between 70 to $90. Ok. Well, now we're here a year later and my FPL bill just now in August was $147. My bill has more than doubled and it's extremely insane to me how they're able to do that so easily since we're renting, we don't have control over some of the energy efficient uh things that we could establish in our apartment to make it more energy efficient, right? To use less electricity to get charged a little bit less. For example, the our sliding doors could be impact, impact windows um to keep in the cold air, we also don't have central ac we have a regular one ac unit for the entire place. This increase while we're able to afford it now is so detrimental when it comes to any type of savings or budgeting or just trying to survive. Because if my bill is already doubled and that's with budget building for the entire year, what's gonna happen by the end of this year or what? God forbid, what's gonna happen by next year? Will my bill go triple? I don't know. My concerns are that renters do not have any, basically any way of lowering their electricity bill that doesn't infringe on the rights of the property managers or complexes or basically leave it up to them. I have no choice. And if my patio doors get replaced for impact windows, if I can add, um, if I can switch my ac unit to be a central ac. So, uh, my entire place is more ventilated and there's more air. Um, so I have to use less, um, ac, I have no, um, say if they, um, install something to, uh, suck up the heat from the stove, I'm very limited in options of what I can do and same with assistance programs. They're usually beneficial for homeowners or people that are, are in homes but not for renters. And so I'm concerned what's gonna happen another year from now, will my bill go up to 200 plus dollars and will be, will I be even able to afford to pay it? So, those are my concerns. Hopefully this video or it's useful and you guys can use part of it. But yeah, we gotta do something about it.
What do you want to say to the utility corporations responsible? What do you want Florida's politicians to do?
Anaruth Solache: So one of the things I want to say to utility corporations is what are you guys doing? Right. I, my bill, like I said previously has more than doubled within a year. And I'm a renter with limited things that I can do to make my energy efficiency become better if I'm already going through this. I'm on budget building. I'm, I'm plugging everything I can. I'm, I'm putting the ac at the highest temperature I can do without it being extremely overwhelming. What are we going to do when that's not enough to lower your bill? Which is what's happening right now. Our bills are going up at extreme amounts. It's not possible to afford this, especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck or on a very strict income and it's making it just impossible to survive this Florida heat with our temperatures getting higher every day. It's just what are we gonna do? So to them, I say stop asking for rate increases because I know they've been approved for a few of them in the most recent years. I think the rates should stay and electricity should be a human, right? Because that's the only way you can survive, especially in a place like Florida where it's almost in the nineties, it's probably in the nineties every single day, except for the, maybe one or two weeks of the year that we might have a little bit of cold weather from a cold front coming. Um And to the Florida politicians, what do I want them to do? I want them to also stop um lobbying for FPL and to have programs that actually help renters. Because as a first time renter myself, I always look for programs that I can be part of that, my complex can take care of. I'm not even in a huge building. My apartment complex is two stories. So it's only me and then our neighbors downstairs. So where are the programs that are gonna help us? Why is it that I have to go and try to buy a home to apply for any of these programs? That doesn't make sense? My bill has doubled and I'm scared that next year it will also double again and make me probably pay more than $200 for electricity when I live in a one bedroom apartment and the only person here is me the majority of the day and my fiance who comes home at 5 p.m. from his job. So how are we gonna fix this? What's the solutions work with community members to get these solutions fixed? Because trust me, if you were living paycheck to paycheck you would also be in the same situation where you would be scared to see your bill go up that much.
