[tiffani]

From talking to hundreds of people over the course of running this project, in many cases, what we have is not a failure to organize one's life. Instead, it's life events such as being laid off or having a medical issue get out of hand and force a person to leave work and forgo a salary that cause people to fall behind and need assistance.

In other cases, people are in situations where they're not earning enough to cover all of their life expenses, but the water department itself has turned them down for assistance. We see their attempts to do the best they can in their payment patterns. $25 here, $50 there as soon as they can.

These are not people that sit around actively looking for handouts. And many people we've helped have volunteered to help us however they can.