The ability to pay for water and wastewater services is a growing issue in the developed world. To this point in time, utilities have helped customers grappling with affordability issues using different types of customer assistance programs (CAPs). Income‐based billing approaches differ from CAPs in that bills are structured so as to be affordable for customers at the outset. Recently, the City of Philadelphia implemented an innovative program to work towards resolving the affordability problem in their city using income‐based billing. This tiered assistance program or TAP structures bills for water, wastewater, and stormwater services to program enrollees’ income. Given the innovative nature of the program, this paper describes the rollout of TAP and assesses the impact of the program on customers and utility revenues. The paper closes with a critical assessment of TAP and considerations for utilities evaluating the implementation of similar programs.

中文翻译：

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使水负担得起的实验：费城的分层援助计划（TAP）

支付水和废水服务的能力在发达国家已成为一个日益严重的问题。到现在为止，公用事业公司已经使用不同类型的客户支持计划（CAP）帮助客户解决了承受能力问题。基于收入的计费方式与CAP的不同之处在于，计费的结构合理，一开始就可以让客户负担得起。最近，费城市实施了一项创新计划，致力于使用基于收入的账单解决其所在城市的可负担性问题。这个分层的援助计划或TAP为水，废水和雨水服务构建账单，以计划入学者的收入。考虑到该计划的创新性，本文描述了TAP的推出，并评估了该计划对客户和公用事业收入的影响。