The Compliance Rules
Behind Every Bill

Residents enrolled in FERA — households earning 200–250% of the federal poverty guideline, at PG&E, SCE or SDG&E — receive the 18% FERA electric discount on their submetered bill, exactly as if the utility billed them directly.

No markup on gas, electric or water: gas and electricity from an investor-owned utility (including community-choice electricity) are billed at exactly the rate the utility would charge the resident directly, and water only by the methods the Civil Code allows, plus at most its capped billing fee.

Electric, gas, water, and sewer appear as separately stated charges — making disputes quick to resolve and rate parity simple to demonstrate.

The billing agent's name, address, and telephone number appear on every resident's bill.

If a meter on a resident's space also measures common-area equipment or lighting, management must disclose it and either compensate the resident by written agreement or stop using that meter for the common area.

Every usage tier is checked against the direct-service tariff rate for the same schedule and period — not just the bill's total.

CARE- and FERA-enrolled residents are billed the income-graded fixed charge (a daily charge, shown monthly on most bills) at their program's tier — never the standard tier.

For water and sewer, common-area use is never charged to residents, and where a community without submeters divides its water or sewer bill, residents' shares together never exceed what the utility charged (our reading of § 798.41(a)). There is no master-bill ceiling on gas or electric; the ceiling is each resident's direct-service rate (§ 739.5(a)). Residents' charges can total more than the master bill; that is lawful — the master-meter discount is the community's compensation.

Since 2022, submetered water can be billed only by the methods Civil Code § 798.40(c) lists — a metered share of the community's own water bill, or the water company's own tier or per-space rates as charged to the community — never a residential rate schedule applied as if the resident were the water company's customer, never common-area water, and with the billing fee capped by statute.

Where the water company bills the community on tiers, each tier's volume may be split evenly among the spaces and each home's metered use priced at the water company's own tier rates as charged to the community. Sentinel checks every price against the rate in force on each day, and the billing fee against its cap.

Where the water company charges the community one price per unit, each home's water is its own metered use at that price — the same result as the statute's share-of-the-bill method — so it can be priced before the bill arrives, never above that price, with the billing fee capped.

Where the city charges sewer at an adopted rate on a share of water use, each home's sewer is that rate on the same share of its own metered water — never more — and any flat sewer amount the community has attested reproduces exactly for the days billed.

Where management does not permit residents to buy propane from anyone else, or federal, state or local law (such as setback rules) stops them installing their own tanks, the price may not exceed 110 percent of the actual price paid by the management, and that actual price is posted in a visible location. Well water has no statutory price cap; its rates must be just and reasonable, which the CPUC decides if residents complain. Our audit standard: every charge traces to the price the community set and attested.

A charge for a service the community provides itself — such as its own septic system, with no utility billing it — is an incidental, reasonable charge for a service actually rendered, with 60 days' written notice first if the rental agreement does not list it. Our audit standard: it traces to the amount the community attested and never exceeds it.

When a utility is moved out of rent, separately billed charges are not rent only if the rent is reduced at the first separate bill by the average the utility charged the community for that space over the 12 months before the notice. Agreements entered into before 1991 are exempt until extended or renewed.

A provider's flat charge, like trash, passes through at what the provider charged, separately stated, with an expiration date if it is limited. Our audit standard: each traces to the documented amount and is prorated only downward.

At a community the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power serves, residents pay no more than if LADWP served them directly, and no fee of any kind related to submetering is added. Our audit standard: each resident's electric and water charge is checked against what LADWP would charge that resident directly, and the city's sewer charge is the City's actual dollars, divided — never recalculated.