The Los Angeles Office of Public Accountability (OPA) held a series of workshops in six communities to better understand Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) customers’ perspectives on affordability. This report outlines what community members shared and identifies ways OPA can reflect these observations in its advocacy work to improve affordability outcomes and strengthen the alignment between LADWP’s services and the evolving needs of the communities it serves. To easily navigate the report's sections, click on the cards below. Click here to access the report's fact sheet.
Executive Summary
Workshop Observations and Key Takeaways
Between January and April 2026, community members across three Listening Sessions and three Solutions Summits identified utility affordability as a significant concern. Four key themes emerged as OPA explored affordability with customer participants:
Taken together, these key takeaways suggest that utility affordability solutions are not nested in a single program, rate design, or customer discount, particularly in a city as socioeconomically diverse as Los Angeles. Rather, solving for utility affordability is the result of several conditions working together:
- Bills that are reasonable and predictable
- Information that is clear and actionable
- Programs that are easy to find and access
- Customer support that helps resolve problems before they escalate
- Engagement processes that allow communities to understand and shape decisions before they affect household budgets
When any one of these conditions is missing, customers may experience their utility bills as unaffordable even when rates are comparatively reasonable.
LADWP’s LA100 Equity Strategies initiative also showed that these barriers do not impact all customers equally. Historic patterns of disinvestment, socioeconomic and racial disparities, and limited access to participation have shaped communities and the benefits they do and do not receive from LADWP. As one of Los Angeles’ largest anchor institutions, LADWP cannot address every source of household hardship or historic inequity, but it can advance a systems-based approach to supporting communities — one that addresses these historic inequities, engages communities as genuine partners in shaping decisions, and works to distribute the benefits and burdens of the clean energy transition more fairly. As the study emphasizes, these dimensions are interconnected: how LADWP listens and decides shapes who ultimately benefits, and equitable outcomes depend on building equity intentionally into the utility's rates, programs, investments, and engagement rather than treating it as a single program or discount.
This systems-based approach is relevant to the dialogue around affordability as LADWP continues through the current period of major investment in clean energy, local water, climate resilience, and infrastructure reliability. These investments are essential to Los Angeles' future, but they also heighten the importance of moving forward in a systematic manner that does not financially burden customers.
Case Studies Examined in Support of Observations and Key Takeaways
It is also important to note how affordability strategies that activate the whole of the utility can also advance multi-benefit solutions to create value for individual customers, the utility, and the broader ratepayer community. The report examines three case studies to illustrate how other utilities are taking on some of the challenges OPA heard in these affordability listening and solutions sessions:
Initial Recommendations in Response to Observations and Key Takeaways
Through the six community sessions, case studies, and OPA’s other work, this report presents six initial recommendations for LADWP and stakeholders grouped thematically by customer needs. These high level recommendations, as discussed in the report, are not a full solution to the affordability challenges heard, but can help deliver multi-benefit solutions that support improvements to affordability:
Putting Observations and Key Takeaways in Context
The community perspectives documented, case studies examined, and recommendations offered in this report are not intended as a judgment on the commitment of LADWP employees nor suggestive that the utility has failed to make significant investments in equity, affordability, accessibility, service improvements, and community engagement. Participants frequently described very positive interactions with LADWP staff and expressed gratitude for the individualized attention and assistance. The OPA is also aware that LADWP is continuously investing and prioritizing investments — all within regulatory, budgetary, and operational constraints — to improve the customer experience, increase employee and operational effectiveness, and address many of the community needs identified during OPA’s engagement.
At the same time, participant experiences reveal where existing services, tools, or programs may not yet be consistently visible, accessible, or responsive to all customers. OPA presents these findings as an opportunity to build on and partner with LADWP and stakeholders on this ongoing work, identify constraints that may require broader institutional solutions, and strengthen coordination to advance the affordability agenda.
Through the work outlined in this report, OPA revealed an engaged and motivated stakeholder community that is ready to engage. Customers care about their bills, their households, their communities, and the future of Los Angeles’ water and power systems. And many share these insights in the spirit of improving the system for all customers. Within this context, OPA’s responsibility is to honor that engagement by ensuring the customer experience remains central to its advocacy and oversight. This report represents a broader procedural step forward in the Office’s mission: to listen, translate customer needs into public accountability, and help advance a more affordable, accessible, transparent, and trusted LADWP for all Angelenos.
Introduction
LADWP operates at a scale and level of complexity matched by few public utilities in the nation. LADWP is the largest municipal utility in the United States, delivering reliable and safe water and power to about 4 million residents and a quarter million businesses across Los Angeles.
Guided by Los Angeles City Council directives and mayoral goals related to carbon-free energy and local recycled water, LADWP is currently transforming its power and water infrastructure to deliver an ambitious agenda that supports a reliable, clean, and sustainable future for all Angelenos. Achieving LADWP’s goals requires massive capital investments — including new renewable generation, energy storage, modernized transmission and distribution infrastructure, and expanded workforce requirements. Simultaneously, the utility is investing to diversify its water portfolio and reduce reliance on imported supplies. This includes significant investments in water recycling, stormwater capture, and the expansion, restoration, and protection of groundwater resources. These dual priorities represent both a historic level of investment and financial pressures for the utility and its customers.
Over the past decade, LADWP has maintained electric rates that are competitive relative to California’s investor-owned utilities and many peer municipal utilities, and leads the field on delivering clean and reliable water and power. However, necessary investments in long-term resilience, decarbonization, and infrastructure projects may amplify immediate affordability challenges. Despite relatively competitive rates, broader cost of living increases and impacts of more severe weather conditions contribute to costly utility bills and affordability concerns, particularly in low and moderate income communities. The convergence of the climate transition, infrastructure investment, and household financial strain defines the moment in which LADWP and its customers now operate, and underscores the importance of independent oversight into how these crises impact customers.
OPA is an independent City Department that serves as the official Ratepayer Advocate for the City of Los Angeles, evaluating LADWP’s:
- Plans and decisions
- Programs and policies
- Major contracts and investments
- Rates and charges
to help ensure they support affordability, accountability and transparency for ratepayers.
Recognizing the pressures of increasing affordability challenges in the City of Los Angeles, OPA initiated a series of community engagement events to better understand LADWP customers’ experiences. OPA designed the events to be accessible, multilingual, and community-based.
How OPA Listened
In 2025, OPA embarked on an ambitious new agenda to reach into communities — one of the largest efforts in the Office’s 15 year history — to ground the Office’s advocacy work in the lived experiences of Angelenos. This experience-led approach grounds OPA’s work in the ideals of how government should serve — an ideal that is captured by an inscription at Los Angeles City Hall: “that government is the strongest of which every [person] feels himself a part.” This notion of participatory engagement is core to OPA and something the Office sought to uplift. To that end, from January to April 2026, OPA designed and convened three Listening Sessions and three Solutions Summits to gather ratepayer feedback and better understand LADWP customer experiences.
What We Heard
A Vision for What Comes Next
Initial Recommendations in Response to Observations and Key Takeaways
OPA serves as an independent advocate for LADWP ratepayers, providing analysis, public reporting, and recommendations to help ensure LADWP’s rates, plans, policies, and programs are reasonable, transparent, and accountable. The work of OPA centers on ratepayer needs while supporting a future where the utility can meet its long-term goals for reliable, affordable, equitable, and sustainable water and power service.
These community engagements represent a core function of OPA’s mission: to better understand the experiences customers have with LADWP and advocate for solutions that comprehensively improve utility service and affordability challenges. OPA heard that customers are asking for a utility system that treats these goals as connected: offerings advance more affordable and predictable bills and provide clearer information and greater control over usage, easier access to programs and support, and more meaningful opportunities to shape decisions before they are finalized.
LADWP has already made significant commitments in each of these areas, from customer technology modernization to expanded community-based assistance and more. The recommendations below are also offered in that spirit: not as a critique of current efforts, but as a set of strategic priorities that are informed directly by customer experiences and can help LADWP organize, prioritize, and amplify the work already underway. Further, these recommendations represent a part of an initial set of potential system-wide improvements and opportunities rather than an exhaustive list, recognizing that LADWP is best positioned to determine how to implement them within its operational and financial constraints. Finally, several recommendations can potentially help improve operational efficiency and effectiveness - a key consideration given the resource constraints LADWP faces and another nod to the multi-benefit approach that is central to these recommendations.
The organization of the recommendations below is intended to fit within the key observations and takeaways from the community engagement sessions, case studies and OPA’s own work to date.
Affordability by Design and Bill Predictability
Clarity and Control
Customer Engagement and Trust
How these recommendations fit together
These initial recommendations represent the starting point for building a more interconnected system that supports affordability rather than a set of independent actions. For maximum affectiveness, solutions should be pursued simultaneously, with each recommendation strengthening and informing the others. The shared purpose is to make affordability more achievable for customers by improving bill predictability, giving customers clearer information and earlier opportunities to act, making assistance easier to reach, and ensuring that LADWP’s programs and investments respond to the needs of the communities it serves. To illustrate:
- AMI and interim usage-management tools provide the visibility customers need to understand and manage consumption before a bill arrives. This is foundational to supporting affordability. When customers can see unusual usage, receive mid-cycle alerts, identify leaks, estimate upcoming bills, or understand how their behavior affects costs, they have a better chance to prevent bill shock and address problems before they become unmanageable.
- Modernized rate structures build on those capabilities by giving customers a clearer and more credible relationship between usage decisions and bill outcomes. Rate design can support affordability when it helps customers understand when and how costs are incurred, creates reasonable opportunities to manage bills, and includes rate assistance for customers who need targeted support — low income households, medically vulnerable customers, older adults, and other vulnerable customer segments.
- Redesigned bills and communications translate usage data, rate structures, and charges into plain-language information customers can understand and act upon. A bill should not only tell customers what they owe; it should help explain why charges changed, whether they are enrolled in assistance programs, what options are available, and what steps they can take before costs escalate. In this sense, bill design is itself an affordability tool because it can reduce confusion, prevent avoidable arrears, and connect customers to support earlier.
These capabilities strengthen predictability, clarity, and control, but they do not ensure affordability on their own. Some customers will still need direct assistance, efficiency improvements, payment flexibility, or clean-energy benefits to keep bills manageable.
- Streamlined enrollment pathways are therefore essential. Customers should not lose access to assistance because they cannot find the right program, are burdened by duplicative paperwork, or confirm their eligibility. Simplifying enrollment, recertification, and program screening helps ensure that eligibility, and not administrative burden, determines participation. Streamlined enrollment goes beyond discounts to also simplify enrollment pathways to modern TOU rates, building efficiency and electrification improvements, conservation tools, solar programs, electric vehicles, and other benefits that reduce household energy and water costs.
- Partnerships with community- and faith-based organizations and public agencies extend the reach of this system by helping customers learn about, trust, navigate, and benefit from available tools and programs. These partnerships are especially important for multilingual households, older adults, undocumented customers, customers with disabilities, and other households that may not engage through LADWP’s traditional channels. By bringing assistance into trusted community settings, partnerships can increase participation, reduce access barriers, and help LADWP identify where programs are not reaching the customers they are intended to serve.
- Participatory decision-making completes and informs the system. Customers’ experiences, community-partner insights, and other customer signals should flow back into rate design, technology deployment, bill redesign, assistance programs, communications, and major planning processes. This feedback allows LADWP to adapt its services as customer and system needs change, rather than relying only on one-time engagement or after-the-fact notification.
Taken together, these recommendations reflect the central finding of OPA's community engagement: affordability is not produced by any single program or rate action, but by the whole of the utility working together — and improving continuously as customer and community needs change.
Report Navigator
Executive Summary Introduction How OPA Listened What We Heard A Vision for What Comes Next Initial Recommendations How OPA Will Move Forward Appendices Acknowledgements
How OPA Will Move Forward
It is important to note that the community perspectives detailed in this report are not intended to be a judgement against LADWP as a utility or its employees, and the significant work and investment it has made to support equity, affordability, accessibility, and community engagement. Participants frequently described very positive interactions with LADWP staff, particularly when representatives were available to provide direct, individualized help. For example, Cecilia, a renter who attended the Lincoln Heights Solutions Summit, noted that “my experience at today’s event was helpful. I didn’t know about a lot of the programs at LADWP so I did appreciate some of that information that Robin [Customer Service Representative] had provided for me.”
The OPA is also aware that LADWP is making significant investments to improve the customer experience, increase employee and operational effectiveness, and address many of the community needs that were identified during OPA’s engagement. These efforts include but are not limited to:
- Improving the customer experience by making investments to modernize customer-facing technologies, including a customer relationship management system, interactive voice response system, and new online customer portal
- Continuing efforts to extend the Equity Strategies effort across both Power and Water systems, including community advisory boards and stakeholder-engaged processes
- Launching new programs like Flume which provide customers the ability to monitor and manage their water usage
- Beginning the implementation of advanced metering infrastructure (power) which can provide customers greater support with their bills and usage
- Providing ongoing, in-community assistance events, including Customer Service Division’s Customer Support Saturdays which are held to help customers navigate bills, services, and assistance, or collaborative events with the City of Los Angeles Community Investment for Family Department (CIFD) to support older adults with cooling devices
At the same time, community members noted areas where existing services, tools, programs, and information may still be inaccessible for customers. OPA presents these findings as an opportunity to build on and partner with LADWP on this ongoing work, identify constraints that may require broader institutional solutions, and strengthen coordination among OPA, LADWP, City leaders, community organizations, and customers.
OPA’s role is to help ensure that these investments and initiatives deliver meaningful and measurable benefits for customers. This includes examining whether new systems are easier to navigate, whether data is used to identify and address customer needs, whether programs reach the households they are intended to serve, and whether improvements are consistently accessible across languages, communities, housing types, and levels of digital access. The experiences shared during the Listening Sessions and Solutions Summits can help inform how LADWP builds on its current efforts and where additional coordination, design changes, or institutional support may be needed.
The perspectives captured across the Listening Sessions and Solutions Summits reflect an engaged and motivated ratepayer community that is eager to partner with LADWP. OPA commits to honoring that engagement with continued advocacy. In the period ahead, OPA will continue to engage with the public so communities remain active participants in shaping the future of water and power service in Los Angeles. OPA will also continue working collaboratively with LADWP to improve customer experience, program accessibility, and affordability outcomes—goals that the utility has also elevated through its ongoing investments and initiatives.
The desire for greater transparency, simpler pathways to assistance, and a future powered by affordable and clean energy and supported by safe and reliable water represents a mandate that OPA commits to carrying forward. Achieving that future will require building on LADWP’s existing work, incorporating customer experience into implementation, and ensuring that technology, programs, communications, and service delivery work together to support equitable and affordable outcomes.
Acknowledgements
OPA expresses gratitude for community members across Los Angeles who participated in Listening Sessions and Solutions Summits. We also thank the community groups, city officials, and utility staff members who supported and engaged in this effort.
- Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Customer Service Division, Programs, and Communication & Public Affairs teams
- Office of Mayor Karen Bass
- Office of Councilwoman Jurado
- Office of Councilman McOsker
- Office of Councilman Nazarian
- Office of Councilwoman Rodriguez
- City of Los Angeles Community Investment for Families Department
- Pacoima Chamber of Commerce
- First AME Church of Los Angeles
- Proyecto Pastoral
- Dolores Mission Church
- St. Anne Melkite Greek Catholic Cathedral
- Wilmington Recreation Center
- Lincoln Heights Senior Center
- Boys & Girls Club of San Fernando Valley
- Pacoima Beautiful