Stanford Report Highlights Greta Markey’s Research on Water Affordability
Fletcher Lab PhD candidate and Knight-Hennessy Scholar Greta Markey was recently featured in Stanford Report for her work to improve water affordability for low-income residents.
Greta is leading a collaboration among the Fletcher Lab, the Osman Lab, and the City of Santa Cruz Water Department to better understand the water affordability challenges faced by renters and residents of multi-family housing, particularly those who pay for water indirectly through their rent.
Nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population does not pay water bills directly to utilities and is therefore often excluded from traditional customer assistance programs. Through focus groups and surveys with tenants, landlords, and property managers, the research team is examining how utilities can design more accessible assistance programs and equitable rate structures.
The project is also supporting a new City of Santa Cruz program designed to extend water affordability assistance to tenants in multi-family housing. By combining community engagement, infrastructure planning, and policy design, Greta’s work demonstrates how engineering research can directly respond to the needs and experiences of the communities it is intended to serve.