Water is scarce in El Paso, but for landlords the more immediate problem is that it is invisible: bundled into rent, it costs the tenant nothing and the owner everything. Water submetering makes it visible unit by unit. El Paso is a large, heavily renter-supported city, and much of its rental housing sits in the older central neighborhoods and near Fort Bliss, where duplexes, fourplexes, and small apartment buildings are held by individual owners on one meter per property. Between military families rotating through and a steady flow of new renters, tenants change often, and none of them see the water bill. True Submeter puts an individual water meter on each unit and bills every tenant automatically for exactly what they used, so the owner stops absorbing the entire total. Consumption falls once it is priced, shared-bill disagreements end, and net operating income improves. In the desert, no gallon should go unmeasured.
