People do not conserve what they do not pay for, and in an Emporia rental full of Emporia State students, nobody pays for water directly, so nobody conserves it. Water submetering rebuilds the incentive by billing each unit for its own use. Emporia’s off-campus housing is mostly modest homes and small apartment buildings owned by individual landlords who lease to a steady rotation of students. Fold water into the rent and you have removed the only reason a tenant would ever turn off a tap. True Submeter installs an individual water meter on each unit and invoices tenants automatically for exactly what they use, so consumption drops and you recover the full bill. The disputes over a shared bill fall away, net operating income rises, and most owners recover the entire cost within six months. Give the water a price, and your tenants will start acting like it has one.
