DETROIT (WXYZ) — Many families in Southeast Michigan are now seeing the impact of last month's heat wave on their electric bills and with another hot stretch ahead, they're worried about what comes next.
Watch Carolyn Clifford's video report:
Chef Doll is used to hot kitchens, but trying to cool off her small home with her window air conditioner on Gilchrist Street in Detroit in blazing hot temperatures is causing her DTE bill to skyrocket.
She says her bill has gone up $200 this summer, which bring the cost to roughly $500 per month.
She’s not alone. Jessica Carr of Auburn Hills reached out to us on our WXYZ-TV Channel 7 Facebook page. She's been off work due to surgery.
Carr says her bill went up to $700 to run two portable air conditioning units.
Local families aren't the only ones scrambling to figure out how they'll pay. Business owners are feeling the scorch too.
“Maybe between three to five hundred a month,” Reshawn Bumphers said of how much her bill has skyrocketed.
Bumphers owns Pink Poodle Bridal in Detroit on the Avenue of Fashion. She says she is struggling to keep up.
“For the first time in eight years, we recently were forced to get on a payment plan to try to maintain,” Bumphers said.
I wanted to find out how hard it is to get help, so we started making phone calls. We contacted five different utility assistance agencies across Southeast Michigan.
Every one of them told us essentially the same thing: funding has run out for this fiscal year. Most aren't accepting new applications until October, when new money becomes available.
We also reached out to DTE but could not get a representative on camera. We learned if you're struggling, contact DTE before you miss a payment and ask about payment plans.
DTE energy has filed a request with the Michigan Public Service Commission for a nearly $474 million electric rate increase, which would raise residential bills by an average of nearly 10% if approved.
For customers already struggling to keep up now that's a hard pill to swallow.
“Everybody just doesn’t go to work just to pay bills cause they're struggling, and that's not fair to anyone out here,” Chef Doll said.
