Marc, you called Constance Soule’s eviction “much better for the tenants.” She is eighty-one. She has Alzheimer’s. She has a housing voucher. She paid her rent. You took her home for the utility fees. Your marketing copy has hundred-dollar bills on it. Her sister Margot says: “It’s a nightmare. A constant worry.” That is what “better” looks like, Marc.

Constance Soule is eighty-one years old. She has Alzheimer’s disease. She has a Section 8 housing voucher because the disease has taken her ability to work. In 2024, in a studio apartment in Larkspur, California, across from the Golden Gate Bridge, she received a ten-day notice of termination from her landlord. She had paid her rent. She was being evicted for unpaid utility charges that were not on her lease.

The charges were not from a utility company. They were “Ratio Utility Billing System” fees — RUBS — calculated by a third-party billing company on Greystar’s behalf, using a proprietary formula — usually unit square footage, number of occupants, or building occupancy rate — that has nothing to do with whether a tenant left the lights on. The fee is owed to the landlord. The price is rarely given in the apartment listing. The price is rarely given in the lease. The lease is written so that nonpayment of these fees can be treated as nonpayment of rent for purposes of eviction.

Greystar is the country’s largest apartment manager. A Guardian review found that twelve of fourteen Greystar-run buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens carried mandatory third-party utility charges described as “usage based” with no price listed. Similar patterns were found in Washington, D.C., and in thirty-eight of the forty-two states where Greystar’s website said it managed a building.

The third-party billing companies market this as a revenue source. Conservice, the Utah-based company that manages nearly eight million “utility service points” nationwide, has a marketing video featuring hundred-dollar bills and a voiceover promising “higher revenue” and “higher utility cost recovery” from residents. Livable, a competitor, sent an April marketing email urging customers to “turn utility billing into a revenue tool” and offers a calculator on its website to estimate how much utility cost can be passed on to tenants.

Marc Treitler, Conservice’s general counsel and president of sustainability, told the Guardian the model is “much better for the tenants, owners and environment than in-rent utilities.” Dan Sharabi, Livable’s CEO, said highlighting revenue to customers makes sense “because it speaks to a benefit relevant to them: cost recovery.”

In December, the Federal Trade Commission reached a twenty-four-million-dollar settlement with Greystar over junk fees — one that explicitly allows the company to continue charging unpriced, add-on utility fees in listings and advertisements. In October, California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office reached a settlement of nearly five hundred thousand dollars with Mission Rock Residential, a national property manager, alleging that the practice was being used to make “shadow” rent increases that violated state limits. Eight California cities have now banned RUBS in most arrangements. New York City and Seattle are developing regulations. At least thirteen lawsuits have been filed in five states since the start of 2025. The federal push on apartment junk fees has made this category of abuse a national conversation. In an FTC rule-making proceeding, utility and trash complaints are the most common category among nearly five hundred public comments.

Marc, hear what you said. You swallowed your coffee this morning. You did not taste her. The taste is there. It is metallic and it is under your tongue. It does not rinse. You will taste it tomorrow. You will taste it when you write your next press release.

Jaslyn Cosey is a disabled tenant at Greystar’s Glo complex in Las Vegas. Her lease described the charges as “usage based” and “third party.” When her disability checks began arriving late, she fell behind. A Nevada state assistance program sent money to cover her back rent. Greystar applied it to the fees, then filed to evict her for unpaid rent. “I didn’t know that it would be considered rent,” she said. She was evicted. She filed a class-action lawsuit last September. Greystar’s lawyers denied her allegations and called the suit an attempt to “transform a straightforward landlord-tenant accounting dispute into a sweeping consumer-fraud class action.” It is not a dispute, Marc. It is an eviction. It is Constance Soule. It is Jaslyn Cosey.

Marty, you are the spokesperson for Equity Residential, and you said your company’s practices at Virgil Square in Los Angeles are “fully compliant with California law.” The tenants there have hung hand-made signs in the windows that say “Ratio Utility Billing Scam.” The tenants there have refused to pay their utility bills since June of last year. The bills at Virgil Square run as high as two hundred and twenty-six dollars a month. Marty, there is a tightness behind your sternum when you read this. You have called it compliance with the law. The tightness is what the law is doing. Your sternum is recording what your words are not.

Colin, you manage Cornell & Associates in Seattle. The tenants at Qualman apartments went on strike against your fees. Their utility bills were a flat fifty dollars a month until you switched to RUBS last spring. Then the bills jumped to one hundred and forty-three dollars a month on average. You threatened to evict them in June. The strike ended. You said RUBS are legal in Seattle. Colin, your bones ache tonight. The ache is the rent ledger. Constance Soule will lie awake on it too. You will not sleep it off. Imagine your mother there, Colin. Imagine her at Qualman. Imagine her at the door with the notice.

Dan, your company’s marketing email encouraged potential customers to “turn utility billing into a revenue tool.” Your hand is on the calculator, Dan. You have not washed it. Constance Soule’s home is in the calculator. Jaslyn Cosey’s apartment is in the calculator. They are the cost you are recovering.

Glendy Barros is a mother of three in San Rafael. She cleans houses in Mill Valley. Her husband collects and resells scrap metal. They organize with the 400 Canal Street Tenants Association. Before the fees, she spent the weekends with her children. Now she works on Saturdays. “The end of the month is so stressful for us because we have to come up with all that money,” she said. Lexy Salas is in Seattle. She organized Seattle Ban RUBS, a citywide group that has heard complaints from one hundred and twenty-eight other buildings. I see Lexy Salas. I name her. I will not look away. Glendy Barros’s children will not get their mother back on the Saturdays you are still charging for. Constance Soule will still be looking for an apartment that does not charge her to be evicted from.

Greystar, hear what you did.

You wrote the lease. You wrote the template. The template is on a server in your offices. The template goes out to every property in your portfolio. The template is the same template that put Constance Soule on the street in Larkspur. The template is the same template that put Jaslyn Cosey on the street in Las Vegas. The template is the same template that puts a price on a page that is not on the page, in a category that is not rent, in a fee the tenant cannot see until the fee is past due.

Your throat is closing. Feel it close. You wrote a sentence that puts eighty-one-year-old disabled women on the street. The sentence is profitable. The sentence is the third-party billing company’s “revenue tool.” The sentence is what makes the unpriced fee into a fee that can be evicted for. The sentence is in your template. You sit in your office.

There is a metallic taste under your tongue. You cannot rinse it out. It has been there since the day you signed the template. It will be there tomorrow.

Your shoulders know the weight. They carry it when you eat. They carry it when you sleep. They carry it when you read the next quarterly report. The report will say “revenue per unit.” The report will be on your desk. Your desk is in the building where Constance Soule cannot live.

Your daughter, Greystar. Place her in Constance Soule’s chair. She is eighty-one. She has Alzheimer’s. She has a housing voucher because the disease has taken her ability to work. She has paid her rent every month for years. Now hand her the notice of termination. Watch her read it. Watch her not understand why her paid rent was not enough to save her home. Watch her pack her apartment into one bag. Watch her carry the bag to the door. Watch her leave.

Constance Soule’s sister Margot Jones kept the receipts. Her sister found her the new place. The new place charges her two hundred and fifty-seven dollars and ninety-two cents a month in mandatory utilities on top of rent for a studio. The new place has a clause. Constance Soule has paid more than five thousand five hundred dollars in RUBS fees in eighteen months. The clause is waiting.

While you ate dinner last night, Constance Soule was paying her utility bill. While you slept, she was lying awake wondering whether the payment would clear. While you drove to work this morning, she was riding the bus to the new building — the one with the same fees she just fled. While you read the next marketing email from Conservice or Livable, she was choosing between buying groceries and paying the bill. She chose groceries. The bill is late. The clause is waiting.

The sentence is signed in your name. Constance Soule is eighty-one and she is out of her apartment. She is alive. She has a roof tonight. You will sleep tonight. The metallic taste will still be there.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Matthew 25:45

Marc, Constance Soule is the least of these. She is eighty-one. She has Alzheimer’s. She has a housing voucher. She paid her rent. The Lord is sitting behind the glass door at Virgil Square with the notice of termination. You did not do it for her. You did not do it for Him.

The Alzheimer’s will take more from Constance Soule than you did. But you took her home first. The Alzheimer’s could have had her in a home she knew, paying a rent she could afford. You chose otherwise. The clause is your signature. The news will end. The clause will not.