Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson’s Utility Justice Campaign fights for an affordable and environmentally sustainable energy system in the Mid-Hudson Valley and statewide.

In New York State, people below 50% of the poverty line pay an average of 31% of their incomes to gas and electric utility bills, while affordable energy is 6% or less of household income. These high energy utility rates are combined with inadequate assistance programs and policies that allow the power of households that fall behind on payments to be shut off—even during the winter and/or even when children, elderly, seriously ill, or disabled people are in the home.  

The utility affordability and shutoff crisis disproportionately affects working-class people of color. For example, national studies show that Black households get their power shut off over twice as frequently as white households. And undocumented immigrants frequently get their power shut off for not having a social security number despite these shutoffs being illegal discrimination under New York State law.

Our Utility Justice Campaign works to address these conditions by organizing and winning concrete gains for working-class people and people of color. 

First, we are fighting for policies that increase affordability, decrease shutoffs, and address climate change from the Hudson Valley’s for-profit energy utility monopolies. 

Second, we are fighting for statewide energy policies for climate and economic justice as a Steering Committee member of the New York Energy Democracy Alliance.

Third, we are fighting for policy to end the illegal refusal of service to people without social security numbers. 

We won a historic investigation by New York State into the Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation, which secured policy changes leading to fewer people of color having their power shut off, fewer people being shut off during the hazardous winter months, and significantly fewer people having their power shut off each year. In April of 2018, we won a Central Hudson flat-fee decrease — the first flat-fee decrease in New York State in over a decade. 

We also won a statewide policy change with the Energy Democracy Alliance that expanded energy assistance program funding by $69 million and expanded eligibility by 550,000 households in New York State.