As California’s Electricity Rates Rise, Parents Struggle to Pay Their Bills

Harnesha Burks’ financial setback began with a high-risk pregnancy.

At the time, she was working as a mail handler for the U.S. Postal Service in Oakland, and her doctor told her the heavy lifting she was doing at work wasn’t safe for her and the baby she was carrying.

The doctor advised her to take time off, but the postal service doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, and she didn’t qualify for state benefits, so she started to fall behind on her monthly bills.

“It was really, really stressful, really hard,” she said.

Burks got help from local churches and public assistance programs to cover food and rent for the apartment she shared with her baby and teenage son in Antioch. But she didn’t always have enough money to pay her gas, electricity and cellphone bills. Eventually, she owed Pacific Gas & Electric $1,700.

Her debt caught up to her when, a month after coming from the hospital with her newborn, the power was cut off.

“I ended up going straight to rock bottom,” she said.

Burks is among one in three California parents of young kids who struggle to afford their utility bills, according to a statewide survey, which found that when parents have trouble making ends meet, their children’s well-being and development suffer. As electricity rates rise sharply in California, parents told the survey they need to make tough choices between basic needs.

“People pay for food and housing first and foremost but utilities are, I think, something that often falls between the cracks because if people can’t pay for basic things like the rent they get evicted, or if they don’t have enough food on their table, it constitutes an emergency,” said Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, which surveyed as part of its multi-year RAPID project.

Fisher said when researchers followed up with these parents, they reported feeling elevated levels of anxiety, loneliness, depression and stress, and that their children were more fussy or defiant.

The parents also filled out an online survey that measures the typical development of children under 5 years old. The results showed that when parents face economic hardships, their babies experience emotional distress and developmental delays, which affects their ability to learn in the long term.

Previous research has pointed to the impacts that financial strain has on parents and their children. Fisher cited a UC Berkeley study that found that caregivers with low socioeconomic status ran short on money, and they spoke less to their infants and toddlers at the end of the month. The “word gap” is a concern for researchers because chatting with babies, even before they can talk, boosts their communication and social skills later on.

“If we’re concerned about kids’ education and [their] readiness to attend school, then these economic hardship issues are really at the center of what we’re talking about,” he said.

After her power was cut off, Burks said she spent several weeks couch surfing with relatives. Her older son, Bradley, went to her grandparents’ house to be closer to his high school. She felt guilty about being away from him while living out of bags with her baby, Zyon.

“We were ripped from our nests,” she said.

Family members helped Burks pay the PG&E bill to get the electricity flowing again. She returned home after six weeks to a refrigerator full of spoiled food.

“I had to pretty much start over with [restocking] the refrigerator and the freezer … so I had a setback on that,” she said. “It was so hard.”

To get out of what she called a financial “black hole,” Burks returned to work. But going back meant working a graveyard shift and leaving Bradley to care for his brother by himself. She felt bad for making Bradley take on a huge responsibility and for leaving Zyon so soon.

“We didn’t get the bonding time that I felt that we needed. A lot of nights, he had to go to sleep without me,” she said. “I was in an unstable place, but I had to go back to work because who’s going to keep the lights on? Who’s going to take care of me and my kids?” 

When she came home, she tried to make up for lost time with Zyon but sacrificed her own sleep. Relief came on the two days Zyon’s dad, with whom she shares custody, took him to his house, but she was still exhausted. Burks began to experience debilitating postpartum depression, which she had never had after giving birth to Bradley.

“I was supposed to be sleeping, cuddling, bonding with my baby. I didn’t have that. So that depression set heavy: I gained a lot of weight, my hair fell out, it was so stressful,” she said. 

For a while, she shut out her family members as she slid deeper into her depression, but eventually she turned to a sister who works for the advocacy group Parent Voices for help.

Burks applied for CalWORKS, the state welfare program, but was denied cash aid because, although she was on unpaid leave, she was technically employed. Her sister helped her sign up for a monthly discount on her energy bill, and when she fell behind again on her payments, PG&E offered to enroll her in its debt forgiveness program as long as she made on-time payments for 12 consecutive months.

The utility giant offers several financial assistance programs to help lower-income customers cope with their bills. But almost one in three parents told the RAPID survey team they didn’t apply because they weren’t sure they would qualify, even though they were eligible.

Burks said when she first tried to arrange a payment plan with a PG&E representative to prevent losing power, that person didn’t offer financial aid.

When we met at her home in late Spring, Burks said she was starting to feel more stable as Bradley prepared to graduate and head to community college. She also planned to enroll Zyon in a local Head Start program.

The tot was energetic and chatty after waking up from a nap, but was willing to sit still to watch Ms. Rachel, his favorite YouTube personality, while his mom prepared chicken nuggets for dinner.

Burks said even though caregiving has gotten easier now that Zyon is two years old, she thinks he’s still clingy whenever she leaves him for work.

“He’s very joyful, but he has his moments. He has these tantrums I’ve never seen before,” Burks said. “It’s probably from my depression and my issues, you know, [kids] pick up what they see.”

Burks said she’s come out of postpartum depression, but on certain days, she gets overwhelmed.

“I don’t go back into that deep depression, but just that feeling comes over me, like what am I going to do,” she said. “Not knowing if I can pay this bill or not knowing how much food is gonna last this month.”