Chicago woman billed $233,000 for water she never used in vacant home with no plumbing
A senior citizen's vacant home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood racked up a staggering $233,000 water bill, despite not having any plumbing for years.
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A senior citizen's vacant home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood racked up a staggering $233,000 water bill, despite not having any plumbing for years.
Eligible homeowners and business owners would be able to have their water bills lowered if they can prove their higher bill is the result of leak in the underground service line.
David Steele got the $5,000 refund he'd been wanting for months, but didn't get an explanation why the city suddenly changed its mind.
Glenn Jones can't sell the vacant house until he figures out the water bill issue with the city.
Through our "Getting Hosed" series on bad water bills, we have found that often communication issues between different city systems have often been the source of the headaches.
Even after David Steele won the first round in his dispute over his bogus water bill, the city figured out a way to hose him again.
The Chicago City Council Finance Committee held a hearing Tuesday with the heads of the Water Management and Finance departments.
A week-by-week log of meter readings showed zero water usage on some entries. Other times, the report came back at 6 million gallons used in a week.
The family knew they had unpaid water charges to settle before selling their three-flat in Roseland, but nothing like the amount they got.
The circumstances vary from case to case, of course, but in short, the pattern involves Chicagoans getting socked with bills for water they didn't use.
"You've got people walking around on fixed income and they can't afford to pay a $500 bill," Burns said. "I would like to see mistakes corrected and I would like to see communication. There's no communication!"
"It's just nuts to me that we have this issue that continues to be reported, on and the city departments are not doing anything about it," Villegas said.
Numerous people whose stories we've reported over the past four years have been getting hosed by bogus bills - often rising into the tens of thousands of dollars.
This did not happen until the CBS 2 Investigators got involved.
Connie Abels has been waiting five years for her hearing.
The homeowner was just being an honest guy and alerted the Chicago Department of Water Management to his unusually low bill.
"The issue with being a city employee is we are obligated to pay any city obligation," said paramedic Lisa Beard.
In Chicago when you die, ComEd shuts off your electricity, and Peoples Gas shuts off your gas. But the city does not stop your water.
Illinois' lead pipe situation is the worst in the country.
Yasser Almanaseer said he has had no luck in getting it fixed.
How does a City of Chicago water bill for $70 turn into a $10,000 tab from one bill to the next?
Getting Hosed, our exposé on Chicago's bad water billing, has saved consumers hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we wanted to know - what happens if you take on the City yourself?
"They told me to hire a good lawyer, that this is probably a billing issue with the city."
Aldermen voted against Ald. Daniel La Spata's proposal for helping low-income residents with water bills, while a competing proposal from Mayor Lori Lightfoot remains bottled up in a separate committee.
Hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans with unmetered accounts pay inflated bills – and you can't get a meter for a fair bill until you get a non-lead service line.
The former UIC Flames coach is back leading young men at the high school level, this time at Lincoln-Way East in the south Chicago suburb of Frankfort.
Chicago police were in a standoff Sunday morning in the South Shore neighborhood.
The Transportation Security Administration has begun imposing an additional charge on passengers without enhanced identification.
A pedestrian was struck in a crash that involved at least six vehicles and shut down a portion of the Edens Expressway in Chicago's north suburbs early Sunday.
Ayo Dosunmu scored a season-high 29 points and the short-handed Chicago Bulls topped the Miami Heat 125-118 on Saturday night.
Funding for many federal agencies expired on Saturday after Congress failed to pass half a dozen spending bills before the deadline, prompting a partial government shutdown.
The Justice Department released more new documents Friday from the Jeffrey Epstein files, more than a month after the DOJ's original deadline to do so.
The Senate passed a deal on a package of spending bills late Friday, sending it to the House, though funding for dozens of government agencies has still lapsed.
President Trump says he is nominating Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, filling a powerful economic policy role as the president pushes for lower interest rates.
President Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department for at least $10 billion, claiming the agencies unlawfully allowed an IRS contractor to leak his tax returns and those of his sons and company.
This week marks Identity Theft Awareness Week, and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza emphasized some safety tips Monday for avoiding and dealing with identity theft.
A controversial data center in Naperville, Illinois, could be the cause to pack a city council meeting there on Tuesday night.
Police in the west Chicago suburb of Geneva are warning of a scam involving spoofed phone numbers.
Protesters on Tuesday were cranking up the heat on Peoples Gas over a recently proposed rate hike that would add an additional $10 to $11 a month to utility bills.
A lawsuit filed late last month took Chicago-based McDonald's to task over the McRib sandwich, calling its name a form of false advertising.
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital announced this week that it is planning to open a new pediatric hospital in the west Chicago suburb of Downers Grove.
It has been nearly six years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the many questions doctors are still working to answer concerns the long-term effects.
Leaders from Cook County, the Illinois Department of Human Services, and the Greater Chicago Food Depository denounced changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Wednesday.
The University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center has received a grant from The Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation for a new cancer center.
Chicago's Lurie Children's Hospital said Tuesday that it is no longer initiating gender-affirming medical treatment for minors.
January may be the coldest time of the year, but Chicago is already looking forward to summer farmers' markets.
A development proposal issued this month calls for the replacement of a building housing a Giordiano's pizzeria in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood with a new mixed-use building with 28 residential units.
United Airlines flight attendants picketed outside Chicago's Willis Tower Thursday morning as they fought for a new contract.
WSCR-AM, 670 The Score, will begin a simulcast on 104.3 FM next month.
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Catherine O'Hara was best known for her comic performances in projects including "Home Alone," "Beetlejuice," and "Schitt's Creek."
Skiing great Lindsey Vonn crashed in her final downhill before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Among the 25 films selected by the Library of Congress to be preserved for future generations are "The Big Chill," Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel," the Civil War drama "Glory," and John Carpenter's "The Thing."
In a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, revealed that the right frontal lobe of his brain was injured in a car accident 25 years ago.
Sales of tickets to NHL games jumped more than 20% after the hit HBO show debuted in the fall, according to ticket vendor.
Suzanne Le Mignot recently spent her 56th birthday in Panama and shows us some scenes, while Mary Kay Kleist and her husband, Mark Zonca, celebrated their 30th anniversary in Palm Beach.
The former UIC Flames coach is back leading young men at the high school level, this time at Lincoln-Way East in the south Chicago suburb of Frankfort. Jori Parys reports.
A pedestrian was struck in a crash that involved six vehicles and shut down a portion of the Edens Expressway in Chicago’s north suburbs early Sunday.
Meteorologist Mary Kay Kleist has your 6 a.m. First Alert Weather forecast for Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026.
The items are in the exhibition "Stories of Survival: Object, Image, Memory" at the Illinois Holocaust Museum presents Experience360. Joe Donlon reports.
The Transportation Security Administration has begun imposing an additional charge on passengers without enhanced identification.
Some are concerned the change could cause hundreds of thousands of people in Illinois to lose their benefits.
A pedestrian was struck in a crash that involved at least six vehicles and shut down a portion of the Edens Expressway in Chicago's north suburbs early Sunday.
The signing comes amid reports of another federal immigration surge planned in Chicago, possibly in the spring.
They are in the exhibition "Stories of Survival: Object, Image, Memory" at the Illinois Holocaust Museum presents Experience360.
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel no longer will have to testify about an alleged "code of silence" at the Chicago Police Department, after a federal judge reversed an earlier ruling that would have required him to take the stand in a lawsuit over a botched police raid.
John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, the busiest trauma center in Illinois, is sounding an alarm, as doctors brace for an influx of patients because of federal funding cuts under the Trump administration's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act."
A Lake County woman has a warning for other homeowners, after she said a contractor took thousands of dollars, destroyed part of her home, and then vanished, even leaving his tools behind.
The crash on June 7, 2024, killed 76-year-old Bernice Pawilan. The driver had a history of traffic offenses, and, in fact, wasn't supposed to be on the road at all.
A town hall meeting on Monday night addressed the concerns of residents paying higher water bills after being forced to use a private utility company.
The former UIC Flames coach is back leading young men at the high school level, this time at Lincoln-Way East in the south Chicago suburb of Frankfort.
Ayo Dosunmu scored a season-high 29 points and the short-handed Chicago Bulls topped the Miami Heat 125-118 on Saturday night.
The Sacramento Kings are acquiring De'Andre Hunter from the Cleveland Cavaliers in a deal that sends forward Dario Saric and two future second-round picks to the Chicago Bulls, according to a league source.
Tre Carroll led Xavier with 21 points and Filip Borovicanin hit the game-winning buzzer beater as the Musketeers defeated DePaul 68-66 on Saturday.
Charlie Coyle had his second career hat trick, Mathieu Olivier added a goal and an assist and the Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Chicago Blackhawks 4-2 on Friday night.
Chicago police were in a standoff Sunday morning in the South Shore neighborhood.
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A Chicago man has been sentenced to 65 years in prison for the execution-style murder of a senior citizen in Chinatown in 2021.
Brendan Banfield testified that he did not fatally stab his wife in 2023, but instead shot the man who did.
A jury has found a Wisconsin man guilty of forging threats against President Donald Trump in an attempt to get a witness against him deported.
