Over the past decade, ION Water has worked hand-in-hand with affordable housing developers to solve one of their most persistent challenges — managing water use and cost.
We’ve had thousands of conversations with developers, property managers, and maintenance teams to understand what really drives high water bills and how to control those drivers. Our approach to everything we do has been based on an “I’m the host, you’re the guest.” mindset where we start with two simple questions, “What do you need?” and “How do you want it delivered?”
Along the way, we’ve learned what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible when the right technology, data and human based support come together in a single solution.
The overarching problem: Water use was unpredictable and hard to track.
Water is the single largest variable expense for affordable housing developers. It’s unpredictable and hard to control, but has a direct impact on NOI and overall asset value. Through more than a decade of collaboration and partnership with developers, we now know that invisible leaks account for more than 50% of total water consumption in affordable housing, costing an estimated 390 billion gallons of lost water and $5.8B every year.
For years, water management was largely reactive. Developers relied on backward looking billing data from building meters that didn’t provide visibility into where water was being wasted and how much. Additionally, meters break frequently and don’t pinpoint leak locations, leaving developers in the dark on how to find and fix the source of water loss.
Problem #1: Legacy solutions missed the real issue.
For a long time, developers assumed the only ways to control water were to bill tenants for usage or install low-flow fixtures. But those approaches didn’t tackle the real problem.
Changing tenant behavior through direct billing is not only a long-term effort that doesn’t produce immediate results; it comes with administrative challenges and costs and doesn’t address the primary reason for water loss — invisible leaks from running toilets, faulty water heaters, and aging plumbing fixtures that silently waste water 24/7.
And low flow fixtures don’t address water’s inherent nature as a universal solvent that continuously erodes all plumbing fixtures, low flow or otherwise.
Without visibility into where and when invisible leaks were happening, developers had no real way to control water use.
Problem #2: The price of water was a mystery.
Even if you knew how much water you were using, figuring out what it cost was another story entirely.
There are over 150,000 water utilities across the U.S., each with its own rate structure, tiered pricing, and unique fees. Two properties across the street from one another could pay drastically different prices per gallon.
It’s no wonder no one could forecast water expenses with confidence. The data wasn’t consistent, and fee systems weren’t transparent. Developers were trying to manage one of their largest operating costs without reliable visibility or verification.
The breakthrough: Data is the currency.
That realization was the turning point for ION.
After analyzing water bills from more than 300 properties, ION discovered that unit-level, sensor-based, real-time data was the missing link. When you can measure water use at the unit-level and recognize patterns, you can finally see what’s happening. Once you can see it, you can control it.
Data became the foundation of everything we do at ION. Now, thanks to 20,000 data points per minute, we can pinpoint a leak within one hour and specifically direct maintenance teams to fix it. This was the key to making water management visible, measurable, and actionable.
Proof in practice.
ION tested this new approach based on this insight in a 42-unit property in Goshen, Kentucky – a building that was struggling to refinance due to unstable utility costs.
We installed sensors, linked them to our live data system, and monitored the results. Within a month, the property’s water use dropped by 90%.
It was the proof point we needed: when you connect data to decision-making, you have actionable intelligence that can transform water and property performance.
Building the end-to-end solution.
Once we had these building blocks we could create the most comprehensive, transparent, and effective water management system in affordable housing.
From there we listened closely to our partners. We refined dashboards, leak reports, and alerts to make them simple, clear, and actionable. We focused on constant communication between property teams and our partner support specialists, making sure information was delivered to the right person at the right time to fix the right problem.
The result today is ION’s End-to-End Water Management solution – the affordable housing industry’s only comprehensive water efficiency solution proven to help developers achieve predictable, measurable savings across their portfolios.
The future: Empowering partners to control water costs and address the U.S. housing crisis.
Today, ION’s End-to-End Water Management solution operates in over 100,000 affordable housing units nationwide, helping developers stabilize water costs and reclaim millions of gallons once lost to invisible leaks.
Our future goals include making data even more actionable through innovations like mobile apps, integrations that help site teams respond even more quickly, and making water management even more seamless, where sensors, fixtures, and systems work together to identify and prevent waste automatically.
The U.S. has an affordable housing supply shortage. When we help our affordable housing developer partners control water costs, we help them save money, protect assets, and create opportunities to build more housing to address the U.S. housing crisis.
