For five days last month, Rachel Brown and her children lived in a house in Providence with no running water.

They showered, when they could, at friends’ houses. An aunt brought over water to flush their toilets. And her children did their best to conserve: the boys urinated outside.

“I used all my food stamps to go and buy water and frozen food for my kids and myself — the microwave food,” said the 33-year-old single mother. “I couldn’t cook.”

Their rental house at 23 Julian St., and the triple-decker next door at 25 Julian St., are in foreclosure. Along with a delinquent mortgage, the landlord left behind unpaid sewer bills — which, Brown learned, is why the Providence Water Supply Board shut off their water.

“They wanted us, the tenants, to pay the bill,” she said. “We just found out the house was being foreclosed and everybody is trying to save their money for deposits.”

So far this year, more than 1,000 residential customers in Rhode Island — including 773 in Providence — have had their water service shut off — the majority for unpaid water bills, according to the Water Supply Board’s data. That’s more than double the 527 shutoffs in 2006. (And that doesn’t even include shutoffs by the board for delinquent sewer bills, which are tallied separately by the Narragansett Bay Commission.)

Four days a week during the last two months, Providence Water trucks have traversed the city, shutting off water service to an average of 15 customers per day, according to a Providence Journal analysis of the board’s shut-off data.

The rise in shutoffs is part of a stepped-up collections effort since the agency completed a program to provide more accurate readings with automated meters, said the water board’s director of commercial services, Ricky Caruolo.

“Our goal is not to terminate water; our goal is to sell water,” Caruolo said. “Right now there is surely a strong emphasis on collections. We want to collect our money…If we’re not collecting our money, we operate in the red and eventually the rates will rise…Although it may seem unfair or difficult for some individuals, we have to look at what’s best for the entire rate base here at Providence Water.”

But advocates for the poor and disabled say that increasingly the people losing their water service are tenants of foreclosed rental properties who were never responsible for paying those bills.

“An alarming number of renters, including families, disabled individuals and senior citizens, are being forced out of their homes through no fault of their own,” Rhode Island Legal Services’ Housing Law Center’s managing attorney Tiffinay Antoch Emery wrote in a May 21 letter to the Providence Water Supply’s chief engineer and general manager, Pamela Marchand.

“The lack of water only exacerbates the situation, often taking the family by surprise and forcing them to either attempt to live in an unsafe and unsanitary home or to move out entirely.”

More recently, agents for the bank say it’s not their responsibility to maintain water service, the letter states, regardless of whether people still live in the property.

Legislation pending in the General Assembly (H-7892 sponsored by House Majority Leader Gordon Fox) would require banks that foreclose on a property occupied by a bona fide tenant to maintain “essential services” such as heat, electricity, gas and running water .

Public utilities can “terminate” service to a residential customer if the customer “fails within a reasonable time to pay,” according to state Public Utilities Commission regulations. A “reasonable time” is 40 days after the bill is mailed or 10 days after a payment was due under a residential payment plan.

Before a residential customer’s water is shut off, the Water Supply Board must notify the customer in writing. If the property is owner occupied, the notice can be mailed. If the owner does not live on the premises, the board is required to post a 10-day termination notice on the door of the property where service will be shut off, according to the Caruolo, of the Water Supply Board

During the winter moratorium, typically Nov. 1 to April 15, the water board must post two notices— a 10-day termination notice and a 48-hour termination notice — on the door where water is to be shut off, regardless of whether the owner lives at the property or not, according to Caruolo.

To prevent a shutoff or restore service, the water board generally requires that a third of the delinquent bill be paid up front, he said, and the remainder over a two-month period. However, if someone cannot afford those payments, he said, “we’re willing to work with people.”

That willingness to work with people was not apparent to Patience Downey when her water service was shut off on May 13.

Downey, 45, who rents an apartment at 204-206 Narragansett St., Cranston, had no water for 15 days before her lawyer successfully petitioned a judge to issue an emergency temporary restraining order to get the water turned back on.

The building is currently in foreclosure. Downey, who lives with her 20-year-old son, suffers from mental illness.

She lugged plastic gas cans back and forth from a gas station down the street to get water to flush her toilets and wash. She didn’t shower or bathe for 15 days. She smeared antibacterial gel on her hands until they were raw.

Her nephew’s wedding was May 16, and she feared she wouldn’t be able to clean up to go.

One day, she tried to wash her long hair in the sink with bottled water. It was such as mess that she grabbed a pair of scissors and began to cut.

She finally called the state Office of the Mental Health Advocate. State advocate H. Reed Cosper obtained a restraining order in District Court, Warwick against real-estate agency Westcott Properties, described as the “manager” of the property for the bank. In the petition, Cosper stated that the water shutoff amounted to an illegal “self-help” eviction — where utilities are shut off to force a tenant to leave.

The water in Downey’s Cranston apartment came back on.

So did the water at Rachel Brown’s house on Julian Street in Providence, after a lawyer from Rhode Island Legal Services got involved.

Now, Brown is moving to a new apartment across the street. But she worries about her neighbors at 25 Julian St. — including a mother and her three children — who have yet to find a new home. Brown has already received another notice warning, once again, of a water shutoff.

larditi@projo.com