Be careful what advice you take in regards to the Flint water crisis, as there is much misinformation causing self-appointed "experts" to give awful, awful advice to anyone that will listen.

Let's start with the most basic concept that a lot of people are missing here:

READING SOMETHING ON THE INTERNET DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE

Now that that's out of the way, let's continue.

The Flint water crisis has been going on for a while, and is very familiar to those of us that paid attention. We got to see it happen in stages, all of which were well-documented by reliable local news sources. Now that's it's a national story, outsiders are having to catch-up on 18 months worth of drama, and a lot of them are flat out getting things wrong.

Just today there was a national story circulating today that reported 10-month-old events as if they just happened. Bad news is everywhere, and anyone with a keyboard or smartphone can add to the mountain of misinformation as they see fit. The problem, however, is not the amateur reporting -- it's the people who don't know the difference.

Some are taking their cues from these incorrect articles, and then making important, yet misinformed, life decisions. Then they are heading straight to Facebook and Twitter to tell others that they should follow suit. Now does this turn everyone into a lemming that blindly follows their lead off the edge of a cliff? No, but it's too much if these things influence even one person, let alone a couple.

So you're probably wondering what I'm talking about. Well, a number of posts I've seen on Facebook inspired this article, but none more than the one seen below:

Flint Water Advice
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I'm sure that the person who posted this meant well, and not everything they say is inaccurate, but there is some extremely risky advice within. Let's go through the most troubling assertions made in the post here:

  1. Not paying your rent will get you kicked out. Period. While we agree that having to pay for Flint water is ridiculous -- you can't just stop paying for everything else and expect it to "work itself out." Also, the water problems are not your landlord's fault.
  2. Not everyone in Flint rents, and guess what happens when a home you own is labeled condemned? That's a loaded question, but none of it is good news for the owner -- you can read more about what happens here.
  3. The Hurricane Katrina displacement reference doesn't apply here. Katrina was declared a natural disaster, a classification for which the Flint water crisis has already been denied (twice) because it is, technically, a man-made problem. Also, remember all those people living in the Louisiana Superdome after Katrina? Does anyone look forward to pitching a tent in Atwood Stadium until the government finds a place for them to go? I didn't think so.
  4. The CPS threat referred to in the post is likely based on an article titled "Flint Residents Told That Their Children Could Be Taken Away If They Don’t Pay For City’s Poison Water," which really just points out the existence of a Michigan Law used under very different circumstances. Nowhere in the article does it provide any examples of actual "threats" being made. Obviously, that law was made to ensure that parents provide a minimum standard of living for their children. Since it is known that this crisis was caused by State/City negligence -- there's no way they'll start separating kids from their parents for not paying the water bill, a practice that attorneys Kronzek & Cronkright PLLC claim is not true anyway. The city isn't doing water shutoffs currently, but they have sent notices. We'll have to wait and see how that shakes out.

Usually, I wouldn't spend so much time discrediting someone's poorly informed social media post, but this one was posted in a large, Flint-based Facebook group.  It had somewhere around 50 likes, and a surprising number of people agreeing in the comments. Things are messed up in Flint right now and people are scared. We get it. However, you have to be careful what information you let shape your decisions or you could make things much worse for yourself and those who depend on you. Furthermore, all the systematic failures that led to this have people very skeptical about who they trust. In those cases, people tend to look to their inner circle. Don't fill yours with BS, or someone might be scared enough to act on said BS.

I guess what I'm saying is do your homework and be safe out there. Things are bad enough out there without everyone panicking and making rash decisions.

CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO SEE WHAT HATERS ARE SAYING ABOUT FLINT

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