The utility death spiral persists because raising tariffs is politically toxic — governments fear voter backlash. The Community Block Tariff solves this by making tariff increases invisible to low-income households while restoring cost recovery for the utility.

Structure: (1) a heavily subsidized or free lifeline block covering minimum daily needs for the bottom 30% of consumers, funded by a cross-subsidy from higher blocks, (2) a cost-recovery block for middle-income households at full cost, (3) a premium block for large commercial and industrial users priced above cost.

The result: the poor see no price increase or a decrease, the utility recovers full costs from blocks 2 and 3, and governments can credibly claim they protected vulnerable users. Critically, the cross-subsidy is built into the tariff structure — it does not require annual budget appropriations, eliminating political year-to-year uncertainty.