DETROIT –  On her worst days, Mattie McCorkle admits, she feels “less than a person.”

Once or twice a week, the Detroit mother of three collects her loose change and buckets from her bathtub. She drives to a carwash and fills her buckets.

This is how she’s collected water to bathe herself and her three children since the City of Detroit shut the taps to her home for nonpayment in June.

“You never get used to it. It’s embarrassing. Here I am, 40 years old, filling buckets to get by,” said McCorkle, a supermarket cashier.