Emergency funds released to help with home heating bills
Living on a fixed income, not knowing where money to pay heating bills would come from, Linda Tobin has struggled to find a solution. She and her husband have a monthly income of about $1,300, while their bills of absolute necessity add up to $848 each month, with the cost of heat and electricity rising.
They spend their spare cash on car insurance and repairs, prescriptions for Tobin’s congestive heart failure and diabetes ills, for which she no longer receives financial assistance, as well as food, gasoline, lot rent and a home mortgage.
Tobin says she has been faced with the decision each month either to pay one bill or another sitting piled in a box. After bills, she says, her spare money totals $60 a month.
“We live from day to day,” said Tobin, 51, of Hopwood. “Sometimes I don’t even have enough for food.
“No money’s left,” Tobin added. “We have to scratch now.”
Electric and kerosene heaters speckle her home, but even with these alternate fuel methods, Tobin says she cannot afford the constant refills of her kerosene tank.
The Tobins receive assistance through the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps low-income residents pay for home-heating fuel sources and furnace repairs in the winter.
LIHEAP pays the Tobins’ monthly electric bill, and the couple receives $75 a year through the Fayette County Community Action Agency to help pay for propane.
Like many other residents in the region, the Tobins have watched their LIHEAP dollars dwindle this winter because of colder weather and rising heating costs.
“I can’t afford (fuel) and I can’t get help. I don’t know what we are going to do without heat. All of my money goes to bills. My husband and I have it hard. It’s like smacking against a wall. You can never get ahead,” she said.
However, help is on the way.
The federal government last week released $16.4 million in emergency funds to Pennsylvania, which will use the money to increase the maximum LIHEAP crisis-grant payment from $300 to $600.
“Families who have already received a crisis grant and who are still experiencing problems can receive more assistance, for a combined total of $600,” said Estelle B. Richman, acting secretary of the state Department of Public Welfare (DPW), which administers the LIHEAP program in Pennsylvania.
LIHEAP offers two types of funding: cash grants and crisis grants.
The cash grants, designed to help pay heating bills, are awarded based on income, family size, the type of heating fuel and heating regions.
Crisis grants are awarded to people in jeopardy of losing their heat, including those facing a termination of utility service and those with broken heating equipment or leaking lines.
Applicants must meet certain economic criteria to qualify for the funding, and LIHEAP will send a payment directly to the utility/fuel dealer of those eligible.
“They (government officials) have recognized that the winter weather we have had this year has created a hardship,” said Barbara Shaw, executive director of the Fayette County Energy Assistance Office. “It is creating a hardship for everyone. The extreme temperatures have caused people to use more fuel.”
According to Shaw, the assistance office has received 10,580 applications for cash LIHEAP benefits and 5,601 crisis applications.
Nelson Martin, executive director of the Greene County Assistance Office, said the problems some residents have experienced have not resulted from a shortage in assistance dollars but rather from their using up their entire crisis allotment because of the cold winter.
“We’ve had more crisis applications this year than in the past two or three, but regular applications have been about the same,” Martin said.
Martin said no one who has applied for the program from the Greene County office has been turned away. All of the applications are processed in Harrisburg, from where the payments are sent.
As of Feb. 1, the Greene County office had received 1,925 applications for regular payments and had paid out $339,175 from the program. Another 878 crisis applications have been processed, totaling $128,437.
People can apply for both regular and crisis funding, Martin said, although funding for the regular program will vary based on household size, the type of heating in the home and the family income. This year, he said, the average LIHEAP payment has been $223.44, and the average LIHEAP crisis payment has been $146.30.
When Fayette County residents have asked where they could turn for heating assistance after their LIHEAP funds are depleted, Shaw has directed them to Community Action.
Dan Sochko, a senior resource consultant for Community Action, said many programs provided by Community Action have been “impacted big time” by the cold winter and demand for assistance.
As a result, Community Action’s Cindy Dais has been busy finding money to assist people.
“If they exhausted the LIHEAP program, then we need funding to keep up with the need for those costs,” said Dais. “They then want other programs to release their funds, which is what I am working on currently. I am working on asking for the money and trying to find available programs to assist these people so they can pay their bills.”
Community Action spokeswoman Shelia Kendall said the agency has a program that can be used to help with heating needs but only after a family has spent all of its LIHEAP money, including the $300 in additional funding. The maximum that the agency’s program provides is a $75 voucher.
The DPW has awarded cash grants to 220,000 families and crisis grants to 63,000 others since it began accepting LIHEAP applications in November. The application deadline is March 27.
For more information on LIHEAP, call the Fayette County assistance office at 724-439-7015 or toll free at 866-857-7095, the Greene County office at 724-627-8171 or toll free at 888-410-5658, or visit the DPW Web site: www.dpw.state.pa.us/oim/oimliheap.asp
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Editor’s note: Herald-Standard Staff Writers Josh Krysak and Steve Ostrosky contributed to this report.