Advocates fret about heating assistance

By Todd Ruger
Quad City Times (Davenport, IA)
Augsut 24, 2002

National economic woes and the possibility of reduced funding for a federal heating-assistance program could combine to reduce the amount of aid given to Quad City households this winter, program advocates say.

Agencies who register households for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, do not expect a change in the recent annual trend of increasing application numbers, said David Fox, the communications director for the Campaign for Home Energy Assistance.

And President George Bush’s budget request for the fiscal year listed $1.4 billion nationwide for the program, down from the $1.7 billion earmarked for the program last year, Fox said.

“As more people try to get a piece of a very small pie, you’re getting slivers, not pieces,” he added.

If the program is not funded at the $1.7 billion level, Iowa stands to lose $5.6 million of the $31.3 million share it received last year, he said.

Even if the same number of Iowa households participate, he said, that reduction would mean assistance money – given directly to the energy companies to relieve higher heating bills during the winter – will fall from $220 per household per winter to $190.

Illinois stands to lose $17.4 million of the $97 million it got a year ago if the program is not funded at last year’s level, Fox said.

Illinois works on a first-come, first-served basis. That means of the 280,510 households receiving assistance last year, the state would not be able to assist about 49,500, he said.

Iowa East Central TRAIN, which registers households for the program in Scott, Clinton, Muscatine and Cedar counties, has seen the number of households increase 28 percent since the winter of 2000-2001, assistant operations manager Karen Lueders said.

Last year, 7,563 households in the four counties received more than $1.4 million in assistance to help pay energy bills, she added.

In both Iowa and Illinois, a household qualifies if its income falls below 150 percent of the poverty level for the area, depending upon the number of people in the household.