Applicants overwhelm heating program

Barbara Barrett CDT Washington correspondent

(Part 3 of paycheck to paycheck series) WASHINGTON — Only in the past few weeks have temperatures given a hint of the winter to come, but already more than 1,800 families in Centre County say they’ll need help paying their heating bills this winter.

The flood of applications, coming early in the heating season, has worried charities and county leaders who expect families will continue to struggle. The cost of home heating oil has risen to record levels of more than $3 a gallon.

“We have a huge number of working poor now who just can’t make ends meet,” said Robert Ott, director of Centre County’s Office of Adult Services. “This is not a joyous season to date.”

Emergency requests are pouring in at unprecedented levels, he said. In a single day this month in Bellefonte, the crisis office heard from 69 people asking for immediate help.

Five years ago, the cost of heating oil was $1.20 a gallon, and yet the one-time crisis payments of $300 from the federal heating assistance program, known as LIHEAP, haven’t risen.

With heating costs so high, the one-time payout won’t even cover a minimum delivery of 100 gallons from heating vendors. Some vendors have increased their minimum delivery to 150 gallons.

The problems in the Keystone State are reflected in the nation’s capital, where Democrats and President Bush have tussled over funding for LIHEAP.

Bush this month vetoed the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services spending bill, which included a $250 million increase for federal heating assistance over last year’s budget.

Bush’s budget had proposed a cut of $400 million.

“You can see the problem,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of The National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association in Washington.

His group estimates that the average cost to heat with home heating oil for a winter has jumped more than 90 percent since 2003.

Congress failed to override Bush’s veto although many Republicans, including U.S. Rep. John Peterson, R-Pleasantville, joined with Democrats in the vote.

Still, Peterson doesn’t worry that the money won’t be there this year.

“I don’t think there’s a problem yet. I don’t think there’s any panic now,” Peterson said, adding: “We’ll never have enough LIHEAP money as long as Congress refuses to deal with energy.”

Others aren’t so sure. “I’m not as confident as he is,” said Wolfe, who testified last week about the energy crunch before a U.S. House of Representatives committee. “More and more, families can’t afford the basic price of energy.”

In his testimony, Wolfe told Congress that that families receiving LIHEAP assistance spend an average 15 percent of their income on home energy bills — more than four times the burden of other families.

Ott said the basic living costs for housing, food and transportation are going up as well. “Never before have we seen so many people in crisis,” Ott said.

Until last year, Pennsylvania was the only state in the northeastern corridor that didn’t put state dollars toward the federal assistance program, Ott said. That changed last year when the state added $100 to the existing $300 crisis amount, but the money only came late in the season.

This year, Ott said, the state has added money to increase the number of families who can be helped by raising the qualification limits from 135 percent to 150 percent of the poverty level.

Still, charities already are seeing problems.

Matthew Hall, executive director of Interfaith Mission in State College, said several families have come to his agency for help with heating costs. Interfaith has $15,000 on hand for the winter, just a third of what it had last year, to cover more families with higher heating bills.

“That’s enough to help 50 people,” Hall said. Last year, the group helped almost 200 families.

He hopes to begin raising more donations in December. For now, though, the agency has restricted its geographic reach from the whole of Centre County to just the State College Area School District and parts of Port Matilda.

Interfaith and a handful of other agencies have started to develop a countywide “fuel bank,” in which they will pool their dollars to help families have enough money to get a minimum delivery of heating oil. But the bank won’t be running until the 2008-09 season, Hall said.

“It’s going to be an expensive winter, and a lot of people are going to have some serious problems,” Hall said.

CDT Washington correspondent Barbara Barrett can be reached at 202-383-0012 or bbarrett@mcclatchydc.com