Fuel fund helping Centre County residents keep warm this winter

Pennsylvania can be a cold place in the winter, especially if you can’t afford to heat your home. An area nonprofit is trying to make the coming months a little warmer for some families in need.

Interfaith Human Services operates two programs that try to address the heating crisis that can affect Centre County residents from November to March.

The Centre County Fuel Bank is one of them. The fund, which picks up where the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding leaves off, helps county residents at 150 percent of the poverty level or less keep their furnace burning.

“We’ve been running for a long time. It’s a response to emergency heating needs,” said IHS interim Director Sylvia Neely.

The program is run through donations, as well as contributions from the St. Vincent De Paul Society and the United Way. How much it expends in a year is dependent on the weather and the needs.

“We have, in the past, spent $60-70,000 on the fuel bank alone,” Neely said.

But sometimes, the program has also run into problems, like running out of funds. To keep that from happening again, they found a way to stretch the money through education.

“We offer classes for clients to cut down on utility use. We’ve been doing that for three years now,” Neely said.

There have been lessons in energy efficiency and lessons in stretching a dollar.

“Heating is one of the largest parts of everybody’s budget. It’s a huge part, too, of the crisis of affordable housing. If we could cut down on utility cost, we could help people a great deal,” Neely said.

At noon on Dec. 7 at the Trinity United Methodist Church in Bellefonte, IHS will run a class on managing heating fuel resources, a requirement to participate in the program.

The other option for the heat-strapped is the Pennsylvania Housing Affordability and Rehabilitation Enhancement fund, fueled by the impact fees from Marcellus Shale drilling.

“Last year, from January to April, almost 45 percent of our PHARE money went to people living in Philipsburg and Rush Township,” said Neely. “That’s where the need really is.”

PHARE’s eligibility requirements are more broad, open to 200 percent of federal poverty level. It also opens a month earlier than the LIHEAP November start.

The program operates with $15,000 from the drilling fees and another $35,000 allocated by Centre County commissioners. The program helped 398 Centre County residents last winter.

LIHEAP still helps more people in the state than any other program.

“LIHEAP helped approximately 400,000 Pennsylvania households stay warm during last winter, including hundreds of thousands of homes with older Pennsylvanians, children and individuals who live with a disability,” said DHS Secretary Ted Dallas when the application period started Nov. 2. “We encourage anyone who needs help with their heating bills to apply before the worst of the winter weather arrives and be prepared.”

This story was originally published November 17, 2015 at 11:53 AM with the headline "Fuel fund helping Centre County residents keep warm this winter."