Even as the government reopens, millions of households still await federal funding to help cover heating costs as winter approaches and energy bills rise.
The federal government shutdown, which ended this past week, resulted in the delay of federal funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. LIHEAP helps nearly 6 million households pay their heating or cooling costs. The Department of Health and Human Services typically sends annual funding to states around November, but the shutdown has delayed the release of those funds.
The program opens at a time when households need to start using heat in their homes, Elizabeth Marx, executive director of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, told the Washington Examiner, adding that despite the government being back at work, it will take several weeks for LIHEAP funding to reach states.
Marx said that individuals who do not receive aid to heat their homes may resort to unsafe and costly alternatives, such as electric space heaters, portable generators, or ovens.
“They forgo food, medicine, medical care, and other basic needs in order to keep the heat on,” Marx said. She hopes the funding will reach the states in early or mid-December.
Households typically use a lot more energy during the winter to heat their homes. The Energy Department stated that nearly 43% of a home’s utility bill goes to heating or cooling. Energy costs for households across the country have risen in part due to the rise in data centers and artificial intelligence.
According to the latest update to the Consumer Price Index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that electricity prices rose by 5.1% for the year ending in September, double the rate of overall inflation.
Marx said that, as of September, almost 340,000 households have lost gas, electricity, and water services.
“Families across the state are being priced out of the market for electricity and gas. They just can’t afford the costs that are coming,” Marx said. “We’ve got households that have $300 or $400 bills just in a single month for electricity.”
Marx stated that, year after year, she has observed a growing need for households to join LIHEAP due to increasing energy costs.
Throughout the government shutdown, many states have either delayed issuing LIHEAP payments or have taken responsibility for the aid. For instance, Pennsylvania implemented a temporary pause to prevent utilities from disconnecting service for LIHEAP-eligible residents. Connecticut has temporarily covered the program’s costs, while Alaska and Massachusetts are using funds from last year for emergency assistance.
Sanya Carley, director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Washington Examiner that “energy prices have risen significantly.”
She added that even though 6 million people receive the funding, that is only 20% of the eligible population.
“Far more people could benefit from having it if they knew of it and they knew how to get through kind of the administrative burden of accessing it,” Carley said.
Experts noted that a possible bottleneck could arise from a reduction in staff administering the LIHEAP funds. In April, the staff administering LIHEAP were laid off, along with 10,000 other employees at HHS.
Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, an organization that works with state officials to implement LIHEAP, told the Washington Examiner that now that the government is back to work, the issue remains how efficiently HHS can allocate these funds due to the lack of staffing.
Wolfe said that typically the staff could issue the funds within 30 days, but because of the staff reduction, it was “unclear how quickly they can move.”
TRUMP ROLLS BACK BIDEN-ERA RULE, OPENS ALASKA FOR DRILLING
“There’s no precedent to say, ‘Well, last time they fired all the program staff, this is what happened,'” Wolfe said. “The core staff has been eviscerated, and they need to demonstrate how they can move the funds in a timely manner without staff in place to do that.”
HHS Office of the Administration for Children and Families distributes the funds to all state programs. The department told the Washington Examiner in a statement that “ACF will work swiftly to administer annual awards now that the Democrat-led shutdown is over.”
