Beating the HEAP

It’s a cool million (plus)
in grant money — and a few county legislators and advocates for the poor are
searching through a procedural haystack for it.

            The grant in question is $1.5 million in federal funds
that Monroe County recently received (via Albany) for the Housing Energy
Assistance Program. HEAP is a federal-state-local program that’s best known for
— and in this part of the country, is pretty much restricted to — providing
money from November through May to help people pay their heating bills. The
benefits are distributed through Action for a Better Community, the Red Cross,
and similar groups. And the program makes more than a dent. In one recent year,
says a Monroe County webpage, HEAP assisted more than 50,000 local households.

            The matter of the million-and-a-half came up at the
August 5 meeting of the county legislature’s Human Services Committee.
According to legislator Carla Palumbo, who represents parts of the city’s
northwest quadrant, people in attendance wanted to know if the money was
available right away for benefits. Palumbo says she put the question to county
Human and Health Services officials then and there. “I didn’t get a clear
answer,” she says. “They weren’t clear whether all of that money had
been spent.” But, she adds, “it sounded like it was money used for prior
expenses up to the cut-off date, to reimburse [the county] for money spent.”

            So it appears local households have already received the benefits,
and the county and state are just balancing their respective books. Palumbo
promises more research on the matter before next month’s Human Services
Committee meeting, regardless. (We sought comment from HHS officials but were
referred to county communications head James Smith, who didn’t return our
call.)

            Some advocates for the poor have been wondering whether
the money could be pumped into something needed right now: a “cooling
component.” As we said, New York devotes its HEAP money almost entirely for
oil, natural gas, and other heating fuels. But the southern states use their
HEAP money for summertime air-conditioning bills.

            And in fact, New York State laid out money for cooling
just a few years ago, says Charlie Brennan, an attorney with the Albany-based
Public Utility Law Project. But that, he says, was a special circumstance. The
relevant federal law, he says, gives the president the option of disbursing
emergency HEAP funds; and one sweltering year, Bill Clinton provided $200
million nationwide for cooling bills. That year, says Brennan, New York used
its share for small, one-time grants to help people rent or buy fans or air
conditioners.

            Utility bills and cut-off notices arrive year-round, of
course. And the threats of cut-off seem to be coming more frequently. As Bryan
Hetherington of the Public Interest Law Office of Rochester says, more
low-income Rochesterians have been struggling with such things since the onset
of deregulation and utility mergers.

            But HEAP’s defects transcend the seasons and the
regulatory fashions. Charlie Brennan explains: “The real problem is that HEAP
has never provided enough money for every eligible household.” In fiscal
2002-2003, he says, New York State got $170 million total from the feds for the
program. Ten percent of that went for administrative overhead, he says. And
another 15 percent went for the weatherization component: home insulation,
weather-tight windows, and so forth. Brennan lauds the weatherization funding,
saying it gives “more bang for the buck.”

            Around 750,000 New York households got benefits in
2002-2003, Brennan says. This means the benefit per household wasn’t very
large. It also suggests why the money runs out just when people start feeling
the heat.

A footnote

People also have been
questioning HHS policies regarding the forms of identification that applicants
for assistance must present. Specifically, it’s been charged that HHS has been
demanding photo IDs from people who don’t have or can’t get hold of such
documents — and thus discouraging or preventing these people from applying at
all.

            Bob Ingram of EMPOWER Welfare Rights, a local advocacy
group, passed along the relevant directions to us. And it’s clear that a photo
ID is not required in all instances.

            The regs say simply that “you must prove who you are” by
presenting a photo ID, driver’s license, or US passport (all of which
have photos, of course); or two of the following: a “statement from
another person” (sic), a Social Security card, a birth certificate, or a “credit
card with signature.”

This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2003.