Low-income Colorado families face another crisis this winter in paying for home heating, despite lower natural- gas prices.
State and federal funding for low-income energy assistance could be cut severely this winter, down as much as 51 percent from last year.
Assistance agencies also are expecting more applications for help, further stretching the diminished pool of funds.
Low-income households face a particular problem, experts say, because even though their total heating bills may drop slightly this winter, they’ll have to reach deeper into their own pockets to pay them.
“That presents an incredible hardship for seniors and low-income families,” said Skip Arnold, executive director of Energy Outreach Colorado.
Denver resident Claudia Hart, 68, said she’ll need to find ways to cut her already bare-bones budget to handle the higher heating-bill obligation.
“I’ll have to skimp to pay all the rest of my bills,” said Hart, who is disabled with emphysema and lives on Social Security. “And then if energy bills go up this winter, I’m really in trouble.”
Qualified low-income households last winter received an average payment of $550 to help cover their heating bills from November through April.
This year, the average payment is projected to drop to $267, leaving the households responsible for paying $716 from their personal funds.
Federal funding to Colorado through the Low Income Energy Assistance Program is expected to fall from $43 million last year to $31 million this year, largely because natural-gas prices are projected to be about 12 percent lower than last winter.
State funding for bill-paying assistance will fall from $20 million last year to $7 million this year. That’s because the legislation behind the payments stipulates that more of this year’s money will go to energy-saving improvements in low-income homes rather than bill-paying help.
Aside from the funding cutbacks, the heating outlook is better this year for Coloradans, whose winter bills are projected to be 8 percent lower than last winter, according to Energy Outreach Colorado.
A separate forecast from Xcel Energy predicts that typical residential heating bills in December will be $135, down 14 percent from the average $157 bill in December 2005. Those figures don’t include costs for electricity.
“Despite the natural-gas price drops, it’s still going to be a very, very difficult year,” said Herb Betts, program specialist with Colorado’s Low Income Energy Assistance Program.
Betts noted that the program’s pool of qualified applicants grew 11.5 percent last year to 107,000 households and is projected to rise another 10 percent this year.
Since the program must give assistance to all qualified households, the average benefit drops when more people enroll.
Betts said that while there is hope for special legislation that would restore some of the funding cuts, “it’s going to be quite a shock if that’s all we get.”
Staff writer Steve Raabe can be reached at 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com.
