Community Action of Southern Kentucky will begin its crisis portion of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program on Monday.

The program, which runs on a first-come, first-served basis, helps households that are in a home heating crisis.

“We encourage people to apply if they need to. Usually the first couple of weeks are busy,” said Barbara Page, Community Action Community Services Warren County coordinator. “We try to serve as many people as we can. We’ve already had several people calling about it.”

Those who are eligible are within 130 percent of the national poverty guidelines and must bring Social Security cards for everyone in the home, previous month’s income for everyone in the home over age 18 and past due disconnect notice, Page said. Other criteria include the household is within four days of running out of fuel if they use bulk fuel such as coal, fuel oil, propane, kerosene or wood as the heat source; has received a past due/disconnect notice if natural gas or electric is the heat source; or heating costs are included as an undesignated portion of the rent and the household has received an eviction notice for non-payment of rent from the landlord. Prepaid electric customers are eligible to receive LIHEAP assistance if they certify that they have 10 days or less of prepaid electric remaining.

There is a new component to the program this year, said Chief Operations Officer Leslie Talley.

“We’re asking everyone to bring in their electric bill, even if they heat with propane, wood or kerosene,” she said. “To meet federal guidelines, we have to ask what their main heating fuel is and collect the electric vendor’s name and account number.”

The program continues until the funds run out, Page said. LIHEAP is done with a partnership between Community Action and the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

“Usually it’s until March. Last year we extended it,” she said. “We had money until April. We don’t know if it was because of the bad weather.”

Clients get the minimum amount it takes to alleviate the crisis, Talley said.

“At times people have more than one time in a heating season, so they come back. Last year we took over 8,000 applications because people came more than one time,” she said. “If they reach crisis again and we still have funding, they can come back. If they have high utility bills we talk to them about our weatherization program in hopes that we can reduce their burden through that program if they’re eligible.” 

Last year, LIHEAP served 4,560 households in the 10-county region, Talley said. Of those, 1,170 households were in Warren County.

“We’re glad that we have funding and we’re able to help people,” she said.

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