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Cynthetiq · 11-27-2005, 04:04 AM

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Middle Class Gets in Line for Help With Rising Heating Bills
By PAUL VITELLO

STONY BROOK, N.Y. - The main government assistance office in Suffolk County sits just off a busy road in an office park surrounded by a neighborhood of deep lawns and two-car garages. Everyone for miles around uses that road every day. But until recently, hardly anyone from the neighborhood - people whose status in the middle class was thought secured unquestionably by homeownership - ever turned into the office park to seek help inside the county's nondescript building.

This year, they have come in from the fear of the cold.

They are retirees, young couples, the temporarily unemployed, the two-income families stretched to the limit of second mortgages and credit cards, a slice of the suburban demographic that social workers call "mortgage rich and pocket poor."

The cost of natural gas heat, already high, has risen 50 percent since last year. Home heating oil prices are up 30 percent. What that means for the larger economy will be divined by economists.

A hint of what it portends for the average person, though, is apparent in early indications from offices like Suffolk's.

"We have more people applying for help, and more of them are in a higher income group than we've seen before," said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, a group of 50 state directors in charge of administering a federal home energy assistance program that offers one-time-per-winter cash benefits of $100 to $500.

"The sense is that there is a crisis coming," Mr. Wolfe said. "The question is, can the government get ahead of it?"

On a recent day, you could pick out the signs of the crisis in the first-timers at the assistance office: There was a woman in a tweed coat holding a coffee-colored leather handbag; an older man in a white shirt and tie, sitting stiffly beside a woman with a beauty parlor tint; a middle-age man with a battered attaché case open on his lap, expertly pushing a paper clip to fasten the documents he had brought.

All were applying for help through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or Liheap, though no one was exactly low income. All, as it happened, would be turned away for having incomes that exceeded the strict federal limits - $41,616 for a family of four, or $28,296 for a family of two.

"No speak English," said the woman in tweed when asked by a reporter to describe her predicament. She was about 60.

"Oh, don't be silly, mom," said a younger woman sitting beside her, who turned out to be her daughter. "Tell the man. There's nothing to be ashamed of."

The younger woman tersely explained her mother's predicament: Mom owns a house, is on a fixed income; received bills for oil heat last year totaling $2,000, which will be higher this year; needs help.

"I've never asked for anything before," said the older woman. "I've never been in a place like this, either."

In what could be a fundamental shift in the relationship between Americans and their energy supply, government officials and consumer advocates worry that this winter will deal the death blow to a long era of cheap energy.

The fear that energy could become "unaffordable," almost in the same sense that housing in some parts of the country is considered unaffordable, has raised alarms not only among consumer advocates but also utility executives and social workers.

Viviana Perez, the supervisor in Monmouth County, N.J., who is in charge of applications for Liheap aid, said that almost every day this month she has turned away about 20 people because they make more than the federal limits.

"I've been doing this nine years, and never have seen that before," she said.

Neil Gamson, an economist in the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the United States Department of Energy, said energy prices had not been as high as they are now in real dollars since 1981.

Volatility is considered standard in the energy markets, and spokesmen for the oil industry and advocates for consumers disagree about some market fundamentals - whether oil reserves have peaked or not, for example.

But there is a consistent consumer price trend, and it is upward.

Because they show a trend that predates the damage to oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, price increases tracked by the Energy Information Administration since the winter of 2002-3 are more telling than the increases of the last year.

Since 2002-3, home heating fuel prices have increased 50 percent, and natural gas 100 percent.

Frank and Leah Cohen of Long Beach, on Long Island, do not know those numbers but they have felt them viscerally, and adjusted to them in various ways. They keep their thermostat set at 68 degrees. They have closed off the first level of their three-bedroom split-level house.

The Cohens sometimes turn the heat off altogether and warm themselves in front of an electric space heater on the principle that there are laws against disconnecting a person's electricity in winter, but no laws against stopping deliveries of oil.

"And we eat two meals a day," said Mr. Cohen, who once owned a tire dealership. They eat breakfast and "luppa," he said. "It's lunch and supper in one. When you already cut expenses everywhere else, you have to get creative."

Elected officials from cold weather states have pushed hard for substantial increases in financing for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provided about five million people with benefits last winter.

Those efforts, however, have so far failed to bring an increase from last year's allocation, which was about $2.2 billion. Governors and lawmakers say about $5 billion would be necessary to meet the needs of the six million eligible people expected to apply for aid this year.

A parallel drive to impose a windfall-profits tax on energy companies, which have reported record profits, has also stalled.

Fairly or not, the energy companies have taken much of the blame from those who pay an ever-larger share of income for heat.

"Look what I got from the oil company," said Marion Barnes of Uniondale, on Long Island, unfurling a printout of his heating oil bills from last winter, when prices averaged $2.25 a gallon - 55 cents less than they are today. A retired trucker, his monthly payments were piled on the page in a neat row, like cords of money: $356, $499, $374, $250, $377, and $302.

"Now they are charging me $2.80 a gallon. How much did Exxon make in the last year? They're taking that money out of my pocket," he said. "How am I supposed to pay this? I'm 66 years old."

Because of the high cost, and despite a 60- or 70-cent-per-gallon premium for deliveries of fewer than 100 gallons, fuel oil delivery companies report more customers asking for partial deliveries than ever before.

In a pinch, consumer advocates say, consumers will carry five-gallon cans to the nearest gas station to buy diesel fuel, which is interchangeable with No. 2 heating fuel in most oil-burning furnaces. It is more expensive than heating oil, but it can be bought in small quantities.

"That would be a desperation move," said John Huber, the spokesman for the National Oil Heat Research Alliance, "but it can be done safely, yes."

Mr. Huber said most fuel delivery companies would not refuse to deliver lesser amounts, but would most likely charge premiums or a fee for deliveries of less than 200 gallons. "Their operation costs are the same whether they deliver 100 or 200 gallons."

In the absence of increased federal assistance, some states have set aside money and started programs to protect their most vulnerable people.

New York, for example, has set aside $25 million to help people pay fuel bills. Massachusetts lawmakers last week approved $20 million. In Kansas, a state and volunteer drive helps the elderly insulate their homes.

In many states, fire marshals are teaching people how to use wood-burning stoves and kerosene and electric heaters, according to Diane S. Shea, executive director of the National Association of State Energy Officials.

As people turn to those alternatives from high-priced heat from oil and gas, Mrs. Shea said, "there is a great deal of concern about the potential for fires." Sellers of firewood report land-office business.

Other advocates worry more about the choices some people will face if this winter is very cold.

In a study released this year by the National Regulatory Resources Institute, the research arm of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, people who struggled with their winter heating bills reported varying degrees of having gone without food, without medicine or dental care, of having taken less medication or of missing mortgage payments.

"We never missed a mortgage payment or a tax bill," said a woman at a government assistance office in Nassau County last week. "But we've been without heat or hot water since around March."

Gloria Boyd, a social worker from Notre Dame Roman Catholic Church in New Hyde Park who was helping the woman apply for assistance, leaned into the conversation at that point: "You should know that people come to our food pantry because they're paying for their utilities and their oil and they can't afford to buy food. Write that down. This is a bad situation."

Since we don't directly pay for our heating, we just got hit with an assessment for $10 each room in your apartment, so our maintenance just got higher by about $40/month for 1 year. We use a boiler heated by heating oil. It's quite efficient supposedly than natural gas or electricity.

those of you outside the US are you paying more for your heating?