Pennsylvania residents who need help paying their heat and electric bills have a week left to apply for LIHEAP grants, as the future of the popular federal program faces uncertainty.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which has been around since 1981, was allocated $4.1 billion last year. The money gets broken up into block grants and is distributed to states to help low-income residents pay their energy bills, avoid losing service, and, in some cases, fund emergency furnace repairs.
The program’s federal staff of around two dozen people was eliminated earlier this month as part of the Trump administration’s mass firings at the Department of Health and Human Services, throwing into question the future of the program and the logistics of distributing the remaining 10% of the current year’s allocation…