winter. Deep cuts in federal home heating assistance benefits mean she probably can’t afford
enough heating oil to stay warm.
She lives in a drafty trailer in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood and gets by on $11,148 a
year in pension and Social Security benefits. Her heating aid help this year will drop from
$1,035 to $685. With rising heating oil prices, it probably will cost her more than $3,000 for
enough oil to keep warm unless she turns her thermostat down to 60 degrees, as she plans.
“I will just have to crawl into bed with the covers over me and stay there,” said Power, a widow
who worked as a cashier and waitress until she was 80. “I will do what I have to do.”
Thousands of poor people across the Northeast are bracing for a difficult winter with
substantially less home heating aid coming from the federal government.
“They’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives,” said John Drew, who heads Action for
Boston Community Development, Inc., which provides aid to low-income residents in
Massachusetts.
The issue could flare just as New Hampshire votes in the Republican presidential primary.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she hopes the candidates will take up the region’s heating
aid crunch because it underscores how badly the country needs a comprehensive energy policy.
Several Northeast states already have reduced heating aid benefits to families as Congress
considers cutting more than $1 billion from last year’s $4.7 billion Low Income Home Energy
Assistance Program that served nearly 9 million households.
Families in New England, where the winters are long and cold and people rely heavily on costly
oil heat, are expected to be especially hard hit. Many poor and elderly people on fixed incomes
struggle with rising heating bills that can run into thousands of dollars. That can force them to cut
back on other necessities like food or medicine.
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