By Jake Brown

Community Action Agencies have long been the lifeblood of LIHEAP in the field, and over the past few years of budget battles in Washington, locally these boots on the ground have been fighting in LIHEAP’s biggest enemies on multiple fronts: including poverty’s dark cloud in general, constantly looming with the threat of darkness – quite literally – if the lights go out on millions of families around the country who depend on LIHEAP to keep their electricity on.  The other big battle has been within the states’ own budgetary constraints, a direct result of decreased funding levels in Washington annual budgets that have sent states scrambling to get those shortages made up on the local level.  On the frontlines greeting the millions of families around the country who show up in lines every day year-round to sign up for LIHEAP assistance, these local Community Action Agency offices have employed a multifaceted campaign to help these families navigate the perfect storm of simultaneously skyrocketing demand and plummeting funding levels. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jake Brown

A record snow storm fell this month even after the official start of spring throughout much of the Midwest and Northeast, extending winter heating bills and LIHEAP’s necessity for hundreds of thousands of households throughout the country.  Reporting on the storm’s severity, The Connecticut Post quipped that “five days into spring, warm weather and budding flowers were just a rumor Monday as the East Coast endured another blast of winter.  A wide-ranging storm that buried parts of the Midwest weakened as it moved east but still managed to carpet lawns and fields in a fresh layer of white. Many schools opened late or closed early, and hundreds of flights were canceled.  The cold temperatures and miserable mixture of snow and rain had people longing for more agreeable weather.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Jake Brown

Known as the Hoosier state for its famed college basketball team, Indiana has long held a unique distinction among the Midwestern states as “the crossroads of America.”  This past year, that moniker took on a crisis-like context amid being hit in its winter season by frigid, bitter temperatures across the same wind-swept plains that in the summer are routinely scorched by punishing heat waves.  USA Today reported in July, 2012 on the severity of the “nation’s record-setting heat wave” that the punishing heat had been “caused by a high-pressure system that loitered for days over the Plains and the Midwest. Combined with a drought that has left little moisture in the ground to provide evaporative cooling, desert-like conditions persisted over much of the country…A Sampling of worst-hit cities by the 2012 heat wave (included)…Indianapolis: 4 days over 100.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Jake Brown

The campaign to improve energy efficiency kicked off 2013 with a pair of HIGH PROFILE efforts to expand key areas within its purview, those of expanding the focus on the importance of weatherization and energy efficiency, and more locally, making up for the short-fall in funding on the state level where LIHEAP assistance levels were concerned. Beginning with the national side of that drive, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer – Chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee -introduced a bill that Politico.com reported aimed at improving “building energy efficiency as one means of mitigating climate change.”  Boxer commented within announcing the legislation that her focus on weatherization of Federal Office Buildings was designed to lead by example and illustrate that where energy efficiency was concerned: “There doesn’t have to be ‘a bill’ on climate, there are going to be many approaches.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Jake Brown

Christmas came early for many Northeastern LIHEAP-reliant states this winter, both in the not-so-hot arrival of frigid weather and by contrast, the welcome news that Tens of Millions of dollars in LIHEAP funding was being released just in the nick of time to aid hundreds of thousands of families in keeping the heat on.    Beginning with one of New England’s traditionally iciest states, Maine, outgoing senior US Senator Olympia Snowe announced the farewell gift of $34.9 Million in federal heating assistance, hailing the funding as “invaluable for our state’s most vulnerable families who will struggle to pay heating bills.” Read the rest of this entry »