State utility and human service officials are highlighting a new agreement that aims to make it easier for struggling Pennsylvanians to have access to multiple forms of utility assistance with less paperwork.
Utility customers applying for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program — commonly known as LIHEAP — can now check a box that will allow their information to be shared with participating gas and electric utilities. This will allow eligible customers to be more easily enrolled in the utilities’ own assistance programs, which are run separately from the state-run LIHEAP.
With the change, consumers can avoid having to basically go through the same application process multiple times with multiple agencies and utilities, said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.
Utility-run assistance programs can include programs that lower bills or forgive past-due balances for low-income households, and home efficiency upgrades that help households use less energy. Statewide, such programs collectively provided about $654 million in customer aid last year.
“We understand that connecting to each of these programs can be confusing, and decentralization may cause a person to not know the full scope of resources available to them,” said Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Dr. Val Arkoosh in a prepared statement. “This data-sharing partnership will help ease some of those barriers and help eligible Pennsylvanians connect to services with greater ease.”
The program is voluntary, officials stressed, and the utility companies are required to protect the privacy of customers and cannot sell or share the data or use it for anything other than determining eligibility for aid.
Advocates for low-income customers, who have been pushing for the change for some time said it was good news.
“It really will transform the way that people interact with the assistance programs,” said Elizabeth Marx, executive director of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project.
The change is limited to participating electric and gas utilities, and it cannot be used for other utilities such as water bills.
In Pennsylvania, LIHEAP applications for the winter will open Nov. 4. For more information, customers can call the LIHEAP hotline at 1-866-857-7095.