On a beautiful spring afternoon, the birds were chirping as 60-year-old Jeanette Cutts sat on her front porch in Dorchester. On a day like this, cold weather seems like a lifetime away, but Cutts is already thinking about it.
“Winter in New England is inevitable,” she said. “Like, this is great. This is wonderful. But it is coming.”
She’s worried about how she’s going to afford to heat her house when the cold weather arrives.
“Filling our oil tank — that’s about $800 or $900 every time you have to fill it. And then, on average, it’s about three times in the winter,” Cutts said.
She and her husband run a small business, but it only provides a small income. To help pay for all that oil in winter, she has gotten assistance from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
Created by Congress in 1981, the federal program provides block grants to states to help homeowners and renters struggling with their utility bills. About 125,000 Massachusetts households got help from LIHEAP this winter to pay for heat. In warmer states, the program also helps with electricity bills for summer cooling.
Soon, families may stop receiving that support. The entire federal staff behind LIHEAP was fired last month, and the program was recently zeroed out in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget.
“How are we going to make this happen when we’re already struggling trying to keep afloat?” Cutts asked. “I mean, we’re not even talking about living exorbitant lives and all these other things, but just making ends meet. And now this is gonna be taken? All of it. And for what reason?”
The president’s budget cites a 15-year-old report that said there was fraud and abuse of the program. A federal task force has since made recommendations that have been implemented.
The application process is now very strict, according to Sharon Scott Chandler of the group Action for Boston Community Development, which helps administer the program for about 20,000 households in the Boston area.
“We are heavily regulated and we stick to very stringent documentation and rules and regulations that govern this program,” Scott Chandler said. “And there are certain people who are eligible.”
The president’s budget also says the program is unnecessary because of state policies preventing utilities from disconnecting low-income households for nonpayment.
But protections against having the heat turned off during the cold months don’t make any outstanding bills disappear, said Liz Berube of the group Citizens for Citizens, Inc., which administers LIHEAP for the communities of Taunton and Fall River.
“The moratorium doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paying your bill. You’re just protected from being shut off,” she said.
Also, for the 22% of Massachusetts homeowners like Jeanette Cutts who heat their homes with oil, they can’t refill their tank if they can’t pay. Berube said cutting off fuel assistance could prove fatal.
“In the winter here, people will put their oven on and, you know, open the door and try to get the apartment warm by very bad, dangerous means,” Berube said.
Tad DeHaven of the Libertarian think tank the Cato Institute says yes, some people need energy assistance. But it’s the responsibility of states to provide it, he said, not the federal government.
“Because state and local governments are closer to the people, and these are local and state needs,” DeHaven said. “They are not national needs.”
It’s not the first time President Trump has tried to get the federal government out of the home energy assistance business. In his first term, he zeroed out the budget for LIHEAP twice, for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. Both times, Congress responded by funding the program. Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts said he’ll try to make that happen again.
“More than half of LIHEAP funds go to states that voted for Donald Trump in 2024,” Markey said. “Now, we’re going to need Republicans of courage who will stand up on each and every one of the issues where Trump this year is severely cutting critical programs.”
For Cutts, making sure families like hers can heat their homes is a moral issue.
“If you just cut something out without actually looking at the ramifications, on the effects that it’s gonna have on families, that’s being inhumane, in a time when we need humanity.”
And she’s hoping members of Congress on both sides of the aisle agree.
