In Memoriam LIHEAP
- Alec Regitsky
- May 23
- 11 min read
Updated: May 23
I have been meaning to do a write up on the death of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) since I learned the entire staff at the federal government was quietly put on administrative leave all the way back on April 2nd. I've been slow to post in part because I wanted to do thorough research and explain the importance of this program in great detail, but in truth the main thing delaying me was that I remain frustratingly, infuriatingly, and counterproductively overwhelmed by the drastic dismantling and corrupting of any and every aspect of our government that I had even a modicum of respect for. In the face of such blatant disregard for public service, public good, and the public at large, a blog post about one of the hundreds of government programs being axed feels pretty meaningless. But the program itself is far from meaningless, and that is why I wanted to write this in the first place.
Maybe LIHEAP really did only deserve the handful of back page articles that it received in the press in comparison to the attacks on democracy, and the potential hot war between India and Pakistan, and the disappearing of people off the street by masked police for nothing more than political opinion, and the complete reversal of the Inflation Reduction Act in the proposed house budget, and, and, and. But LIHEAP saved lives, and now it won't. LIHEAP kept apartments cool for seniors during heat waves, and now it won't. LIHEAP kept babies warm in the dead of winter, and now it won't. It kept disabled people's oxygen machines running, and now it won't. It freed some people from deciding whether to pay their energy bill or face eviction, and now it won't. And that means something. So let's get into it. I'll do my best to explain how LIHEAP came about, how much it has helped, why it's more important than ever, and even how it could still be saved.
A Brief History
As with most public policy that betters the lives of impoverished citizens, the beginnings of LIHEAP are found in a crisis. Specifically, the energy crisis of 1973 spurred by the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries' oil embargo against the United States and other countries who supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War[1]. Oil prices skyrocketed following the embargo and led to windfall profits for oil majors in the US to the tune of 60% when compared to their 1972 numbers[2]. Along with the increased cost of crude oil, heating oil and natural gas prices (the heating fuel of choice for ~25% and ~50% of the country, respectively) also increased tremendously[3]. Even prior to the embargo, however, shortages of natural gas and heating oil were well underway due to collusive practices by those same oil companies[4].
This perfect economic storm came to a head just as the depths of winter approached the country, teeing up low and middle income Americans to choose between immense financial hardship or freezing to death. In response, the Federal Energy Administration put a petroleum allocation program into place, entitling residential buyers of heating oil (and other petroleum products) to 110% of their previous months usage or a comparable share of the total available stock in the case of a shortage. Additionally, the Office of Economic Opportunity initiated task forces at national, regional, and state levels to provide grant funding to consumers during winter crises[5]. One standout among such programs was Maine's Project FUEL. In Boasberg and Feldesman's summary of the nation's policy response to the energy crisis they describe the program's success thusly:
"[Project FUEL] (1) established a crisis center in each county which worked closely with the [State Office of Petroleum Allocation] in solving consumer energy problems; (2) and winterized over 3000 homes of low-income people, using volunteers and enrollees in manpower training programs. Officials of the State Division of Economic Opportunity, the Project FUEL sponsor, reported that the cost of insulation materials was recovered, twice over, in lower fuel savings during the first year alone!"
A nationwide program was rolled out in early 1975 based on Maine's Project FUEL called the Emergency Energy Conservation Program (EECP), which was passed within the much broader Headstart, Economic Opportunity, and Community Partnership Act of 1974. Funds for weatherization were distributed through the newly dubbed Community Services Administration, a rebranding of the Office of Economic Opportunity [6][7]. In 1977 the EECP was expanded through the Supplemental Appropriations Act to also provide funds totaling $200 million to directly pay fuel suppliers on behalf of low-income families — with specific emphasis on households whose utilities had been shut off — rather than solely focusing on home weatherization. In all cases during this time, funding for homes in need of heating assistance in the winter were prioritized over those needing cooling assistance in the summer[7].
From 1977 until 1979 this same $200 million was appropriated with slowly expanded usages including recovery from "energy-related emergencies" or "substantial increased energy costs [7]." In 1979 they upped the ante for the upcoming year and appropriated $1.6 billion towards energy assistance through a myriad of programs. Finally, these various programs across the government attempting to alleviate the financial burden of extreme temperatures on US citizens were consolidated in the Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP), just one letter away from what we know today. This direct predecessor to LIHEAP was introduced in 1980 through the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, explaining my use of the term "windfall profits" earlier in this post[7]. By this point "heating oil prices [had] increased by 293%, natural gas prices by 155%, and electricity prices by 91% [7]" from 1970 prices while heating oil, natural gas, and electricity were heating 18%, 53%, and 18% of US homes, respectively [3]. Households were spending an average of 18.4% of their income on home energy consumption, but it could be as high as 30% for low-income families in colder regions[7].
Finally, in 1981, LIHEAP was born within the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. While the formulas, appropriations, and requirements have changed countless times over the years, it has quietly been aiding low-income Americans afford their energy bills for decades.
By the Numbers
Today, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, despite being a mouthful, does (did) basically exactly what its name implies. It is (was) a block grant provided by the federal government to help pay for energy costs, including home weatherization, to low income households. The funds — $6.5 billion in fiscal year 2022 — are (were) distributed by state governments, tribal governments, and the District of Columbia, where they could be supplemented by other state/municipal level provisions, and the distributing agencies are (were) granted significant leeway in what stipulations they could put on qualifications and how the money could be spent by their recipients. For FY2022 51% ($3.4 billion) of the allocated funds went to heating assistance, 8% ($541 million) towards cooling assistance, 20% ($1.3 billion) went to energy crisis assistance, and another 8% went toward home weatherization[8].
According to the Office of the Administration for Children & Families (ACF)'s latest fact sheet, for FY2023 LIHEAP aided 5 million households heat their homes, 927 thousand households cool their homes, and 61 thousand households weatherize their homes as well as help 1.4 million households following an energy crisis. Of those, 2.1 million housed someone with a disability, 996 thousand housed a child under 6 years old, and 2.4 million housed a senior. Of particular importance, 2.75 million homes either prevented utility shut off or were able to have their utilities turned back on thanks to assistance from LIHEAP during this period[9][10].
Below is some general LIHEAP data broken down by state, all of which were randomly selected and definitely are not the ten states who voted for Trump at the highest margins in 2024 with California and New York thrown in for a coastal elite comparison.
LIHEAP Random* State Data[10][11]
If there is one take away from the data above I would want to highlight it would be the disparity between the number of households eligible for LIHEAP assistance and the number of households served by the LIHEAP program. Only one state, New York, served half of the households who were eligible for assistance. California ranks at the bottom, serving one in fifteen eligible homes. On average in these 12 states one in four eligible homes received aid. This speaks to an underfunded and underutilized program, not one that should be shuttered. Removing New York and California from the mix LIHEAP assisted 255,790 households with a senior resident, 106,173 households with a child under 6 years old, and at least 387,387 households who faced utility shut offs (Arkansas, Idaho, and North Dakota did not provide estimates of prevented shut-offs or reconnections) in these 10 red-leaning states[10].
Regular readers of the Alec makes you depressed blog will already know, but I and LIHEAP data collectors are highlighting numbers around seniors and children because they are highly vulnerable to extreme temperatures. Exposure to extreme temperatures is a growing hazard in the US even without removing a crucial safety net like LIHEAP. According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association both heat-related and cold-related deaths have doubled since 1999[12][13]. Events like the 2021 Western North America heat wave that killed hundreds in the Pacific Northwest are virtually certain to increase in frequency as we continue to pollute carbon into the atmosphere[14][15]. Extreme cold events are expected to decrease with rising global average temperature, and while the climate impact on the polar vortex potentially causing cold snaps like the one seen in Texas in 2021 is still being debated, increased frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation is virtually certain[14][16]. Bluntly this means when it rains it will pour and when it snows it will avalanche.
As it stands, none of the 12 states I randomly* selected went without some extreme temperature fatalities in the last two years where there is official data, the full dataset is in the table below[17]. And these numbers are only the deaths determined to be caused by exposure to extreme temperatures, so it does not include the many deaths where exposure to extreme temperatures was a comorbidity. Imagine what these numbers will look like when those 2.75 million families who were able to prevent a shut-off or were able to afford reconnection thanks to LIHEAP don't get that benefit in the coming years. In the coming years when heat waves will be more frequent and more intense. And when, according to the US Energy Information Administration residential electricity prices will continue to rise, likely even more than previously forecast as the federal government prioritizes expensive fossil fuel buildouts and suffocates the cheap renewable energy generation previously expected to enter the nation's stack[18].
Extreme Temperature Mortality by State[17]
A Closing Window
LIHEAP is on death's door now. The program's staff within the Department of Health and Human Services was put on administrative leave on April 2nd, and unless they are asked to return before June 2nd they will be fully terminated. President Trump explicitly called for LIHEAP to be removed in his recent budget proposal, his third attempt at doing so. I am struggling to find any reporting on whether LIHEAP was saved in the budget passed by the House earlier this week, but a proposal submitted by Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas to reinstate LIHEAP staff was not included in the final bill.
Time is running out, but LIHEAP could still be saved! Call your senators and urge them to include LIHEAP in the final budget and to include Representative Davids’ proposal to rehire the staff put on leave (Amendment 389 in the House Committee on Rules). Call your governors and tell them you are worried about low income residents in your state as summer fast approaches and LIHEAP funds are not assured. Just call people in power and yell at them! It's cathartic. And if you or someone you know has benefited from LIHEAP, please share that story here, so the National Consumer Law Center can use it in their lobbying efforts. If you'd like more official verbiage to fight for LIHEAP through your organization, let me know, and I will happily share resources.
LIHEAP, like almost all government programs, was an imperfect tool, but its impacts were real, perfect or not. Should cooling assistance be more prioritized? Coming from someone who has now spent years studying extreme heat, yeah, probably. Would a return to focusing on weatherization be a more effective use of funds? Maybe! Should cooling assistance be required to include actually paying energy bills instead of only allowing for the purchasing of an A/C unit every few years like in New York? Obviously — what an insane model to adopt! Would more funding all together be better? Always! But millions of people have been better off because LIHEAP was there for them. And soon it won't be. That will always matter.
References
Corbett, M. (2013, Nov 22). "Oil Shock of 1973-74". Federal Reserve History. https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil-shock-of-1973-74
Holsendolph, E. (1974, Jan 24). "Chief 'Not Embarrassed'". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/24/archives/chief-not-embarrassed-exxons-profits-show-gain-of-59-for-year-and.html
US Census (2000). "Historical Census of Housing Tables: House Heating Fuel". United States Census Bureau. 1970 & 1980 Table. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-fuels.html
Hume, B. (1973, Dec 9). "Why was there a shortage before the shortage?". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/09/archives/the-case-against-big-oil-why-was-there-a-shortage-before-the.html
Boasberg, T.; Feldesman, J. L. (1975, Winter). "The Washington Beat: Consumer Legal Problems with the Continuing Energy Crisis". The Urban Lawyer. Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.128-135. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27893038
LIHEAP Clearinghouse. (n.d.). "History of LIHEAP". LIHEAP Clearinghouse. https://liheapch.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/webfiles/docs/History_of_LIHEAP.pdf
Perl, L. (2012, Feb 14). "The LIHEAP Formula: Legislative History and Current Law.". Congressional Research Service. https://neada.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/RL332751.pdf
Administration for Children and Families Office of Community Services. (2023). "Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2022". Department of Health and Human Services. Table I-6a. https://acf.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ocs/RPT_LIHEAP_RTC01BodyTTAProjects_FY2022-compliant.pdf
Administration for Children and Families Office of Community Services. (2024). "LIHEAP Fact Sheet". Department of Health and Human Services. https://acf.gov/ocs/fact-sheet/liheap-fact-sheet
National Energy & Utility Affordability Coalition. (2025). "LIHEAP State Sheets". National Energy & Utility Affordability Coalition. https://neuac.org/liheap-state-metrics/
US Census Bureau. (2024). "State QuickFacts". https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/
Liu, M.; Patel, V. R.; Wadhera, R. K. (2024, Dec 19). "Cold-Related Deaths in the US". The Journal of the American Medical Association. Vol. 333, No. 5, pp. 427-429. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2828342?guestAccessKey=c7859fb9-b0b4-40c8-a442-cce103a0727a&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=121924#google_vignette
Howard, J. T.; Androne, N.; Alcover, K. C.; et. al. (2024, Aug 26). "Trends of Heat-Related Deaths in the US, 1999-2023". The Journal of the American Medical Association. Vol. 332, No. 14, pp. 1203-1204. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2822854
Seneviratne, S.I., X. Zhang, M. Adnan, W. Badi, C. Dereczynski, A. Di Luca, S. Ghosh, I. Iskandar, J. Kossin, S. Lewis, F. Otto, I. Pinto, M. Satoh, S.M. Vicente-Serrano, M. Wehner, and B. Zhou, 2021: Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1513–1766, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.013.
Popovich, N.; Choi-Schagrin, W. (2021, Aug 11). "Hidden Toll of the Northwest Heat Wave: Hundreds of Extra Dead". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/11/climate/deaths-pacific-northwest-heat-wave.html
Kang, W., Krol, A. (2024, May 21). "The Polar Jet Stream and Polar Vortex". MIT Climate Portal. https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/polar-jet-stream-and-polar-vortex
CDC Wonder. (2025). "Underlying Cause of Death Data". US Center for Disease Control and Prevention. https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D158
Comstock, O. (2025, May 14). "U.S. electricity prices continue steady increase". U.S. Energy Information Administration. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65284
Comments