Sun, July 26, 2007
City Council will aid low-income gas customers
By Jennifer Lin, Inquirer Staff Writer
With natural gas bills poised to spike again this year, City Council will spend $1 million in emergency funding to help delinquent gas customers clear their bills.Yesterday, a nonprofit group that helps low-income households with utility bills - the Utility Emergency Services Fund (UESF) - said it will be able to use the City Council funding to assist more than 2,600 families in averting shutoffs and wiping their accounts of debt.
John Rowe, executive director of UESF, said the additional money will allow the agency to more than double the number of families it helps with gas bills. Homeowners can call 215-972-5170 for information about grants or visit www.uesfacts.org.
Rowe said most of the agency's clients are working women with children, or families living on fixed incomes who get by on $11,800 a year.
He added that those households are spending 37 percent of their income on utility costs - gas, water and electricity. In 1999, utility bills accounted for only 28 percent of their household budgets.
"These are families who are struggling," Rowe said.
Philadelphia has the highest gas rates in the state and the cost of heating homes will get higher in September. (A typical household now pays more than $1,800 a year.) That's when the state's Public Utility Commission will rule on a base rate hike request that could raise household rates by 9.3 percent - or another $180 a year.
About 80,000 low-income households already are receiving discounts from PGW. Of those, about a third are facing shutoffs because of delinquent bills, said Doug Oliver, a spokesman for the city-owned gas utility.
City Councilwoman Marian Tasco said the elderly who subsist on fixed incomes are unable to cope. She said this past winter, an older neighbor living on Social Security slipped a note through her door, imploring, "Please help me with my gas bill."
"It's really one of the highest burdens on the budgets of families," Tasco said.
Find this article at: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/main_line_delaware/20070726
_Council_steps_in_to_aid_gas_customers.html
