- Utility bill is one more casualty of recession, By Erik Eckholm, December 19, 2009, New York Times: “For the Cardente family, the shutoff of their electricity and gas in September was a wrenching marker in a two-year downslide. A run of mishaps, including illness and the husband’s workplace injury, extensive structural damage from a burst water bed and the mother’s layoff from a nursing job, had already upended their middle-class lives. Then the pile of utility bills emerged as a headache to rival the past-due mortgage. ‘You always try to pay your mortgage or rent to keep a roof over your head,’ said Debra Cardente, the mother. ‘Then you ask, do you pay your electric or gas bill, pay your telephone or put food on the table?’ The recession has accentuated what was already a growing home-energy challenge for low-income and many middle-class households across the nation. Rising numbers have had their utilities shut off, causing desperate scrambles to pay arrears and penalties to get them restored…”
- Government helps more Americans pay their heat bills, By Julie Schmit, December 18, 2009, USA Today: “More Americans are getting help to pay home heating bills, and more are likely to need help as the economy continues to struggle, says the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association. Almost 8 million U.S. households received federal government help to heat homes in fiscal year 2009, up 33% from the prior year, the association says. Applications for assistance in the current fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, are running even higher as more people join the ranks of the long-term unemployed, the association says. ‘It looks like 2010 will be a very difficult winter for a lot of people,’ says Mark Wolfe, the association’s executive director. The group represents programs that subsidize energy bills…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty