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Community

LIHEAP Money Still Available

Help is still available for low income residents of the Illinois Quad Cities who are having trouble paying their energy bills. Even though it began taking applications last summer for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Project Now says money is still available.

Executive Director Dwight Ford says because of the pandemic, the income guidelines have been raised. That means someone earning 200 per cent of the federal poverty level, instead of 120 per cent in past years, can still qualify.

"Because some people don't like hearing "no" and because disappointment is hard when your life is starting to unravel at the seams. And so they just say I don't want to set myself up - if I'm not going to get it I don't want to waste the time, but you don't know. Allow us to do the numbers, alllow us to do the math, allow us to see what other challenges you may have that we may be able to facilitate some assistance in."

The LIHEAP program can also help people pay for utility re-connections and fixing their furnaces.

Ford says last year Project Now received 6,200 applications for LIHEAP funding, but this year reached that number this week, and there's still several months left to apply (5/31).

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.