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April 01, 2008

Rising Utility Costs Strain Assistance Groups

The growing cost of heating, cooling, and lighting homes means that more people are unable to pay their utility bills, and energy assistance programs are unable to fulfill the demand for their services, reports The Washington Post.

On a recent day at the Light House Shelter for the Homeless, in Annapolis, Md., the emergency-assistance fund — which used to be distributed over a month — was depleted in just two hours to help those with unpaid utility bills. Many people who showed up to receive help went away unassisted after the group’s money ran out.

“We’ve always had the very poor coming in for assistance,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association. “What is different now is that we have more working-class people requesting assistance than before.”

In the Washington region, for example, major electric-utility rates have risen an average of 47 percent since 2001. At Pepco, the local utility provider, 153,000 residential accounts were in arrears, a 16-percent increase from the previous January.

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