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What is it?

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) helps pay the winter heating bills or summer cooling bills of low-income and elderly people. During extreme weather conditions, people living in poverty and low-income elderly should not have to choose between buying fuel to heat or cool their homes and buying food for themselves and their families. Since two-thirds of the families receiving LIHEAP assistance have incomes of less than $8,000 a year, the program clearly helps the people who need help the most.

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program was authorized by Title XXVI of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 and began in 1982. Its purpose is "to assist low-income households, particularly those with the lowest income, that pay a high proportion of household income for home energy, primarily in meeting their immediate home energy needs." LIHEAP was designed to provide help to low-income households with a minimum of government bureaucracy and a maximum of involvement by civic institutions. LIHEAP evolved from earlier programs created in response to the energy crisis of the 1970s. The most notable of these was the Emergency Energy Assistance Program, established when Congress provided funds in 1977 to turn a pilot program into one that was national in scope.

The LIHEAP statute allows Indian tribes and tribal organizations and territories that wish to assist low-income households in meeting the costs of home energy to apply for a LIHEAP block grant. As of FY 2009, 156 tribes and tribal organizations received LIHEAP funds allowing them to directly operate LIHEAP, and five territories also operated LIHEAP programs. Tribal LIHEAP programs operate in 24 states, with grants to Indian tribes and tribal organizations being determined either by calculating each tribe's number of eligible households as a percentage of the number of eligible households in the state(s) in which it is located, or by awarding a higher amount agreed to in a state-tribe agreement.

The total amount of the tribal LIHEAP set-aside from FY 2009 regular block grant funds was $47,403,391. The territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands) received a total of $6,070,387. Seventeen tribes received LIHEAP allotments over $1 million for FY 2009. The smallest tribal grant amount is $4,000; the largest is $3,258,327.

As a result, most tribes serve relatively few households, compared to states. For FY 1996, the last year for which complete statistics are available, 123 tribal LIHEAP grantees reported serving 35,684 households with heating assistance; 2,238 with cooling assistance; 6,817 with crisis assistance; and 931 with weatherization. That same year five territorial grantees served 85,060 households with cooling assistance and 4,137 with crisis assistance.

Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority has continued to work hard for the Southeast Alaska administering the LIHEAP Program. Once part of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, THRHA adopted the LIHEAP program in November of 2007 under the former administering of 20+ year veteran Sandra Cross. Today, the LIHEAP team is headed by Louise Kadinger, a long time employee of THRHA under the Housing Programs Department and she is assisted by Martha McKinley who has had over 5 years of experience administring the SE Alaska Energy Assistance Program.