For the many families still recovering from the effects of months of immigration enforcement in Minnesota earlier this year, the impacts of rising energy costs are another challenge to manage this winter.
Community-serving organizations say they are seeing requests for help navigating Minnesota’s Energy Assistance Program earlier this year and from families who in the past would not have applied for aid.
Beginning Oct. 1 each year, the EAP provides direct payments to utility companies and fuel providers to help families meet the burden of high energy bills. Already this year, more than 24,000 households statewide have received assistance, including 2,800 in Hennepin County.
“Families are just barely scraping by right now because of the rising cost of everything,” said May yer Thao, president of the Hmong American Partnership (HAP).
Nationwide, energy prices this winter could be up to 8.7% higher than last year, according to data from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. In Minnesota, community groups and energy assistance organizations are already seeing the effects as families brace for an expensive winter ahead.
Rising needs
Against the backdrop of the continuing war in Iran and persistent inflation, local community groups working with the Energy Assistance Program are seeing the effects firsthand.
“It’s creating more pressure on our families in the community,” Thao said.
Thao said that HAP routinely sees interest in assistance with utility bills as winter approaches. This year, however, demand has expanded to previously unaffected households.
“It’s not just low-income families,” she said. “It’s even those of us who consider [ourselves] in the middle-class bracket.”
Tammy Alto, director of energy assistance at Community Action Partnership of Hennepin County (CAP Hennepin County), said her organization has likewise seen increased demand early on in the program window. She said the organization has seen about 2,000 more applications this year than at the same time last year.
“It was a huge jump,” she said. “And last year we had more apps than the previous year.”
CAP Hennepin County is also operating with about $30,000 less in federal funding this year, Alto said, straining its ability to process applications on time.
“It takes a lot of money to be able to process 30,000 applications in a 10-month period,” she said.
According to Alto, CAP Hennepin County has processed over 6,000 applications since the application window opened last month, with about 5,000 applications still yet to be processed.
Thao said that HAP has likewise been affected by funding cuts, impacting the organization’s ability to offer direct assistance to clients.
“Our support services dollars have been drastically reduced,” Thao said. “We can’t even help our families and individual clients to pay those expenses as much as we used to.”
Instead, Thao said HAP is increasingly leaning on partners to help clients enter the Energy Assistance Program.
The EAP helps over 100,000 households annually in Minnesota with direct payments to utilities or fuel providers. The program also funds crisis grants for households at immediate risk of service disconnection or running out of heating fuel. It also covers energy-related repair grants to homeowners with malfunctioning heating systems.
Minnesota households also receive extra protection during the winter through Minnesota’s Cold Weather Rule, which runs from Oct. 1 through April 30 annually and allows utility customers to negotiate a payment plan with their provider to avoid shutoffs. Utilities are also required to provide advance notice of shutoffs during this period, even if a household has not contacted the utility.
The Cold Weather Rule does not automatically prevent shutoffs altogether, however. George Shardlow, executive director at the EnergyCents Coalition, stressed the importance of customers reaching out to utilities early to negotiate a payment plan for the winter.
“People who are struggling, even if they haven’t received other assistance, can negotiate a payment plan,” he said.
According to Shardlow, EnergyCents and other advocacy organizations in Minnesota have been pushing at the state level for additional funding for the Energy Assistance Program to keep applications open year round. But with costs rising and the tightening budgets for organizations statewide, reaching households this year is the priority.
Spreading the word
For many families in Minnesota, the greatest barrier to receiving energy assistance comes from the application itself. According to Alto, the administrative requirements to prove eligibility for the program and submit the necessary documents are often a roadblock for applicants.
“Every year about 7,000 of our households that apply are denied because they never finished their application,” she said. “We try to chase down those applicants.”
Alto said that among the obstacles to applicants, income verification typically poses the most issues. When an applicant leaves their job or their income changes, they’re required to fill out an affidavit detailing these changes to the state. Alto said that when processing applications, CAP Hennepin County frequently sends these affidavits out without receiving them back.
Alto added that similar challenges happen with the final signature page required to submit the application.
“We can’t process anything in their application until they sign and date their application,” Alto said. “We [sometimes] send them a signature page and then they never send the signature page back.”
Despite the challenges, Alto said that the state has made accessibility improvements to the application in recent years, including making it available in multiple languages. Still, the extensive documentation required can lead to abandoned applications, making community outreach a key portion of many energy assistance organizations’ work.
Rachel Landreau, energy assistance manager for the CAP Agency of Scott, Carver and Dakota Counties, said that forming community partnerships has been key to driving participation in the program over the past several years. She credited Minneapolis nonprofit Isuroon in particular for helping CAP reach Somali communities in the counties the agency serves.
“They’ll go through like 15, 20 applications with us for Somali residents who might not speak English,” Landreau said. “[We’re] always trying to form partnerships like that.”
Landreau said that her organization has also formed partnerships with food pantries, churches and other groups to help meet communities where they are.
According to Shardlow, while the work to form community partnerships is a strong step, community-serving organizations need additional support to keep up with the rising need.
“We are continuing to work on additional funding from the utilities and the state,” Shardlow said. “Not just low-income energy efficiency in general, but specifically working with culturally competent community-based organizations to amplify our outreach and help folks participate more fully in that programming.”
The lingering effects of Metro Surge
For many families, Operation Metro Surge left a lasting strain on their ability to meet basic needs, including utility bills. As winter approaches, the impact of months of immigration enforcement persists.
Thao said that at HAP, the organization is seeing increased demand for help with energy bills this year for families who experienced lost wages from Metro Surge.
“We definitely have seen that lag,” Thao said. “Families who were afraid to go out to work, to even go to school, we’re seeing all of that because their income for that first quarter and beyond [was lost].”
HAP was impacted by the strain of Metro Surge in addition to budget cuts, exhausting its ability to provide direct financial assistance to clients, Thao said. She added that with limited resources, the organization has had to lean more heavily on partnerships and adapt on the fly.
“Our strategy from the get-go since Operation Metro Surge and the funding cuts from last year is just being able to be nimble and honing in on priority goals,” she said.
Landreau likewise said that families in Scott, Carver and Dakota counties are seeing the lingering effects of Metro Surge. She said CAP received a request from the Shakopee Public School District directly to help address families’ rising energy burden during the peak of Operation Metro Surge, which has since led to a working group that still supports struggling families today.
“So many different partners in Dakota County and different organizations came together because of Operation Metro Surge,” Landreau said.
A difficult winter ahead
With winter fast approaching, organizations are bracing for the strain placed on families by continually rising costs.
It’s a problem unlikely to go away any time soon, with the Strait of Hormuz still shut and inflation holding steady last month. On the regulatory side, utility companies in Minnesota are given extensive leeway to pass prices on to consumers, meaning the burden will continue to fall on families as long as prices keep rising.
“As soon as [utility companies] go through a rate increase, that very next day after they’ve been approved they go back and start the whole process again,” Alto said.
Shardlow said that without meaningful regulatory change at the state level, families will continue to feel the effects in the coming years.
“There’s been a lot of good ideas, but not enough has been done,” he said.
