The New York Times reported this week that the Trump Administration fired the entire staff of the low income Heating Energy Assistance Program, a more than four-decade old program within the Department of Health and Human Services that helps more than six million Americans afford their utility bills.
In Idaho, 38,448 households used the program last fiscal year, according to the state Department of Health and Welfare, with $17.7 million provided to participants for heating and cooling bills.
Households qualify by applying for the grant funding through one of eight community assistance agencies in Idaho, which also administer grants to cover winterization costs to make homes more energy efficient.
Idaho used another $1.2 million dollars in federal funds to administer the program.
The federal funding hasn’t been revoked, but with the 25 program administrators fired, it’s not clear how people who can’t afford their heating and cooling bills will access that money. About $378 million of the program’s $4.1 billion budget remains this year as summer approaches.
A study published last summer in The Journal of the American Medical Association showed heat-related fatalities in the United States more than doubled between 1999-2023, with a sharp rise over the last seven years of that span.
Idaho health and welfare spokesperson A.J. McWhorter wrote by email the department is working with their federal partners to determine the extent of the impact on this and other programs, and “all of our federal grants include exit strategies which we are prepared to implement.”
