Four million homes had their heat or power turned off this year.
(Photo by Elizabeth A. Sellers, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)
Millions of families had their heat
or electricity shut off this year.
Rebecca Williams reports that happened
even though government assistance
for energy bills doubled:
Transcript
Millions of families had their heat
or electricity shut off this year.
Rebecca Williams reports that happened
even though government assistance
for energy bills doubled:
Record numbers of Americans are having trouble paying their heating or power bills.
Mark Wolfe is with the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association. He represents the state agencies that help people pay their energy bills.
He says when families use up their allotment of energy assistance, things can get tough.
“It’s pretty awful – they go to payday lenders, pay high interest rates to get extra money, they borrow from relatives, they cut back on medicine, they turn the heat down to dangerous levels. These are families that’ve already gone from steak to chicken to rice. They don’t have a lot of choices.”
Four million homes had their heat or power turned off this year.
Wolfe says unless the economy improves next year, the number of families needing help with their bills could be even greater.
31% of low-income people said they kept their home so cold it felt unsafe. 20% said they had their electricity or gas shut off for some amount of
time.
(Photo by Gerald Downing, courtesy of FEMA)
Now that the price of oil has
dropped, the cost of heating your home
won’t be as high as experts were predicting
this summer. But millions of Americans
are still struggling to pay their heating
bills. Rebecca Williams reports in some
rare cases having your heat shut off can
mean being evicted from your home. And,
in the worst case, it can even mean losing
your children:
Transcript
Now that the price of oil has
dropped, the cost of heating your home
won’t be as high as experts were predicting
this summer. But millions of Americans
are still struggling to pay their heating
bills. Rebecca Williams reports in some
rare cases having your heat shut off can
mean being evicted from your home. And,
in the worst case, it can even mean losing
your children:
Demetria Salinas has three kids. Money is tight and she’s worried about
getting through the winter.
“I’m kinda nervous because I mean what if we don’t have enough to pay the
bills, then what do we do?”
She says she tries to save on heat by putting extra sweaters on her kids, and
turning the furnace off.
“Put the gas on for a little bit and turn it off, and when it gets a little bit
colder, put it back on. But it does definitely mean layering up, even in the
house.”
She says that’s hard on her kids.
Many parents are in these impossible situations. The National Energy
Assistance Director’s Association has found low-income people often have
to choose between paying their heating bills and feeding their kids.
31% said they kept their home so cold it felt unsafe. 20% of low income
people said they had their electricity or gas shut off for some amount of
time.
Phil Thompson works for Capital Area Community Services in Lansing,
Michigan. His agency helps people pay their bills and talks with utility
companies to buy people more time. He says usually utilities won’t shut
heat off in the coldest days of winter.
“Most utility companies are sympathetic to the situation of not having heat
in the wintertime. There’s always those horror stories of a senior or
handicapped individual who froze because their utility was turned off.
They’re going to do everything they can to keep that from happening.”
But Thompson says he sees a lot of people get their heat shut off in the
spring, and it can still get cold then.
Now, in some states, if the heat is shut off – even for just a little while – you
can be evicted.
“In some cases where there’s small children it’s very possible that Child
Protective Services would get involved and possibly remove the kids from
the household when there’s no utilities.”
That’s right – the state can take kids away if the utilities are shut off.
We talked with foster care workers in several states, and they all said that
this is rare. They said they do everything they can to keep families together,
and they can sometimes help pay heating bills. But they also said a home
with no heat is often a sign that something else is wrong.
Andrea Yocum is an investigator with Child Protective Services north of
Detroit.
“Typically there’s other reasons why they’re removed for example, if the
family’s just not willing to pay their bills because they’re using the money
for other things like drugs or alcohol.”
But Yocum says sometimes it’s just not the family’s fault.
“I have had families that were evicted as a result of their landlord not paying
their bills, and utilities turned off the same because the landlord’s not taking
care of what’s happening within the home.”
If families are evicted, it can be temporary, maybe just a couple days until
the heat’s back on. But for families living in poverty, having the heat turned
off again can happen as soon as the next bill is late.
There is some good news this year. There’s federal money that states use to
help people pay their heating bills. Because fuel prices were expected to go
up, Congress doubled that pot of money this year. Most states are reporting
they’re in a better position to help people now.
But winter is just beginning and they’re already getting a lot more people
asking for help with their heating bills than in the past.
A Conesville, OH smokestack. The Cuyahoga Valley Initiative has found a way to turn potential pollutants into money. (Photo by Kenn Kiser)
The Rust Belt regions of the United States are looking at new ways to make industrial prosperity and environmental recovery work hand-in-hand. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shula Neuman reports on an effort that could be a model for industrial areas throughout the nation:
Transcript
The Rust Belt regions of the United States are looking at new ways to make industrial
prosperity and environmental recovery work hand-in-hand. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Shula Neuman reports on an effort that could be a model for industrial
areas throughout the nation:
(sound of birds)
This area of Cleveland near the Cuyahoga River is where John D. Rockefeller first set up
his Standard Oil empire. The Cuyahoga is infamous for being the river that caught fire in
1969 and it became a symbol of the nation’s pollution problem.
Cleveland businesses and industries still live with that legacy. But through a new effort
called the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative, they’re trying to overcome it – although on the
surface it doesn’t look like there’s much happening.
Today, smoke stacks from steel plants still tower above head … below, like a jumble of
twisted licorice sticks, railroad tracks run through the meadows alongside the Cuyahoga.
Silos and old brick buildings line the banks of the river.
For Paul Alsenas, it’s an amazing place — not so much for what it has now, but for what it
can become. Alsensas is the director of planning for Cuyahoga County, the lead
organizer of the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative. The idea of the initiative is not to abandon
industry, he says, but to incorporate environmental and social principals into industry,
which could attract new businesses.
One of the more progressive aspects of the Initiative is something called “industrial
symbiosis.” Alsenas says industrial symbiosis works like natural ecology…
“An ecology of industry where nutrients flow from one form of life to another and make
it tremendously efficient and so therefore we have a competitive advantage. The
Cuyahoga Valley Initiative is not just about sustainability; it’s also whole systems
thinking, it’s also competitive strategy.”
Here’s how it works: waste from one company—a chemical by-product perhaps—is
used by a neighboring company to create its product. And that company’s product is then
sold to another company within the valley—and so on.
Alsenas says it’s already started: some companies located in the Cuyahoga Valley have
been sniffing out opportunities for sharing resources before anyone heard of the
Cuyahoga Valley Initiative. Joe Turgeon, CEO and co-owner of Zaclon, a chemical
manufacturer in the valley, says the Initiative sped things up.
“We pull all the members together and say, ‘OK, this is what I’ve got, this is what you’ve
got; here are some of the materials I need, here are some of the assets I have.’ And an
asset can be anything from a truck scale to a rail siding to by-product energy to
chemicals.”
Zaclon and its neighbor General Environmental Management have already begun their
symbiotic relationship. GEM now buys a Zaclon by-product, sulfuric acid, and in turn
Zaclon purchases a GEM byproduct. GEM president Eric Loftquist says the benefits go
beyond simply saving his company money.
“You know, we do business all over the country… but when you look around you see that
for every dollar you keep in this county, that generates taxes, generates jobs and the
benefits just keep rolling down. So you always want to look within.”
Loftquist says the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative encourages that effort. He says it’s
remarkable that it’s all coming together at the right time and with the right stakeholders.
It brings businesses together with government and area non-profits—including some
environmental groups—in a way not thought possible by industry and environmentalists
in the past.
Catherine Greener is with the Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit think tank that
studied the Cuyahoga Valley and is helping to get the initiative off the ground. She says
this area of the river—known as the regenerative zone could put Cleveland on the world’s
radar as a new business model.
“Cleveland has been known for being one of the seats of the industrial revolution and
what we’re seeing is a new industrial model that can emerge. How can you create
manufacturing jobs, industry jobs without jeopardizing the health and welfare of all the
people involved and also, to overuse a word, to ‘green’ the area around it?”
Greener says industrial symbiosis is a workable, practical solution because it makes
business sense… not just environmental sense…
“Sometimes I think about it as finding money in your pocket after you’ve washed your
pants. It’s always a bonus and you’ve always had it. And the resources that you have
here you’re just reinvesting in them and finding them and looking at them differently.”
The participants agree that “industrial symbiosis” won’t solve all the waste problems, but
it’s one part of a movement that’s making industrial cities re-think their relationship with
business and the environment.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Shula Neuman.
It’s the height of the season for luscious, farm-grown fruits and vegetables. But most people, who get help from the government with buying their food, can’t take advantage of the fresh, nutritional food at their local farmers’ markets. The food stamp system was replaced in many states with new Electronic Benefit Transfer cards. And since vegetable stands don’t usually come equipped with electricity, both farmers and many poor people were missing the harvest. But one state hopes to change that with a new pilot program that’s bringing wireless EBT technology to farmers’ markets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak has more on how the program is catching on:
Transcript
It’s the height of the season for luscious, farm grown fruits and vegetables. But
most people, who
get help from the government with buying their food, can’t take advantage of the
fresh, nutritional
food at their local farmers’ markets. The food stamp system was replaced in many
states with
new Electronic Benefit Transfer cards. And since vegetable stands don’t usually
come equipped
with electricity, both farmers and many poor people were missing the harvest. But
one state
hopes to change that with a new pilot program that’s bringing wireless EBT
technology to farmers
markets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak has more on how the
program is
catching on:
Six children form a low circle around Tammy Johnson’s skirt. They move together in
a cluster
through the market, checking out overflowing baskets filled with crayon-colored
produce. The
single mom from Niagara Falls comes to the city’s outdoor market regularly in the
summer.
Johnson says she has to.
“Because I no more than get stuff and it’s gone usually a day or two later, so I
prefer it over going
to the grocery store myself, because you can get a lot of your fruits and vegetables
a lot cheaper
here than in the grocery stores, plus it’s a lot cheaper, a lot better.”
But Johnson says even here it’s hard to stretch her limited budget. She’ll soon get
help from the
state. They granted her an Electronic Benefit Transfer card to buy food for her
family. It’s not
activated yet, but once it is, Johnson says she especially looks forward to using it
at the farmers
market. But Johnson’s enthusiasm for the EBT cards is rare. Most farmers here, and
at other test
sites, say they’ve made few EBT transactions. Johnson thinks it’s because people
still don’t know
they can use the cards at the farmers markets.
“Nobody really knows how the system works yet. They put an article in the paper,
saying the
farmers accept it, but nobody I know has actually used their cards.”
(natural sound – people making purchases)
Small signs reading “We Gladly Accept EBT” dangle from a handful of the farmers’
stands. But
they go largely unnoticed. Crowds of people wait along the rows of tables to
exchange crisp
dollar bills for crisp produce. It’s the way business has always been done at the
open-air markets.
Farmer John Senek peers up from under the brim of his tattered green cap. He says
the old way is
good enough for him.
“Do you have the EBT machine here?”
(Senek) “No, we got one home but we don’t use it.”
“Why is that?”
(Senek) “Too much work. I don’t know how to run it. I’m too old for that stuff.”
Sixty of the hand held devices were given to farmers such as Senek who volunteered
for the pilot
program in May. They did get limited training and the promise that the machines
would be free
to use – thanks to a federal grant – for at least the first year. After that, there
could be a small
monthly charge, and per use fee. The payments take a day to transfer into the
farmer’s bank
accounts. The farmers say they signed on hoping the EBT’s would bring them more
business.
But after the first couple months, optimism is wilting.
(Miller) “We just turn it on, but it takes a second for it to pop up.”
Even farmers who are still hopeful the idea will catch on are concerned about losing
cash
business while punching in numbers.
As Farmer Jim Miller soon demonstrates, it takes more than just a second. It took
about twenty-
seconds for this trial transaction just to get started.
Miller says it might not seem like a big deal. But he says the lost time could mean
losing cash
paying customers.
“It takes a little bit more time than taking two dollars from somebody, or ten
dollars from
somebody. So, you’re wasting time while you could be working with other people.”
New York and the USDA are weighing the program carefully to see if it’s worth
expanding to
other states.
Nathan Rudgers is New York’s Commissioner of Agriculture. He says they have faith
that with
better promotion and education, the system will eventually help farmers and improve
nutrition for
food stamp customers.
“We are addressing the issue of education. We recognize the fact that it takes
awhile sometimes
to get new technology going, but we’re confident that business will pick up,” said
Rudgers. “I
think it’s going to turn out to be a win for both the farmer and the food stamp
customer. And
when we can do that, it’s a pretty successful endeavor.”
Single mom Tammy Johnson agrees. She says for her, and her six children, the EBT
system is a
fresh idea worth keeping.
“I just went today to get my card, so my card won’t be in effect until Monday, but
I’ll be back
Monday.”
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Joyce Kryszak in Niagara Falls.
Four million homes had their heat or power turned off this year. (Photo by Elizabeth A. Sellers, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)
