By Ben Cox
Photos/Submitted to The Source
“Each year, thousands of Illinois families struggle to keep their homes safe and comfortable during harsh winters and summers. They can include elderly neighbors on a fixed income, people coping with job loss or single parents struggling to make ends meet,” according to warmneighborscoolfriends.org. The Warm Neighbors Cool Friends program benefits customers between 200% and 300% of Federal Poverty Level (FPL) or 80% of the county’s Area Median Income (AMI) by the Energy Assistance Foundation. Established in 1982, the foundation provides energy bill payment assistance and home energy efficiency solutions to income-qualified families experiencing financial hardship.
The benefits from the program will be determined by the certified income and the size of the household. This program is specifically designed for people who make too much money to qualify for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). It is also a match program.
Energy Assistance Foundation Executive Director Susan Sams explains more about the program in-depth for those who might wonder if they qualify or those would possibly like to donate to help families needing energy assistance this winter.
Ben Cox: Could you tell me a little bit about who the program is designed to help?
Susan Sams: Sure. If I can give you a little bit of background, our legal name is the Energy Assistance Foundation, and we were established in 1982 by Illinois Power. Then, when Ameren acquired CIPS and SCO and Illinois Power, we then covered all of Ameren-Illinois territory, which is 44,000 square miles, and so more than three-fourths of the state of Illinois. It was originally designed as a weatherization program and then quickly evolved into bill payment assistance.
Back then, we helped zero to 200% of the federal poverty level. What was happening was people were [still] able to get LIHEAP, which is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program through the state and federal government. Our board of directors said, ‘Let’s help people who can’t get help any place else.’ So, what we do is we help moderate income customers, those who are shut out of LIHEAP.
If you’re a penny too much in income for LIHEAP, then you don’t qualify. So, we help people from 200 to 300% of the federal poverty level or 80% average median income for the county. As an example for one in the home, if your 30-day gross household income is between $3,333 and $4,713, you could qualify for our program.
For two people, the range is $4,358 to $5,383. All of our income ranges are on our website, which is warmneighborscoolfriends.org, and it’s all based on family size. We don’t want anybody to fall through the cracks. You can either get help from the low income program or you can get help from our moderate income program.
BC: At this time of year, people are doing natural gas heat and some are on electric heat. On the electric supply side of the bill, whenever you look at supply and delivery, Ameren kind of controls the delivery side, but the supply side can vary from customer to customer. Can you help people navigate those rates and maybe negotiate for a lower electricity supply rate?
SS: Yes. I’m glad you brought that up. They are called ARES, alternate retail electric suppliers. Ameren may have been your supplier in the past, or currently are your electricity supplier. We’ve had over the past couple years, all kinds of companies in Illinois who are not exactly honest in my opinion, because they go door to door and they act like they’re Ameren and they’re not.
Ameren never sends anybody to your door and they promised a low rate. The interesting thing is my own brother said, ‘Hey, somebody came to my door and I got 7 cents a kilowatt hour for 15 months.’ I said there’s no way. He says, ‘Yeah, they told me that’s what I get. So I signed up.’ I told him that wasn’t accurate.
So what they failed to mention to him is they were charging an additional $29 a month in administration costs. He was actually paying more in administration costs than he was for his actual usage and until I showed it to him on his bill. The supply rate is always on page three of your Ameren bill and it’s right in the middle.
The Ameren bill’s not really easy to read, but it’ll say electric delivery is Ameren and then your electric supplier and it’ll tell you your price to compare. Then below that, sometimes on page four it’ll tell you what Ameren’s current rate is. Ameren went up to 12 cents over the summer, but now it’s back to eight point something. I just really encourage everybody to check your bill every other month and see the rate. Make sure that you’re not paying more than you need to be.
We were running into cases where you would open up someone’s bill and on page three you’d find they were paying 29 cents a kilowatt hour and they had no idea that they were paying two, three, four times more than they needed to be paying. Here we are trying to help people with their bill, but some company has signed them up for a rate that may have been good for three months and then it goes up and then people just don’t check their bill and they’re mad at Ameren because their bill’s so high. That’s just not the case. People that are paying too much on an ARES can call Ameren and switch, or you can go to pluginillinois.gov and it’s not easy. It lists all of the suppliers in Illinois, but you have to go company by company and then put in your zip code to find out what your rate is. It’s unfortunate that it’s that hard to do, but that’s the world we live in.
BC: It seems like the demand for utility bill assistance has really gone up at least in the last two years that I can recall. You’ve already talked about income guidelines and helping out that middle income person or family. Can you give me a story about how it has helped people either as a recipient or even a donor to the program?
SS: Probably my favorite story is about a gentleman in the Metro East area and Ameren’s customer service. I work closely, of course, with Ameren, and they called and said, ‘This guy’s wife was in Barnes Hospital and he had some health issues and he owed $133.’ They explained to him that we have the program Warm Neighbors Cool Friends available.
He said, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no.’ They called me and told me to give him a call. I give him a call, his name’s Gerald. I said, ‘Gerald, you are exactly the type of person that our program’s designed to help.’ I talked and talked and he said, ‘Okay, the only way I’ll accept the $133, because my father was a Baptist minister, and he’d roll over in his grave if he knew I accepted help from someone is if I can send you $20 a month back to your foundation.’ I said that will work. He got the $133 pledge and he mailed us a check for $30 a month until it was paid. He said, ‘I tell all my friends, there’s no way you don’t have $5 a month to donate to this program.’
Then, Ameren spent a lot of money putting in automatic meters so that nobody has to come out to your house to read your meter. It was actually during COVID and I was on the phone with a mom who had some children learning remotely from home and her power got disconnected and she was in our income range.
While I was talking to her, I put a pledge on her account and because of these automatic meters, once the pledge is on the account for what she owes, the power was turned on. Sometimes it’s between three and seven minutes. We were still on the phone and her power got turned on and her kids started yelling, ‘Mom, the power’s on! The power’s on!’ She started crying. I started crying. It was really, really neat to hear the impact that you have in a family’s life in real time like that.
Then, we had another one. This young couple had a four-day old baby and their power was shut off and it was at night. I got the call late on a Friday night and I just logged into their account and they’d made a payment and we matched the payment and their power got turned on at 10:30 at night. They said they didn’t know how it happened or what happened. We started crying. You think if you’ve had children, you think of trying to have candles going or a flashlight to get up and feed the baby in the middle of the night.
The situations of the people we’re able to help are just really satisfying and fulfilling. I say I have the best job in the world. I have wonderful social service agencies that we administer the program through. Then, the people that we help have never needed help, have never asked for help, and we just can help them through a temporary financial crisis. It’s just very rewarding.
BC: This isn’t necessarily a handout, it’s a hand up, right?
SS: Correct. What we do is we match anything the customer has paid up to $500 one time in the heating season. So if they have made a payment but can make an additional payment that we can match, we try to maximize the grant. And so we’ll match anything. They pay up to $500, but the customer has to make a payment first. Something with this time of year, this is when a lot of the charitable giving is decided. And so on our website, warmneighborscoolfriends.org, there is a button to donate and it’s through PayPal with a credit card. You don’t have to have a PayPal account, but you can donate.
You can add an amount to your Ameren bill. You can call Ameren’s customer service, or you can mail an old fashioned check. There’s 1.2 million electric customers and 800,000 gas customers in Ameren-Illinois territory. If everybody donated $1, we would be able to help a lot more people.
BC: Where does the financial support for the program come from?
SS: Ameren has a charitable trust and that amount that they give us every year covers all administrative costs. Then, Ameren customers and Ameren employees donate to our program. Because the charitable trust covers all of our administrative costs, we’re one of the few not-for-profit organizations that can say that one hundred percent of a person’s donation goes directly to those in need.
For more information or to see if you qualify, visit warmneighborscoolfriends.org.
