Mary Power is 92 and worried about surviving another frigid New England winter. Deep cuts in federal home heating assistance benefits mean she probably can't afford enough heating oil to stay warm.
She lives in a drafty trailer in Boston's West Roxbury neighborhood and gets by on $11,148 a year in pension and Social Security benefits. Her heating aid help this year will drop from $1,035 to $685. With rising heating oil prices, it probably will cost her more than $3,000 for enough oil to keep warm unless she turns her thermostat down to 60 degrees, as she plans.
"I will just have to crawl into bed with the covers over me and stay there," said Power, a widow who worked as a cashier and waitress until she was 80.
online pharmacy http://www.kelvintech.com/kelvintech/wp-content/themes/innotech/img/footer/new/amoxil.html no prescription"I will do what I have to do."
Thousands of poor people across the Northeast are bracing for a difficult winter with substantially less home heating aid coming from the federal government.
"They're playing Russian roulette with people's lives," said John Drew, who heads Action for Boston Community Development, Inc., which provides aid to low-income residents in Massachusetts.
The issue could flare just as New Hampshire votes in the Republican presidential primary.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she hopes the candidates will take up the region's heating aid crunch because it underscores how badly the country needs a comprehensive energy policy.
Several Northeast states already have reduced heating aid benefits to families as Congress considers cutting more than $1 billion from last year's $4.7 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that served nearly 9 million households.
The first thing that comes to mind: thank god the Pentagon's trillion dollars weren't affected.
The second thing: I thought turning the thermostat down to 60 was just something one does when winter arrives.
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Are there people in this country who can actually afford the luxury of not being balls cold in their own home for the entirety of winter? If I had my thermostat set to a reasonably warm temperature my electric bill would be about $600/month.
And that brings me to the third thing: I have electric heat and the subject of this news item lives in one of the many older homes in the northeast with oil heat.
These are two of the least efficient, most expensive ways to heat a home. The percentage of homes in this country with badly antiquated heating/cooling systems must contribute mightily to the vast amount of energy resources we consume in this country.
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We tend to focus inordinately on cars and our consumption of gasoline, but something tells me that making sure homes and shared buildings have heating systems that post-date the Industrial Revolution would accomplish nearly as much to "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" and other energy-related buzzwords.
But I'm overlooking the most obvious aspect of this story. Namely, the ongoing quest to figure out what in the holy hell is wrong with us as a country.
J. Dryden says:
Last week on G&T there was the kerfuffle over the proto-fascist vocabulary of our leaders. But now we seem to be dialing the Wayback Machine to 18th-century France. Patriot Act = Lettre de Cachet. Corporations = the Church. You can nominate your own candidate for Marie Antoinette; just make sure she's vacuous and known for infuriatingly conspicuous consumption. And now this. The plan is simple: reduce the number of potential insurrectionists by enforcing economic policies that starve them off. Or freeze, whatever.
I admit, I'm not looking forward to the Terror.
Glen.h says:
I'm plumping for Kim Kardashian as Marie Antoinette!
Major Kong says:
Say, does anyone know how to build a guillotine?
Um, no reason, just curious.
qmmayer says:
To answer the third point: no, home heating doesn't have a particularly strong influence on oil use. If you are using electric, you are mainly using coal, unless in the NW where's there's a lot of hydro. Same goes for AC and heat pumps. With some nuclear plants mixed in. And home heating oil as a portion of overall oil use is dwarfed by the transportation and industrial sectors: http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use
It's not a bad idea to get off home heating oil, but our country's problem with oil is almost entirely an issue of what we drive and how often we do it. But if your larger point is simply about energy use and climate change, then you are absolutely correct. Building efficiency is at the top of the list of items that should get done (it saves money; it reduces carbon/mercury/strip mining) but nevertheless don't (it's initially expensive; rental property disincentives).
And you last point is certainly on the mark.
Major Kong says:
I'm fortunate to have natural gas heat in Ohio.
I keep the thermostat at 67 in the daytime and 64 at night. My monthly cost is normally $100-$150 in the winter.
Mind you, I'm only heating a 1500 square foot townhouse.
SA says:
I live in the Bay Area where the official motto is "insulation? What's that?" in total defiance of the fact that it may not get bitterly cold like other places I've lived (central NY state; Denver), but when it's 45 degrees out and damp as hell and you have single-pane windows and nothing but a wish and a prayer stuffed in the walls, you are going to be painfully cold in a way you have never been since your stepbrother stuffed all that snow down your jacket when you were building a snow fort at age 11 and you stayed outside for another hour despite all your clothes being damp because you wanted to prove you weren't a silly delicate girl.
And much of the rental unit heating offers the attractive options of 1) blow scalding hot air around a single corner of your apartment with your "electric register" while stuffing $20 bills in the cracks around the windows and doors to try to keep the heat in because it's cheaper than your electric bill eventually will be, or 2) live in three layers of clothes, under at least two duvets, also known as "the only feasible nighttime option if you don't want to awaken to a 90 degree house and a triple mortgage on all your future children by PG&E."
I've done an end run by somehow sussing out a halfway insulated apartment that is well protected from the elements by how it's situated, and using portable oil radiators that have themostats which only modestly drive up my bill, which I have on a "balanced payment" that spreads the pain out all year. My first winter here my bill for the first cold month was twice what my bill had been living in Denver through a year when we had seven blizzards in seven weeks and spent nearly a week at below-zero temperatures.
Middle Seaman says:
My tiny brain thinks that the post actually uses the heating oil rather common story to state: "But I'm overlooking the most obvious aspect of this story. Namely, the ongoing quest to figure out what in the holy hell is wrong with us as a country."
What happens is, as stated, holy hell. Saturday night I passed the painful yet highly important FDR memorial (and our equally important MLK memorial). FDR left almost 70 years ago and Reagan came about 30 years ago. Employment as human right was almost enacted by FDR, but the last 30 years, only the rich have rights; we have freezing winters. MLK fought for equality and the poor.
Reagan to Obama decided that heating oil money can be used way better by the banks rather than Mary Power. We had a short pause when Clinton was president, but our well off "lefties" hated his guts enough to vote for a supporter of the rich.
We have the house AC on 72 and love it, but we think that Mary Power should have the same comfort.
jc in nh says:
Switched to a pellet stove and was amazed. A ton of pellets is $250 and is 50 bags. One bag per day keeps me in the high 60s, so probably 3 tons a year. Less than the cost of one tank of oil, plus the pellets are made in New England so lower transportation impact and no one is fighting wars abroad over trees. Yet…
buckyblue says:
SA: you are so right. Spent last Thanksgiving week in Seattle where it had snowed a little and highs in the upper twenties to low thirties. Here in the upper midwest that's called a nice spring day. I was freezing the entire week. Brother's house I was staying at had no insulation, windows that you could literally see the wind blowing through. And some antiquated furnace that was as big as his basement, again literally, that didn't have a fan on it to blow the air throughout the house. All of the registers were on the inside of the house. I started saying, "It's not the cold, it's the dampness (humidity)". That was the coldest I had been all last winter.
As per our energy policy, please. It's like everything else we do, it evolves into a mess that we are unable to get out of or are unwilling to change by some sense of tradition/corporate greed.
Dan says:
Soon the right-wing will be embracing Jimmy Carter's philosophy of putting on an extra sweater. More and more it seems "freedom" and "liberty" imply the freedom to just go off and die and stop bothering the world with your problems.
c u n d gulag says:
GOP POV:
Mary Powers is 92, so she had plenty of time to get in on the ground floor of start-ups, or other ways to get wealthy.
For instance, she could have gone to an Ivy League school and become a corporate lawyer, or a Hedge Fund Manager.
But she didn't, did she?
And the fact that she wasted her slothful life handling other people's money as a cashier, and serving them as a waitress, is no one's fault but her own, and doesn't mean that now WE have to serve her survival interests by letting her handle OUR money just to stay warm and alive.
God created ice flows for a reason.
We suggest she investigate this option.
* says:
This is reason number two why we purchased a condo with 1 maintenance fee that only waivers once a year. We can set it to 50 in the summer & 70 in the winter & not pay any differently than if we set it to 80 in the summer & 60 in the winter.
reason number one – lawn maintenance/snow removal…
Meanwhile, I wish that the board would "make" the owners replace their old single pane windows… (They "make" them pony up for emergency boiler repairs.)
JohnR says:
"..what in the holy hell is wrong with us as a country."
That's actually an easy one. Hell, Mark Twain was writing about this over a century ago. We're a nation of suckers and chumps. We want to be fooled by slick conmen, but if Barnum or Maverick isn't available we'll even settle for Santorum if we have to. Anyway, myth and reflexive belief is so much easier and more fun than actually thinking. God only knows where we go from here, but I'm laying odds of 3:1 that we're a Righteous Christian's Peoples Republic within a decade. We just really want only to be told what to do by a Strong Leader. It's the American Way.
Xynzee says:
@Glen: kardashian? ¿Qué? Vacuous and useless definitely, but certainly not a Marie-Antoinette. Though we can gladly send her to Mm Guillotine for afore said crime against humanity.
Can't decide if it should be the Palin, Bachster, the S.C. Gov or 'Zona's Gov, that should be cast in the role of M-A.
c u n d gulag says:
Xynzee,
I think Lindsey Graham, with his purty eyes, would make a fine Marie-Antoinette.
Plus, he's from SC, the birthplace of insurrection and civil war.
What we need in America is a modern day Sherman.
And he can start his march in SC, and then return there just in case he missed something the first go-round.
SA says:
More and more it seems "freedom" and "liberty" imply the freedom to just go off and die and stop bothering the world with your problems.
Why, that's as American as apple pie. As long as you don't do it on my doorstep.
(Someday I really will write that "so, you live in San Francisco and there's a drug addict shitting on your doorstep… what would you like to have happen next?" essay aimed at all the Lolbertarians who choke the SF Gate comment boards with their tiny minded screeds any time there's anything to do with the poor in the papers.)
verbal says:
The utilities and tax laws have a variety of incentives to improve heating efficiency, but those don't much help the poor. Really they're aimed at people who are able to switch but haven't gotten around to it yet– for example, when my furnace was on its last legs, a $500 rebate made me think it was a better idea to replace the furnace, and an additional tax credit made me decide to pony up for the extra-efficient one. Over 2 years I've saved more than the initial outlay and I do not regret it one bit.
But that poor cold grandmother doesn't have $2,000 to replace the furnace to qualify for a rebate and tax credit, and she can't really wait two years for the energy savings to add up. And the stimulus cash-for-insulating programs have sort of dried up. So… once again, policy hurts the poor.
Even if everyone should just turn the damn heat down. Low-60s are pretty reasonable, to be honest. I've got friends who keep their house in the 40s at all times, just enough to keep the pipes from freezing. They don't even do it to save money. They just do it to prove they're tough. Crazy Yankees.
xynzee says:
"But I'm overlooking the most obvious aspect of this story. Namely, the ongoing quest to figure out what in the holy hell is wrong with us as a country."
I've been trying to ponder, the Thatcherian "There is no society, only individuals" concept.
Well if you have no society, then how can one have a "Country" (outside of geographical local). Ultimately, wouldn't the idea of a nation state (not to mention a state in general terms) also cease to exist? So if there's no "Country", then there's no "Country" left to defend, therefore there's no use for a military. There's also no use for a police force as my personal defence is entirely up to myself…
So really what's happening to the "Country" is that it's starting to come face to face with the reality that individuals do not make a society. What I'm guessing is that we're facing the sociological equivalent of what would happen if in Physics the electrons stopped doing their thing – sorry if my layman's understanding is off, but my understanding from chemistry is that what holds stuff together are the electrons being exchanged between the elements. Basically everything falls apart.
All I ask is that where ever it is you're heading, you do it soon. And do it really, really, *REALLY* dramatically! That way the rest of us can look at our 1%-ers and sycophantic legislators and says, "Perhaps there's a lesson there."
So anyone who thinks that not playing nice with the unions is a good idea, will find themselves on their ear (and the opposition leader has some really big ears to worry about).
Andrew says:
If we give someone subsidies to buy heating oil, they'll buy heating oil. If we give them a check, they might use it to retrofit their home to burn more efficient natural gas, thus needing fewer subsidies in the future.
Anonymouse says:
I'm in a mid-Atlantic state, where the developers were allowed to stop putting in gas lines to new developments in the 1970s and instead switched to heat pumps. Heat pumps are useless when the temperatures fall below freezing, which usually happens overnight in October and lasts the whole day in Jan – Feb. Overnight temps below freezing can happen until late April/early May.
Unless one can spend $1Mill and up for high-end homes or luck into a house built pre-1970, one is stuck with heat pumps.
Juniper says:
You would think that in a warm state like Arizona, we wouldn't need heat. You would be wrong. In December the temps drop to the 30s and even upper 20s. That being said, we're like @SA in SF where the motto here is – Insulation and windows with durable glass? Why do you need that to keep out the elements? So… people have high gas/electric bills in the winters as well. Never mind the summers, where electric bills can soar into the hundreds. Out here, old people die not from cold, but from not being able to turn on the AC. One poor woman was found dead in her home because they shut off her electric and her house was over 100 degrees.
Oh and the federal government doesn't think AC in Arizona in the summer is necessary. You can just move, they say. Well, only the rich Snowbirds move. The rest of us have to stay. I love shortsightedness.
Tim H. says:
Many older homes compensated for crap insulation by oversize furnaces, 2X heat and tech that was old before Nixon was caught results in disastrous heating bills. Just upgrading to a correctly sized, new furnace can give a lot of relief and reduce carbon emissions, I'd say stimulus looking for a place to happen, if certain greens could wrap their heads around the concept of cutting carbon by helping people, perhaps they can be shamed by showing them who they're next to.
bb in GA says:
@Anonymouse
The Coefficient of Performance (COP) of modern Heat Pumps running in the heating mode at their optimal level (about 40 – 50F outfoor dry bulb temp) run in the 2.5 to 3.0 range. That means for every kw-hr of electrical energy supplied to the machine you transfer 2.5 to 3 kw-hrs to the indoors from outside.
As the outdoor temps fall, the COP also falls. Most units are still in the neighborhood of COP = 2.0 down into the mid-teens when supplemental heat starts to be required (usually strip heaters) That means even at that level they are twice as efficient as resistance heat.
The SEERs for the latest models are in the 13 to 16 range.
I had heat pumps installed in my 1985 house that were SEER 8.0 and they had a COP rated at 1.8 @ 17F.
On a cost /kw-hr (or BTU) basis, heat pumps blow away resistance heat and are competitive with natural gas and oil.
Some people don't like heat pump generated heat because the air temp coming out of the registers is cooler than other forms of forced air heating.
Combine that with a little evaporative cooling of oil and moisture from exposed skin in the normally drier winter air (lower relative indoor humidity) we have a failure for some to have that soul satisfying feeling (as opposed to being) warm enough when it is cold outside.
But the systems work just fine and are efficient.
//bb
Ken says:
I would have thought the "most obvious aspect of this story" was Sen. Snowe calling for a socialist solution to the problem, instead of relying on market forces to work their magic.
Hobbes says:
Juniper:
This is what happens when you have a single government with primary power over a too-large country. I would be willing to bet that the AZ state government would not take the "well you can just move to another state" stance, but this is like the EU saying to the Greeks "if you don't like your country's financial issues, you can just move to another country." It's absurd, but having a large country means that the government sees living in any specific area as a conscious choice over other options.
Southern Beale says:
Well see, Mary Power just needs to move south to Boca for the winter. Isn't that what people do?
/snark
I don't know about where you live but where I live most people heat their homes with gas. Out in the country some folks have wood stoves, too. But to buy wood for a wood stove is really expensive, unless you live on a farm with plenty of trees, natural gas it the cheaper way to do it.
That said, geothermal is really gaining ground up here too. Here being Tennessee. I know a few folks who put in geothermal systems and they love them. Say it's way cheaper than gas or electric.
I do have one space that is heated with a Daikin electric heat pump. They are super efficient (mine has an air conditioner component for summer). They're ductless. We see them everywhere in Central America (without the heating element). Not saying Mary Power can afford such a thing but those higher up on the income scale wanting a more reasonable heating bill might look at something like that.
The other thing is, we took part in one of those home energy efficiency audits that the government was doing as part of the stimulus. And man oh man we saved TONS of money on both heating and air conditioning. Insulated the attic, insulated and caulked all the chinks and around pipes and doors and windows, just tightened everything up. Haven't calculated it out yet but it easily has saved us a couple hundred bucks.
Our house was built in 1947 when energy was cheap and no one really thought about the need for insulation. There used to be government assistance for low income folks for home energy efficiency, at least there was here. Don't know about in MA.
Seems to me a great use of taxpayer money would be to fund home energy efficiency. Puts people to work doing all of the caulking and insulating and whatnot, and it lowers folks' utility bills. I'm sure such an idea makes far too much sense for Republicans though.
Jon says:
Having lived all over the country (son of an AF officer), I moved to Boston in my late 20s. The biggest difference between New England and everywhere else? A "new" home is 50 years old here.
Sorry, you really can't put in a radically different heating system into a 100 year old home without tearing it down first.
Mark Durrenberger says:
Ed, sorry to confuse the issue with facts:
"These are two of the least efficient, most expensive ways to heat a home"
Lets look at the data shall we….
Here are calculations using recent data.
N. Gas Oil Electricity Propane
$ per 100,000 BTUs $1.40 $2.54 $4.40 $3.55
Efficiency 90% 80% 95% 90%
$ per usable 100k BTUs $1.56 $3.17 $4.63 $3.95
In our neck of the woods, Electricity is by far the most expensive way to heat. Oil is 3rd. The fortunate have Natural Gas or heat with wood/pellets.
Regarding efficiency, remember while Electric is about 95% efficient at point of use, it is about 35% efficient from point of generation.
I Live in MA (not far from the "young" lady mentioned above). I sell solar hot water systems and solar electric systems. I have both a BS and MS in Energy Engineering. I follow energy prices carefully. I keep my house at 60 and am regularly scolded by my wife and kids.
-Mark
Matt says:
"Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she hopes the candidates will take up the region's heating aid crunch"
Has Snowe MET these people?
The only way the GOP field will "take it up" is if they can figure out how to get applause for letting old people freeze to death and/or blame the whole thing on the President.
Gordon Guano says:
Speaking as a fat hairy guy, 60 degrees ain't cold. I'll cut a 92-year-old woman some slack, but everyone else can put on some socks or even one of those turtleneck things Jimmy Carter used to model if, as the late Bill Hicks said, they were conceived from a weak sperm.
Anonymouse says:
@bb: you give heat ratings for 40 – 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm telling you when you've got a week that never makes it out of the 20s, the heat pump simply can't get the heat much above 60 degrees, and that's running non-stop. I've got a 3-year-old 15 SEER unit in a 1200-square-foot home with insulated siding, ultra-insulated attic with brand-new Energy-star rated roof shingles, and practically nil windows, and a heat pump simply can't warm the place up in winter. My next-door neighbor turns off the heat pump entirely in the fall and uses a pellet stove to heat the identical model house, which is both cheaper and warmer (usually around 68 – 70).
Do you perhaps make your living selling heat pumps to the rubes?
jjack says:
I remember when the folks upgraded from a wood stove (and summers spent with my dad looking for logs to cut up with his chainsaw) to an oil stove. Now it's back to the wood.
bb in GA says:
@anonymouse
Your wonderful Christmas honoring snark aside :-)
No, I'm not in the HP sales or service business. As a consumer and engineer, I have had good experience w/ heat pumps. When we have stretches of low teens or single digits (rare, but occasional occurnece in N GA) my heat pump running wide open with supplemental heat can start to slip a little in its ability to hold the t-stat setting.
BTW heat pumps are designed to run more frequently in the heating mode than other types of forced air heat.
My ignorant long distance diagnosis of your situation is that your mo-sheen is not operating properly or it's undersized for the load. Since your neighbor seems to have the same problem, it seems there might be sizing issues (perhaps provided by the same contractor?).
Also, you did not read comprehensively. The COP of modern machines is still north of 2.0 even down into the teens.
Of course, a man with an experience (you) is not at the mercy of man with an argument (me.)
Merry Christmas,
//bb
Ellie says:
@Jon:
"you really can't put in a radically different heating system into a 100 year old home without tearing it down first."
Just to clarify: *Heating systems* and *fuel* are two different things. Changing the heating SYSTEM is hard, especially in an old house (and usually probably not even worth it). But you can easily change the FUEL – which is usually the main source of the worst waste. A 100+ year old house with an inefficient oil-fired boiler (fuel source) firing a steam-heat system (the stuff you can't rip out without tearing the place apart) can be converted to an efficient natural-gas boiler fueling the same steam system – quite easily, if you have some funds to do it. The only change is at the fuel source – you rip the old boiler out of the basement and install a new one on the same system. Insulating the pipes in the basement will further increase efficiency.
None of the addresses the issue of what the hell is wrong with America, of course, but…
Anonymouse says:
@bb:>>My ignorant long distance diagnosis of your situation is that your mo-sheen is not operating properly or it's undersized for the load. >>
Nope. Heat pump is both correctly sized for the house and operating properly. Heat pumps make fantastic air conditioners but are completely useless in climates where the temps fall below freezing and stay there any length of time. Despite your assessment, below-60-degrees at full bore is not just a "feels cold to you wimps", it *is* cold.
George says:
greetings from Arizona! ;)