A huge increase in need has been seen in Wyandotte County and the Kansas City area, according to Susila Jones , executive director of Cross-Lines Community Outreach, 736 Shawnee Ave.
“We just get so many more calls for assistance than we can keep up with,” she said.
There is a sense that it’s unreal, with the challenges faced by people, she said.
A temporary moratorium on electricity disconnections from the Board of Public Utilities was announced on Thursday. But the bills continue to increase for some customers, and when the moratorium is scheduled to come off March 31, residents may face additional hardships.
“I think people are really struggling to figure it out, when the disconnections start, how are they going to keep up with their bills,” Jones said.
Jones said the state of Kansas now has utility assistance dollars available through the Kansas Emergency Rental Assistance (KERA) program in the Kansas Housing Resources Corp. The funds are for rental assistance and also utility assistance statewide, she said. The funds are through federal coronavirus relief assistance.
The state has not yet outlined exactly how the program will work for community members, she added.
“We’re kind of in a holding pattern, until they figure out how they will release those dollars,” she said. Wyandotte County will not get the funds directly; they went to the state to be administered, she said.
The state previously announced that applications for KERA assistance will open on March 15. (See https://wyandotteonline.com/rental-assistance-offered/)
Kansas also has the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, which is taking applications through March 31. Information is at http://www.dcf.ks.gov/services/ees/Pages/EnergyAssistance.aspx.
There is another coronavirus relief package currently in Congress, but it has not yet been approved.
Agencies such as Cross-Lines have offered utility assistance in past years, but this year, the agencies don’t have enough money to help everyone. In normal times, Cross-Lines has budgeted about $9,000 a month to help with utility bills, Jones said.
But if, for example, residents have $1,000 utility bills, a $10,000 emergency fund could help only 10 households at that level. A lot more people than that need help with utility bills, Jones noted. And utilities are important as people need to stay warm, and also, kids who are in remote learning need electricity to do their school work, she said.
Cross-Lines is hoping that the KERA program and others like it may help people catch up with their utility bills, then the agencies will try to help others who fall through the cracks, she said.
The moratorium on electricity disconnections doesn’t help people whose power has already been shut off.
For those who may have lost jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and are still unemployed, the lack of unemployment benefits for some of them adds to the problem, with residents having to choose between paying the rent, paying the utility bill, buying food or buying medicine.
Jones said they want to help people as much as they can so they don’t have to pick and choose between food, rent, utilities and medicine. The agency also has food assistance and has recently done some work with cold weather shelters.
An activist group, Build Power MoKan, held a news conference at midday Thursday urging the Board of Public Utilities and Evergy to not only extend the moratorium, which had been scheduled to end March 1, but to also forgive past debts. BPU on Thursday announced an extension of the moratorium until March 31.
The utilities, including BPU, have a number of payment plans for those who can’t make their full payments, and the BPU has encouraged customers to call 913-573-9145.
Cross-Lines also recently opened up space in its building for shelter during the extremely cold weather, Jones said. The agency was able to use the former St. Thomas Church as a place for people to come in and get out of the cold during the daytime, during the extremely cold weather, she said. They partnered with the KC Dream Center at La Fe church, 15th and Central, so that people could be bused from Cross-Lines to a night-time shelter there, she said.
See previous story at https://wyandotteonline.com/bpu-announces-moratorium-on-electric-cutoffs-until-march-31/.