As temperatures drop and heating bills climb, help is available for Pennsylvanians struggling to keep their homes warm.
Applications are open for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, also known as LIHEAP.
Through April, eligible households can apply for a one-time cash grant to help cover heating costs. Grants range in amount from $200 to $1,000. The money does not need to be repaid.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, more than 25,000 Allegheny County households received LIHEAP assistance grants last winter, totaling more than $8 million dollars in cash grants. The average payment amount in Allegheny County was $321.65.
In addition to LIHEAP cash grants, crisis payments available to those who are experiencing a heating emergency.
Peoples Natural Gas spokesperson Nick Paradise said it's a good idea to apply sooner than later.
"We encourage people not to wait until they're in a crisis situation to apply for LIHEAP," Paradise said. "It's only about income eligibility. The money is first come, first served, so that's another reason that folks shouldn't wait."
The cost of staying warm
The amount of LIHEAP assistance a household receives depends on factors including household size, income and heating fuel type. But families may not know how much assistance they'll receive, if any, when planning for winter heating expenses.
That uncertainty can make it difficult to budget, according to Destenie Nock, the Alex Hills Career Development Associate Professor of Engineering and Public Policy, and Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
"A lot of times the amount of help a person gets is based on how much energy they use and their bill," Nock said.
But those bills don't necessarily reflect how much energy a household needs. Someone who keeps their home uncomfortably cold to save money, for example, may appear to need less assistance than someone who uses more energy.
"It can be touch and go with how people balance comfort and cost," she said. "They might say you don't need $1,000, when really if you wanted to keep your house at 70 degrees to stay warm, you do need $1,000."
Nock co-authored a September 2025 analysis examining whether LIHEAP assistance changed how recipients used energy. Researchers studied more than 1,300 homes in the Mid-Atlantic region and found that, in most cases, receiving assistance had little effect on household energy consumption.
"You couldn't actually say that receiving this money changed the way people were using energy in their homes," Nock said.
Instead, recipients used the savings to cover other expenses while largely maintaining their previous energy consumption.
"In the past, people thought the LIHEAP dollars would get people to use more energy, but what we actually found, was that people were … operating from a survival mindset," she said.
While LIHEAP provides critical assistance during the winter, Nock said it doesn't address the underlying problem of rising energy costs.
"LIHEAP is supposed to be the social safety net that catches people before they fall into deep arrears," she said. "The more and more people that need LIHEAP the more and more we have to accept the system is not affordable for most people."
Nock recommends that eligible households also explore year-round Customer Assistance Programs, or CAPs, offered by utility providers. Unlike one-time LIHEAP grants, these programs can help make monthly energy bills more predictable.
"While LIHEAP is really good for helping people ... it can also be just the first avenue to helping people get manageable bills," Nock said.
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