READING, Pa. – A Reading man says he’s been living without heat during one of the coldest stretches of the season. And he believes delays in a state-run assistance program are part of the problem.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey Nein lives on Orange Street in Reading.\u2028 He relies on oil to heat his home.\u2028 And last Wednesday, he ran out.<\/p>\n
“I get $1,200 a month in Social Security, which is not a whole lot. It’s hard to live on that. So, of course, I do receive certain benefits, and LIHEAP is one of them,” explained Nein.<\/p>\n
LIHEAP is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.\u2028Jeffrey says he applied for emergency help, but days later, he’s still waiting.<\/p>\n
“As I said, right now, my home is 37 degrees,” he said.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey is 67, disabled, using a small space heater\u2028and staying in one room to keep warm.<\/p>\n
Berks Community Action Program (BCAP) confirms delays are happening.\u2028The organization says recent government shutdowns and layoffs slowed processing.<\/p>\n
“The wheels are starting to turn, but they’re turning slowly,” said Lawrence Behringer with BCAP.<\/p>\n
BCAP says applications are now moving again and it urges anyone without heat to apply or reapply through PA Compass,\u2028or contact the local assistance office.<\/p>\n
“So, it’s gonna take some time, but that being said, I talked to our energy efficiency director and he just informed me that we’re starting to see a flow of LIHEAP on applicants being processed,” Behringer added.<\/p>\n
For Jeffrey, that help can’t come soon enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – A Reading man says he’s been living without heat during one of the coldest stretches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[28948,34117,34118,9142,9143,25874,28,736,128,130,129],"class_list":{"0":"post-63795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-heating-assistance","9":"tag-jeffrey-nein","10":"tag-lawrence-behringer","11":"tag-liheap","12":"tag-low-income-home-energy-assistance-program","13":"tag-oil","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-reading","16":"tag-reading-city","17":"tag-reading-city-headlines","18":"tag-reading-city-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}