Soaring energy costs increase stress
Calls to nonprofits for help are on the rise as poorest Texans seek assistance to pay bills
LaToinya Davis never thought she’d have trouble keeping the lights and air conditioning on at home.
Then in March, the 44-yearold mother of three lost her job as a phlebotomist, setting her household on a road to financial calamity. With budgeting, unemployment benefits were initially enough to cover rent, utilities and food. But skyrocketing energy costs caused by the war in Ukraine and a scorching hot Houston summer have negated her budgeting and efforts to cut costs.
“It’s just been so hard to keep up and stay afloat,” she said this week.
Davis and many of the city’s poorest residents are struggling to keep their lights or air conditioning on amid growing housing costs, soaring inflation and expiration of COVID-era safety net programs.
As a result, calls to area nonprofits for utility assistance are up 40 to 50 percent year-overyear, according to nonprofit leaders and data.
“We are seeing people with increased stress around housing at the same time that inflation and high (utility) costs make it difficult to try and stay in that housing,” said Amanda McMillan, head of the United Way of Greater Houston. “It’s a real double whammy.”
Prices of all goods were already on the rise throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as global shutdowns caused international shipping to grind to a halt, only to be overwhelmed in part by online spending of Americans flush with stimulus checks. Inflation has remained at near-historic highs since and hit double digits in the Houston region last month — a 40-year high that’s
compounded fears of a recession.
Industry experts, meanwhile, pin much of the blame for soaring electric costs on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and subsequent halts on exports of oil and natural gas from Russia, a major producer. The price of crude after the late-February invasion soared to more than $120 a barrel and the price of natural gas jumped to a 16-year high. The result: spiking electricity bills and fuel costs.
And it’s the poorest Texans who are feeling the most pain as a result: The five Houston ZIP codes with the lowest median household incomes accounted for more than 10 percent of monthly utility assistance requests since June, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of 2-1-1 call data from the United Way of Greater Houston.
High energy costs have exacerbated troubles for households that were already facing increases in rent and food prices, and some are now forced to choose between air conditioning, food on the table or staying in their home at all. Many have turned for the help to the region’s nonprofit sector, which is still reeling from service demands that were yet to recede from Hurricane Harvey when COVID-19 arrived in Texas.
“The biggest impacts are those we’ve seen with families,” said Desiree Davis, head of BakerRipley’s utility assistance program. “It’s just been so unexpected. Our region is unfortunately accustomed to disaster, but some of those families are still trying to recover from Harvey.”
“You have families that have been in crisis from 2017 to now,” she added.
She and other nonprofit leaders fear the worst as some COVID-era grants other funding end in 2023. BakerRipley, the area’s largest nonprofit, said that could mean losing up to half of the current funding it has for utility assistance, jeopardizing some of the nearly 20,000 households it expects to assist with electric bills by the end of the year.
“We are definitely on the edge of our seats because we know the need for our services far outweigh the resources available,” she said.
That much was clear by the dozens of people seeking utility bill assistance who were in cars lined up in the scorching heat recently outside of the nonprofit’s Bellaire location. The event offered drive-thru registration to allow applicants to stay in their cars because, a week earlier, an elderly woman passed out in the heat while waiting to get help to keep her air conditioning and electricity on.
“It’s just been a total roller coaster,” said Deborah Heaggs, 52, as she waited in a pickup truck.
High utility bills have been just the latest calamity for Heaggs. In 2013, she said her father died in a house fire, and she was still recovering from that loss when Harvey hit and Heaggs “lost everything.” Since then, she’s been able to cover bills, rent and food for her children through her trash-hauling and lawn-mowing business. But COVID made it difficult to find work.
She was struggling to make ends meet even before rising gas prices contributed to slashing her profit margin to near zero. Meanwhile, as more households cut spending, she loses more customers. Now, she can’t afford to pay her monthly electric bill, which she said has more than doubled in the past year, without help from the local nonprofit sector.
“It’s just been a string of events that we still haven’t recovered from,” Heaggs said. “We just try to get food first because we don’t want our kids to have hungry bellies. And then whatever we have left, we use for gas to get to work so that we can make enough money for the light bill.”
At West Houston Assistance Ministries, or WHAM, one of the many nonprofits that have tried to assist struggling Houstonians with bills, the number of elderly clients is on the rise, said Kim Hill, who oversees the charity’s utility assistance fund.
The nonprofit has been a godsend to those such as Davis, the out-of-work phlebotomist, who turned to WHAM for help with her utility bills a few months ago. Davis said she has cut back pretty much all of her expenses so that she can afford her eldest child’s tuition at Lamar College next fall, the first in her family to go to college.
Even so, it’s been almost impossible to manage her budget as her electricity bills skyrocketed from about $180 a month a year ago, to roughly $350 this summer. She’s hopeful that she’ll turn the corner soon, and is considering a career change while also interviewing for jobs to make ends meet.
“But it’s been very overwhelming,” she said. “And so it’s really hard to see hope ahead sometimes.”