Andrew Rimmer, a 63-year-old retired factory worker, lives alone in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood and barely makes ends meet on $1,100 a month. But a week ago, Rimmer tore open his gas bill and looked at the balance, $430–double what he paid this time last year.
“I almost fell down,” said Rimmer. “I wondered where the money was going to come from. I couldn’t pay it.”
Heating bills began arriving in mailboxes around Chicago, and nearly everyone–rich and poor, city and suburban–is shocked to see the balance due.
Nicor Gas says the average gas bill is up 40 percent this month compared with last December. Skyrocketing prices and record-low temperatures have delivered a powerful punch to pocketbooks around the region.
From the North Shore to the South Side, people are plugging in space heaters, turning down thermostats and nailing plastic over windows–trying anything to insulate themselves from bills almost certain to grow higher as winter bears down.
In one sign of the frigid times, Nicor Gas has been selling gift certificates that can be used to pay bills.
Applications for heating assistance have poured into the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP. Already in December, officials have received 120,000 applications in Cook County, compared with 180,000 for all of last year.
Already this year, the city of Chicago pledged $5 million to LIHEAP, while Peoples Energy gave $2 million and ComEd pledged $1 million.
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Such help is sorely needed by people like Patricia Miller and her 10 grandchildren, who wear sweatshirts with hoods pulled over their heads to keep warm inside their Waukegan home. North Shore Gas turned off service to the family’s four-bedroom home from April to October when she couldn’t pay the bill, she said. The company turned it back on for the winter but says she still owed $375 from last year. Her November bill was $400, she said.
Thermostat set at 65 degrees
Miller has sealed her windows with plastic and keeps her thermostat at 65 degrees. “I just have faith and trust in God,” said the 50-year-old assistant teacher. “We do the best we can.”
Faith isn’t enough to keep everyone warm.
In Midlothian, Rev. Mark Walter, pastor of St. Christopher’s Catholic Church, keeps the thermostat turned down. He notices people don’t take off their coats during mass.
Still, the church’s heating bills have soared about 25 percent over last year.
Though rising gas prices cause worry for many, scores of others have fallen so far behind that they owe thousands of dollars for bills left unpaid from past winters.
“Bills get so high that people must make decisions between food or heat,” said Bobby Speaks, spokesman for the Community Economic Development Association, which distributes LIHEAP grants in Cook County.
Gas companies generally will not turn off people’s heat between Dec. 1 and the end of March. But many had their gas turned off before the December deadline and have been living in the cold, or depending on space heaters, Speaks said.
After recently visiting one home that had become so cold ice had formed on an inside stairway, Speaks found the resident another place to stay.
The LIHEAP grants are available to people who live barely above the poverty level, but the income requirements disqualify many of the working poor and people on fixed incomes, Speaks said.
“The people who are right [above] those levels are having the worst trouble,” he said. “There’s very little help for them.”
Dipping into savings
Audrey Roman, 76, dipped into savings to heat her Chicago bungalow. A widow of a Chicago police officer, Roman believed the sting of winter heating bills would not be as sharp because she uses the Peoples Energy budget plan, which spreads payments over a year.
Her heating bill had been running about $124 per month through November, but then went up to $170. “I almost died,” she said. As the temperatures drop, so does the balance in her savings account.
While Roman worries, others have become irate at gas companies.
“They are trying to gouge my wallet,” said a furious Maria Elking, 44, landlord of a three-unit building in Humboldt Park. She knew heating bills would be going up, but she never expected her bill to reach $638, up from $333 last year.
Everyone has been feeling the pinch, including middle-class Joe Holtgreive, a 40-year-old assistant dean at Northwestern University. Holtgreive installed new windows in his three-bedroom Waukegan home and covered them with plastic for extra insulation. Holtgreive placed space heaters in his children’s rooms and kept the gas fireplace running. Still, he got a bill last week for $500, up from $300 this time last year.
“I was disappointed,” said Holtgreive. And it can only get worse, he thinks. “Wednesday was only the first day of winter.”
Pillows in the fireplace
In Batavia, Theresa Albanese jammed rubber insulation around the windows, applied foam around electrical outlets and stuffed draft blockers under doors. She stopped using the fireplace and stuck towels in her chimney flue.
When she stuffed two large floor pillows in the fireplace, her children started to panic.
“The kids are like, `Are you going to take them away before Santa comes?'” Albanese said Thursday. “So, it’s gotten kind of crazy.”
As the heating bills rise, some are looking for alternatives.
The four suburban stores for Cozy Fireplace have sold over 300 wood-burning stoves, up from 60 last year, according to Ken Love, a company vice president. Waits have stretched as long as 10 weeks to get the stoves installed.
Wes Westover, a retired business executive who lives in a four-level home in Lakeview, got a bill for $416 this month. That’s up from $251 this time last year. He hasn’t put plastic over the windows. “It’s not even worth the effort,” he said.
Instead, he thinks of more drastic actions: building a new, energy efficient house, one that runs on a diesel generator and electricity.
Either that, he says, or “moving to the South.”
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READER CONNECTION
Where you can try to get help with your heating bill:
– Community Economic Development Association’s LIHEAP information line for the city: 312-456-4100; outside of Chicago: 800-252-8643.
– Nicor: 888-NIC-OR4U (642-6748) to inquire about $300 matching grants available through the company and administered through the Salvation Army (773-725-1100). Online: www.nicor.com.
– Peoples Energy: Call 866-556-6001 to inquire about $200 matching grants available through the Share the Warmth program administered through the Salvation Army. Online: www.peoplesenergy.com.
– North Shore Gas customers should also call 866-556-6001.
– City residents without heat can call 311.
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