By Samantha Maldonado, The City
Mike Knerr was excited to move into his Washington Heights apartment in September 2023, but coming off a hot summer, he faced a looming problem: his building didn’t have central air conditioning, and he didn’t have an AC unit — or the money to buy one.
Knerr, who is HIV-positive, was out of work as his health took a nosedive. But the 42-year-old receives benefits through the the city’s HIV/AIDS Services Administration, which is how he found out he might be eligible to receive a free air conditioner from the federally funded Home Energy Assistance Program, or HEAP, which helps New Yorkers pay their heating bills in the winter and provides air conditioning units in the summer.
Knerr applied last April, and became one of the more than 10,000 households in New York City authorized to receive the cooling benefit. With his AC unit installed before summer, he felt relief.
“It would have taken all my expenses for the entire month to try to buy even a small air conditioner that wouldn’t have been able to cool the apartment very well,” said Knerr. “The medications and things cause me to sweat a lot so it’s helpful for me to stay healthy.”
Applications for this season’s HEAP’s cooling assistance opened Tuesday. But the future of the program is uncertain: the Trump administration in early April fired all the federal staff that ran the program as part of wider layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. And states are millions of dollars short in promised federal funding, having still not received about 10% of the $4.1 billion Congress approved. That means New York has yet to receive about $36 million of its expected $360.2 million for HEAP, which helps over 1.5 million households across the state each year.
With the heat of summer approaching and utility bills mounting, consumer advocates and government officials are sounding the alarm.
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