Seniors ‘panic’ on cost of heat
The following article was written by a reporter from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and published Friday, August 22, 2008. It is surely most telling.
Service agencies get calls for aid
By Paula J. Owen CORRESPONDENT
People working with area seniors say they are experiencing a record level of requests for help with fuel costs this year.
They are hoping the state will expand its fuel assistance program and get the word out sooner than in previous years on what is available and who is eligible.
Ashburnham Council on Aging Director Mary Lee Muessel said she is getting many more calls much earlier about the state fuel assistance program and she does not have any answers to give.
“You call the number they have listed and you hear the same recording from last year,” she said. “I just keep telling them I am trying to find out.” She said seniors are concerned because they do not know how they are going to pay for heat this year. Their incomes have not increased as the costs of food and fuel have continued to rise. Last year, she said, they were already choosing between buying food and medicine and staying warm.
“The state really needs to take action on this so we don’t have people so cold they are endangering their health,” she said.
She added that people who normally wouldn’t apply for the program are asking about it this year.
Such is the case with Joan M. Dahl, 75, of Ashburnham.
Mrs. Dahl, whose husband died several years ago, has lived in her family home for 22 years, caring for her many flower gardens. She runs a business raising and selling hybridized day lilies.
The upstairs of the two-family home is rented out, but there is only one furnace and she pays to heat the entire house, she said. Last year, she said, that cost her $6,000. This year, she just signed a contract with a local oil company for $11,000.
She said she called the Council on Aging a month ago for help for the first time and was told she made $2,000 more annually than allowed under last year’s guidelines.
“Mary Lee said she has not seen any new guidelines,” Mrs. Dahl said. “I keep checking back, but she told me there was no word yet. I can maybe just about do it this year, but there is no way I can make it another year, even if fuel costs stay the same.”
She said she replaced the downstairs windows last year to make the home more energy-efficient and is closing her workshop and greenhouse to save money, but she thinks it won’t be enough. She is looking at moving in two years and leaving her home and the gardens in which she has worked hours every day.
“If I didn’t cherish this garden so much, I would have moved out already,” she said. “But I can’t see putting all this money into heating my home and still being cold.”
Doreen C. Noble, director of senior affairs for the Templeton Council on Aging, said she is experiencing the same problem of more seniors looking for more help much sooner.
“They are coming out in droves,” she said. “There is a fear, panic and desperation that I have not seen in this population before.”
Ms. Noble said participation in all the council’s programs has increased 500 percent in the past five years. Last year, she helped with 70 new applications for the fuel assistance program. On top of it all, tax bills just came out.
“This is a population that would rather pay their taxes than buy their medications,” she said. “It is a different mind-set than the baby boomers that will follow.”
She said many of the seniors have the mentality that they should leave the money available for help for someone else who may be in need. In the past, they did not want to ask for help, she said, until this year.
“It’s this quiet desperation where people are almost forced to ask for help that wouldn’t otherwise,” she said. “They have to humble themselves and that desperation has chipped away at that good old Yankee pride.”
In Winchendon, Sheila L. Symonowicz, director of the Council on Aging, said that department has begun its own food pantry for the first time, just for seniors.
“We have never had a food pantry for just the elderly,” she said. “We put one together this year because we had a tremendous amount of calls in the last month. We wanted to get some things implemented before the cold weather.”
She said the volume of calls for help with heating this winter is much higher, and the state does not usually provide information for the fuel assistance program until September or October.
She hopes some of the steps her council is taking and directing those in need of help for services will help seniors feel better while they wait.