The Long Winter Ahead in Metro Detroit

by rachel parsons

Crimes of Poverty: The Long Winter Ahead in Detroit

Last year it was Douglas. Fifty-six years old, he perished in his Highland Park home on the 1900 block of Trumbull. His heat had been turned off, and the kerosene heater he used for warmth fell over while he was sleeping. His house caught fire, and he asphyxiated. Then he burned inside his home. He was the first casualty of the winter utility shut-offs.

In 2002 nearly 30,000 homes in Wayne County faced light and gas interruptions. This was due in part to the high unemployment rate in the county coupled with welfare reform measures that reduced government assistance to those in crisis. It was also the year when the utility companies discontinued what was called the Vendor Pay Program. If you were enrolled in this program before it was discontinued in 2002, you were protected from utility shut-offs because the Family Independence Agency paid a portion of your utility bills until you were back on your feet again. But without this safety net people quickly fell behind and were left cold and in the dark. Since 2002 the numbers of unemployed have risen, and the financial assistance needed to alleviate these problems has not materialized. Apparently there is more political will in our government to wage foreign wars on innocent people than there is to take care of its own. With winter around the corner, people are bracing for more of the same in 2005.

This year—with heat and electricity costs rising 45 to 70 percent—promises to bring more deaths, more 4 a.m. fire engines rushing to put out house fires, more casualties from these crimes of poverty. This is the third time in the last year and a half that the price of natural gas has risen. While for some this would mean simply having to spend less money on other items, for many others it will mean having to choose between medicine, clothing, food, water, rent—or heat. The added stress of higher utility costs will force the homeless population to grow even larger, and City Council members are already worrying about how Detroit will confront these challenges.

Maureen Taylor, State Chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, says that the organization is already receiving 10-12 phone calls a day from folks who are in a heating crisis. “It’s still warm outside,” says Taylor. “Soon it will be 50 calls a day. Then it will be 20 calls an hour.” She expected the call volumes to start rising during the last couple weeks of October when the new rate hikes should have been first reflected in people’s bills. Many who limped through last winter—managing not to get their heat turned off until the spring—are once again finding themselves in trouble because they don’t have the money to get their utilities back on again for the colder months.
The city and state both have programs set up to assist low-income people with utility bill payments. According to Jacob Corvidae, the Greens Program Manager for the WARM Training Center, the city of Detroit is effective in getting available federal funds into the city to address the problem. The city not only helps with low-income residents’ heating costs, but it also runs a program that will pay for residents to winterize their homes—sealing or replacing windows and even putting on new roofs. But the funds always run out quickly, and there are not nearly enough to address the sheer magnitude of the problem of inadequate heating.

The state also has fuel assistance programs for people who find themselves facing heat and electricity shut-offs. In the opinion of many, however, they intervene too late—only when people find themselves already in a crisis situation. You need to be already shut-off or have received a shut-off notice before the state will step in to help. After going through all of the paperwork that needs to be filed and the hoops that need to be jumped through, it can take weeks or months to receive aid, and that can oftentimes be too late. “I’ve talked to people who haven’t had heat the last three winters,” Corvidae says. “Yes, there are programs out there. Some of the programs are very well designed, but some of them basically end up requiring people learn how to work the system just to get their needs met—and they need to get their needs met.” Anyone who’s lived through a Detroit winter knows that having heat can be a matter of life or death.

There are organizations in Detroit that respond to this crisis in more effective ways than the government. One of the largest is The Heat and Warmth Fund (THAW). THAW is an independent non-profit agency that supplies emergency assistance to people who have no one else to turn to when their heat is turned off. It holds fundraisers and works with five different utility companies that match them dollar for dollar in energy assistance. THAW works in 65 counties in Michigan in addition to Detroit and has helped many folks through the coldest winter months.

Another organization is the WARM Training Center. WARM works with those who are provided with government fuel assistance to make their homes more energy efficient. WARM not only helps to drive costs down, it teaches household energy efficiency. It also holds classes for the general public and runs other programs as grants allow. It has gotten government funding to fix broken furnaces in people’s homes and has run home repair workshops for long-term solutions to heating problems.

The Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO) has been very active in the struggle for human rights in Detroit and Highland Park. It is an advocacy group that works to get people the money and help they need to turn their utilities back on as soon as possible. If there’s money out there, it will direct people where to find it. It strives to address the situation without sending them through red tape. It has brought international attention to the struggles in our city through the organizing it has done, and it manages to do all of this with no overhead costs. All the money it gets goes directly to turning people’s heat and lights back on.

As the gap between the rich and the poor widens, the responsibility of the government has been taken up by organizations like THAW, WARM and MWRO, but the governments in Detroit, Lansing and Washington D.C. need to be held accountable to the people they are supposed to be serving. Governments should not rely on organizations like these to do its work while poverty is killing people in the richest nation in the world. The Governor’s office and the Michigan Public Service Commission, the government group that regulates the price of gas and electricity, should put forth more effort to keep people’s utilities on. Being poor does not deny you the right to life. It does not justify you being killed in a house fire or freezing to death in the cold. As Taylor explains, “These are crimes of poverty, and they happen every year. Every year.”

If you are facing utility shut-offs or you want to support those fighting against the shut off, contact information is below.

The Heat and Warmth Fund—Neighbors Helping Neighbors in Need
1212 Griswold Street 48226-1899
Detroit, MI 48226-1899
(313) 226-9253
(800) 866-8429
www.thawfund.org

WARM Training Center
4835 Michigan Avenue
Detroit, MI 48210
313-894-1030
info@warmtraining.org
www.warmtraining.org

Michigan Welfare Rights Organization
4750 Woodward Ave #404
Detroit, MI 48201
(313) 832-0618
info@mwro.org
www.mwro.org