The state Department of Social Services has announced an additional 15-million dollars in funding for the low-income home energy assistance program (LIHEAP). DSS Acting Director Jennifer Tidball tells Capitol reporters that the program assists low-income Missourians with payments for their summer cooling bills through September.
Tidball says the additional dollars double the maximum benefit amount to six hundred dollars.
Tidball emphasizes that dangerously high temperatures can make homes unsafe. To be eligible for LIHEAP, low-income Missourians must have three-thousand dollars or less in bank and retirement accounts and have a household income of 135 percent or less of the federal poverty level. About 115-thousand Missouri households received LIHEAP assistance in fiscal year 2019.