Dreading the thought of your heating bill this winter? Most of us are, but if you meet federal low-income guidelines and live in Washington or Hancock County, there is an agency that can help. The Washington Hancock Community Agency (WHCA) is a nonprofit, private, non-governmental or state agency that was incorporated in 1966.

An 18-member board of directors, equally split among those representing private, public and low-income residents of Hancock and Washington counties, governs WHCA.

The agency got started 40 years ago in Ellsworth as a small Community Action Program (CAP) for fuel assistance during President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. It later moved to Milbridge.

From this start WHCA has grown into a three-building, many-tentacled agency of six divisions: Community Services; Housing Services; Children, Youth and Families; Transportation Services; Down East Business Alliance; and Keeping Children Safe Down East. Each division offers from five to eleven programs and each program is important in its own way, but in autumn, as the temperature begins to inch downward, the fuel assistance program, called LiHEAP (Low income Home Energy Assistance Program), takes precedence.

WHCA receives funds through grants, federally funded and state-funded programs, and seed money from most towns, according to the Community Services Division’s Administrative Director Eleanor West.

“We use that seed money as matching funds to apply for our grants,” West said. “We get grants from Maine Community Foundation and we’ve received grants from the United Way and other organizations. We have to work very hard to get our funding to keep our programs going.”

Twenty years ago, West, then a licensed cosmetologist with her own business, started her career at WHCA by working part-time doing “in-take” for people applying for help with their heating bills.

Help with Heating

Applicants must call WHCA each year to make an appointment for fuel assistance. The applicant is given a date, time and place to apply and asked bring proof of income for everyone in the household.

Because so many people apply, West said, “We take 5,200 applications in Washington and Hancock Counties between the first of October and the end of April.” It takes four weeks between the time an applicant calls and the date of an “in-take” application.

West said her office is making appointments five days a week from 7:30 am to 4 pm. “Call now,” she urged, “so we can get the application taken and assistance out to [the people who need it].”

Each year the federal government sets the guidelines for what it considers low income for different-sized families. With the price of fuel having risen so high and with no sign of stopping, West and those who qualify for fuel assistance fear the amount available to help offset the coming winter’s fuel bills will not be enough. “This year of all the years, with the high cost of fuel, it’s extremely important to apply,” West said.

Last year WHCA established what it calls a THAW Fund: THAW being an acronym for The Heating And Warmth Fund. West explained that it’s “To try to help folks who’ve used up all other avenues of assistance and still need help.” The money came from a fundraiser the agency held last winter around Valentine’s Day: a dinner-dance in Ellsworth called “The Night of Warm Hearts.” She said the fundraiser didn’t net a lot of money, but every cent raised went directly to help clients. WHCA plans to hold another fundraising dinner-dance this coming February.

Fuel assistance is far from the only thing WHCA does for its low-income clients. Housing Director AnneMarie Davis runs the Housing Services division with its eleven programs. And come autumn, the Home Weatherization and Home Repair programs take on particular importance. The Weatherization Program sends out professionals to assess air leakage in the house and inspect the heating system. They then insulate and seal air gaps and educate owners about moisture problems and carbon monoxide. Funding is limited, and applicants are placed on a waiting list.

WHCA professionals in the Home Repair Network combine with the federal USDA Rural Development Program to get loans and grants for essential home improvements to permit people with disabilities to remain in their houses. Older and very low-income people who get to the point where they can no longer make their own repairs and cannot afford to hire people to do it for them are also eligible. A Central Heating Improvement Program (CHIP) repairs or replaces unsafe, malfunctioning, or inoperable heating appliances or systems. An Appliance Replacement Program reduces residential electricity costs in low-income households by replacing inefficient refrigerators, replacing electrically heated waterbeds with standard mattresses, replacing unsafe halogen torchere lamps and regular incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient light bulbs.

A client who received a new refrigerator wrote: “The average person doesn’t know when it’s time to replace an old refrigerator … I was overjoyed when you called and offered me a new refrigerator. You were right: that new fridge has lowered my electricity bill. Thank you so much.”

An older, partially disabled client wrote: “…you handle the help you give me in such a nice way. I never feel ashamed. I appreciate your helpful attitude.”

Nonprofit Subdivisions

A year ago WHCA had an opportunity to get into affordable housing for its clients by working with a federal agency, Rural Development, which used to be called Farmer’s Home Administration.

“It’s really helping those who help themselves,” said WHCA housing developer Isaac Wagner. The program is geared toward first-time house buyers whose gross income cannot be more than 80 percent of the county’s median income. “We’re trying to serve those who are responsible, who are credit-worthy,” he explained: “they work a retail job or they’re a sternman on a lobster boat. They’re doing something where they barely make both ends meet. The first opportunity they get to leave the state, they’re going to do that and take their family with them. We’re trying to target them to keep them here in a home-ownership kind of situation.”

Wagner has been searching out and buying inexpensive raw land in Hancock and Washington counties that can be turned into housing subdivisions. WHCA acts much like a subdivision developer except it doesn’t make a profit. WHCA acts as a general contractor. It lays out the subdivision, builds roads, and chooses very carefully the families it will accept and in units of six families at a time.

Each family buys a lot in the development from WHCA with no down payment and each family will help build each other’s houses until all six houses are completed. WHCA expects each family to complete at least 65 percent of the construction, which comes to about 30 hours of work per week. Wagner said that it takes only one day for six families to frame a house. It sounds like the old-fashioned barn raisings and it’s rather like Habitat For Humanity except, as Wagner said, “This program relies on the homeowners’ help, not volunteers.” WHCA subcontracts the electrical and plumbing work to licensed contractors. When all the houses are complete, the family who bought the WHCA land owns the house built on it.

Wagner said, “A few years down the road, maybe they’ve had a couple more kids, and they need a bigger house; they can sell it.” By then the house may have appreciated or they’ve added a garage or something else that has increased its value. The owners may realize a profit on the sale, which will make WHCA feel like a proud parent.

Wagner will have two small subdivisions in Hancock County by 2006, one in Franklin and one in Hancock; and he’s working on one in Machias that’ll be ready in 2007.

WHCA Services and Programs: