She Can Sleep Now

Dolores "Dee" Fugate has administered Home Energy Assistance Program benefits in upstate New York for twenty-two years. She started processing heating oil applications in 2004. She now runs a cooling assistance program that closed on June 5, twelve days before summer officially begins, and fields calls from households that didn't make the window. She does this without federal guidance, after the entire LIHEAP staff at HHS — all fifteen of them — were fired on April 1, 2025.¹ She is planning her FY2027 program while the president proposes, for the sixth consecutive year, to eliminate it entirely.²

Dee Fugate is not a real person. She is a composite character built from documented program mechanics, published testimony, and the operational realities described by coordinators, advocates, and former federal staff in the public record. Every fact she references is sourced. The voice is imagined. The conditions are not.

Your cooling benefit closed June 5. Today is June 17. What does your morning look like?

Dee: Same as last Tuesday. Same as Thursday. Phone rings. Someone tells me their air conditioner died, or they never had one, or they're on a fixed income and their electric bill from running a window unit last July was four hundred dollars and they can't do that again. And I say — well, let me hold off on what I say, because I want you to understand that the conversation is real. The person on the other end is real. The need is real. The program is closed.

So what do you actually tell them?

Dee: I tell them the application window has closed. I tell them about the state's extreme heat resources, there's a website where you can check heat risk by ZIP code.³ I mention cooling centers. And then there's this pause. They're waiting for the part where I help them, and I've already finished talking.

Is the cooling center referral useful?

Dee: It's useful if you have a car, if you can leave your apartment, if you don't have a disability, if you don't have pets you can't leave behind, if you don't need to sleep. Cooling centers close at night. People die at night. The data is very clear on this point.⁴

Walk me through the timing of the application window.

Dee: We opened April 15. Closed June 5. If someone applied June 1, their application takes up to thirty business days to process, plus another ten if we need documentation. And we almost always need documentation, because you have to prove a medical condition exacerbated by heat, or have someone in the household over sixty or under six.⁵ So. June 1 plus thirty business days is mid-July, optimistically. The AC unit gets installed in August, maybe. And that's someone who applied before we closed. The ones calling me now don't even get into the math.

When did you start seeing the timing as a structural problem and not just the calendar?

Dee: Maybe 2019, 2020. Before that, cooling was a small part of what we did. Heating was the program. Heating is the program — it's mandated through March 15, cooling is optional.⁶ States choose to offer it. So I'm running a program my state volunteered to do, with money Congress may or may not appropriate, through a federal agency that no longer has anyone working on it. The window closes before summer starts. I used to think that was just bureaucratic sequencing. Now I think the program was designed for a climate that doesn't exist anymore, and nobody updated the calendar.

Let's talk about the federal staff. Fifteen LIHEAP employees at HHS, all fired April 1, 2025. What did they actually do for you?

Dee: People hear "fifteen employees" and think, that's nothing. But those fifteen people reviewed every state's plan, every year. All fifty states, DC, the territories, a hundred and fifty tribes.⁷ They tracked whether states were spending correctly. They resolved disputes with vendors. They provided guidance on edge cases. And in this program, everything is an edge case. Someone's documentation is in Spanish and the county office doesn't have a translator. Someone's landlord owns the AC unit and won't authorize service. Someone applied for heating and cooling in the same fiscal year and the systems don't talk to each other. We used to pick up the phone and call someone who'd handled it before. Now there's nobody on the other end.

You still submit your state plan?

Dee: We still submit it. Pennsylvania is holding public hearings for their FY2027 plan right now — June 25, July 2.⁸ Community organizations testify. Fuel vendors testify. Recipients testify. It's a real process. People show up and say what they need. And then the plan goes to HHS, and I genuinely don't know who reads it. Maybe someone does. Maybe it goes into a folder. The process exists. Whether there's a function behind the process — that I can't tell you.

The president has proposed eliminating LIHEAP for FY2027. Sixth time. How do you plan under that?

Dee: You don't plan. You prepare. Planning assumes the future you're planning for will arrive. Preparing means you do the work anyway because the alternative is sitting at your desk waiting for a phone call from Washington, and meanwhile July is coming regardless of what Congress does. So I update the vendor list. I train intake staff — if I can hire them, which I can't always do because I can't guarantee their positions past September. I hold the hearings. I take the testimony. I submit the plan. Congress has protected the funding every time so far.² Six for six. I'd like to stop testing that streak.

The program reaches roughly seven percent of eligible households for cooling assistance nationally.⁹ What do you do with that number?

Dee: I work inside it. Seven percent means for every application I approve, there are thirteen households that qualified and didn't get help. Some didn't know the program existed. Some knew and couldn't get the documentation together in time. Some applied June 3 and I'm still processing their paperwork and the program is closed and I don't —

(pause)

Do you ever think about quitting?

Dee: Every June.

Why don't you?

Dee: Because I know what the vendor list looks like. I know which HVAC contractors actually show up and which ones take the purchase order and disappear for three weeks. I know which county offices process applications in two weeks and which ones take six. That knowledge isn't in a manual anywhere. If I leave, it leaves with me. Someone new comes in and spends a year learning what I already know, and that's a year of people not getting air conditioners.

I had a woman call last week. Eighty-one years old. Her AC died in April. She applied April 20, the day after we opened. Got approved. The vendor installed a new unit May 28. She called to say thank you. She said:

One person. Out of however many thousands can't. But she can.

The FY2027 LIHEAP state plan public comment period is open in multiple states. Pennsylvania hearings are scheduled for June 25 and July 2, 2026, with written comments accepted through July 10 at LIHEAPmail@pa.gov.⁸

Footnotes

1. The Hill, "HHS fires entire staff of program that helps low-income people afford heat and air conditioning," April 3, 2025. https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5228186-hhs-fires-entire-staff-of-program ↩

2. American Public Power Association, "Remaining FY2026 LIHEAP Funds Disbursed to States; LIHEAP Again Faces Elimination in FY2027," April 24, 2026. https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/remaining-fy-2026-liheap-funds-disbursed-states ↩ ↩²

3. New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, HEAP Program. https://otda.ny.gov/programs/heap/ ↩

4. NYC Health Department, 2026 New York City Heat-Related Mortality Report, June 15, 2026. https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/about/press/pr2026/nyc-health-department-releases-heat-related-deaths.page ↩

5. ACCESS NYC, Cooling Assistance Benefit eligibility requirements. https://access.nyc.gov/programs/cooling-assistance-benefit/ ↩

6. LIHEAP Clearinghouse, "Targeting LIHEAP Benefits." https://liheapch.acf.gov/pubs/510targ.htm ↩

7. National Low Income Housing Coalition, "Entire LIHEAP Staff at HHS Fired," April 7, 2025. https://nlihc.org/resource/entire-liheap-staff-hhs-fired ↩

8. Pennsylvania LIHEAP 2026-2027 State Plan public hearing notice. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/liheap ↩ ↩²

9. Sen. Markey / Sanders, Heating and Cooling Relief Act Section-by-Section, March 2025. https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/heating_and_cooling_relief_act_section_by_section.pdf ↩

10. NEADA, "LIHEAP Still Here, But Threats Loom," February 25, 2026. https://neada.org/press/liheap-under-threat/ ↩

11. National Consumer Law Center / NEADA, "LIHEAP in Crisis," April 23, 2025. https://www.nclc.org/liheap-in-crisis ↩