NC Energy Companies Cutting Off Utilities In Freezing Weather

NC Families Hit By Recession Struggle To Stay Warm In Brutal Weather


One of the worst cold spells in 30 years has become the latest reminder that Charlotte has a new definition of needy.

From families evicted to the streets for lack of a job, to low-income homeowners trying to pay utility bills, thousands of Carolinians have been struggling to stay warm.

Among them are people like Lesia Weeks, 37, a mother of four, who dodged the cold by sitting for hours in an 18-by-20-foot waiting room at the Salvation Army Center of Hope.

Retha Carriker, 42, another homeless mother, has spent her days sitting in the shelter's parking lot, huddled in the Mercury Villager that had served as her home until October.

Suffering along with them is a new strata of working- and middle-class people hit hard by the recession: those who can't afford their utility bills or repairs to their heating units.

"I heat my house with a wood stove because the HVAC has been broken since the recession started two years ago," says one small-business woman, who declined to give her name. "It's 52 degrees inside in the morning when I wake up, and at best it gets up to 60 degrees before bed."

The impact of the cold was nowhere more apparent than at Crisis Assistance Ministry, which offers help with utility bills. On Friday, a typically slow day, 74 people showed up hoping to get help to keep their utilities from being turned off, says Carol Hardison, executive director of the agency.

"There's a group of people who were making it without water, without electricity," she says. "But this prolonged cold has worn out their resources. ... When they get to a week like this, they have to figure out a way to get help."

Ruby Adams, 57, of west Charlotte says she is an example, having lasted without electricity since November.

She's raising her late daughter's three children, but sent them to live with neighbors weeks ago. She spends days at a friend's house. At night, she returns to her frigid home and sleeps next to a kerosene space heater.

When she shuts it off, she burrows beneath five comforters.

"I've never in my life experienced something like this," says Adams, who is unemployed. "I've just been devastated."

Yet to come: a weekend with some of the coldest temperatures this winter.

Shelters at capacity

No deaths in Charlotte have been blamed on the cold. But at least nine people have died in other parts of the country, including Kenneth Hammett, 55, of Gaffney, S.C., whose body was found in a tent behind a gas station.

He was homeless, a group most at risk during extreme weather.

For nearly a week now, Charlotte shelters have reported capacity crowds, including 500 at the men's shelter, and nearly 300 women and children at the Salvation Army Center of Hope.

Lesia Weeks says she has tried her best not to set foot outside the center all week, because the cold worsens complications from her chest surgery. Her best option is to sit in the shelter's cramped waiting room, where at any given time, you'll find two dozen women in winter garb, fending off gusts of cold muscling in through the front door.

Weeks and her children were locked out of their apartment for overdue rent in September, and they came to the shelter with only the clothes on their backs.

"If the shelter hadn't taken me in, I had a plan to give up my three children to Social Services," says Weeks, whose health problems cost her a job as a bus driver. "They were mad at me. But there's no way we could have lived on the streets in weather like this."

Retha Carriker says she moved to the shelter in the fall only because she had gotten custody of her 8-year-old daughter. Frigid nights spent living in her van were not a problem, she says, but this is a different kind of cold.

"For as long as this has lasted, I'd be dead by now or in the emergency room," says Carriker. "When it starts getting into the teens, you don't sleep. You just sit up all night and shiver."

She still prefers the van, for the peace and quiet.

But she says it's not where she wants to die.

Expensive Heating repair costs

Anne Gannon, general manager of the Morris-Jenkins heating and air firm, says employees have been working overtime this week to handle hundreds of daily service calls, two or three times the level they usually see in January.

Often, when the technicians tell customers the cost of repairs, they'll say they can't afford them because they've lost their jobs or fear they're about to.

"We run into this more than 10 times a day," she says. "It's heartrending."

The cold snap comes as the region and country struggle to pull out of the worst recession in a generation. Mecklenburg had more than 10,000 home-foreclosure filings in the first 10 months of 2009. The Charlotte metropolitan region still suffers double-digit unemployment, and the professional and business services sector has shed nearly 5,000 jobs in the past year.

Winter's icy fingers have reached working- or middle-class people who once thought themselves immune. When the Observer asked for insights from people struggling to stay warm, a Department of Social Services worker, a small-business woman and a cook for a large local church were among those who responded.

The DSS employee e-mailed that his family has been heating its 2,000-square-foot home with a space heater since October. He added that his spouse lost her job due to a life-threatening illness, and the family hasn't been able to make ends meet.

He says he hears similar stories from other working people who come to DSS. Many, he says, are newly unemployed, whose income hasn't fallen low enough for them to get the full range of assistance available. (Hardison says the cutoff at Crisis Assistance Ministry is roughly $55,000 for a family of four.)

The church cook, a grandmother who didn't want to identify herself further, says that's been the case with her. She heats her Charlotte home with several space heaters because she can't afford to fix her furnace, which went out about two months ago.

"You work," she says, "but you have just enough to get by because you're living paycheck to paycheck."

After the bitter cold of the weekend, meteorologists are predicting a moderate warming trend next week. But that's little comfort for Ruby Adams.

Her heat pump died months ago, and she couldn't afford to fix it. She says the power company cut off her electricity in mid-November after the unit crashed.

With the rest of the house so cold she can see her breath, Adams confines herself to one dark bedroom, where she cooks meals in a frying pan atop the space heater.

She says Crisis Assistance Ministry agreed to pay about $600 of the $900 she owes on her power bill but told her she would have to raise the rest. She got commitments from her church and the Good Fellows, a charitable group that helps the needy.

Still, days passed and nothing happened.

Finally, she says, she called Friday and a Crisis Assistance worker told her the agency had paid its share. The Good Fellows paid as well, leaving only her church's contribution to get her lights on. She's hoping that can happen sometime this weekend.

Then, she says, she's hoping an assistance program will fix her heat pump. She'll need it. The National Weather Service's meteorologists are predicting an unusually cold and wet winter in the Southeast.

"I'm so grateful," she says, referring to the assistance she's received. "I've been through hell and high waters."




Gas Companies Disconnecting Thousands


On the brink of the cold-weather months, more than 56,000 natural-gas customers in the Chicago area remain disconnected for lack of payment. That's up 36% from last year, putting pressure on utilities and local officials to get disconnected households back online before winter begins in earnest.

Peoples Gas and Nicor Inc. are offering new programs to help customers who are behind on their bills. In a pilot that began last month, Peoples has stopped shutting off customers as long as they pay 60% of their monthly bill. For two weeks last month, Nicor offered to reconnect customers who paid half of their outstanding debt and agreed to a payment plan for the rest. Some 1,400 took advantage of the offer.

With the souring economy making it increasingly difficult for people to pay their bills, consumer advocates say the programs are not enough.



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, Huffington Post, Google Maps