Cold Boosts Need For Heating Aid Nearly 2,000 Residents Wait In Line Just To Ask For Relief

Phyllis Farnworth lives in a six-bedroom house, but the eight children she and her husband are raising have been sleeping in the living room this winter.

Despite spending more than $200 per month on heat, Farnworth said, the rest of the house is just too cold for sleeping.

“It’s not so bad during the day,” she said. “It’s just at night. The basement and the second floor get so cold.”

Farnworth was one of nearly 2,000 Spokane residents who endured Monday’s single-digit temperatures and two-hour waits to schedule a time to apply for help in paying their heating costs.

The federal government gave Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs about $1 million this year to assist low-income people in paying their natural gas, fuel oil or electricity bills.

The people who made an appointment Monday can qualify for up to $250 in heating assistance between now and February if they can prove their need, said Julie Graham, a spokeswoman for Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs.

A family of four must have earned less than $1,700 per month for the last three months to qualify for assistance, Graham said.

“Striking Kaiser Steelworkers would be able to qualify about now,” she said.

The program is expected to help about 5,000 Spokane County residents this heating season. About half the money was committed to people this November.

There has been more money available in past years. In 1993, SNAP gave out checks to more than 9,200 households.

But Congress has gradually reduced the amount of money available each of the past five years, Graham said.

“The spending priorities have changed,” she said.

The need has changed as well. More residents than ever are applying for help, Graham said.

The recent cold snap brought people out in droves Monday. Three SNAP appointment-taking sites were jammed all morning, as were the agency’s telephone lines, Graham said.

People began arriving at the East Central Community Center before 7 a.m. while the temperature outside hovered at 4 degrees.

They filed into the gymnasium, where Diana Kloster of SNAP issued them a number and told them to wait.

“It could be an hour, two hours, three hours. I just don’t know,” Kloster told one woman.

By 9 a.m., Kloster had issued 328 numbers, and people were still coming.

“In the past, we only did it on one day,” Kloster said. “That was horrible. It helps that we had one in November, too.”

Eight SNAP workers sat at tables in the gym scheduling appointments for people to come in with documentation showing their financial status.

People of all ages sat on the hard wooden bleachers quietly waiting their turn.

It likely will be several weeks before most have their appointments, and several more weeks after that before they get their checks.

Farnworth wasn’t happy about being there, but she felt she had little choice.

Her husband, Gary, works at a concrete railroad tie-building business in the Valley and she delivers newspapers on the South Hill. Still, they have a hard time making ends meet, she said.

“We’ve got eight kids: two from my husband’s previous marriage, three together and three of his brother’s who we’ve got custody of,” said Farnworth, 31, who keeps her thermostat set at 69 degrees. “I need to feed them, too.”