Descriptive report of changes to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program
An evaluation report for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
What was the challenge?
LIHEAP is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF), and is primarily aimed at assisting households with low incomes in meeting their immediate home energy needs. States, federally recognized Tribes and Tribal organizations, and territories (“grant recipients”) apply to ACF for direct LIHEAP awards, and grant recipients then provide assistance to households in need.
ACF awarded an additional $4.5 billion to LIHEAP grant recipients under the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act in 2021, and $900 million under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in 2020. ARP alone more than doubled the typical annual appropriations available to grant recipients. This descriptive study documents how grant recipients have implemented LIHEAP since 2019 and highlights the changes grant recipients made in how they spent their funding. LIHEAP funding is determined each federal fiscal year (FY) through the Congressional Appropriations process.*
What did we do?
We summarized data that grant recipients reported to ACF, including performance data, household reports, model plan data, and quarterly data, to answer three research questions:
- What are the ways that grant recipients implemented LIHEAP since 2019?
- What did the distribution of funding to LIHEAP-eligible households look like?
- What is the extent to which LIHEAP serves eligible households and LIHEAP participants experience reductions in energy burden?
What did we learn?
The descriptive results provide an overview of trends around LIHEAP changes that can help understand how grant recipients implemented LIHEAP since FY 2019. This can help grant recipients identify program changes that are being made nationally which may be useful when adapting their LIHEAP model plans in upcoming fiscal years. This can also help to identify where there are potentially promising program policies and practices that could not be implemented without the additional funding.
*Please note: This descriptive study was conducted before grant recipients finished spending all their ARP funding.
