With each passing day, Consuelo Ruano finds her mounting bills increasingly difficult to keep up with.
Two jobs fill her schedule, but the income barely stretches to cover rent and food, which has left her with a tough choice on cold days: turn on the heater to keep her family warm and pay the high cost or live in discomfort, making due with the blankets she scraped her money together to buy. More often, Ruano choses the latter. “We are putting up with the cold because we try not to have the heater on for too long,” says the 31-year-old Salvadoran immigrant who lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her three daughters and niece in San Lorenzo.
“I haven’t even wanted to open my [energy] bill because I have too many worries, and then looking at the receipt and seeing how much I owe is an extra burden,” she added.
Ruano is behind on her payments to Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) by over $800. This amount equals half of her monthly income, so she pays what she can, when she can.
“I’m paying $50 here and there when I can to bring down the balance,” she says in Spanish.
Her husband passed away in April 2023, making her the only breadwinner for her family of five. She tries to keep her apartment warm by turning on the heater for 10 minutes three or four times a day, conscious that her bill will only go up.
I had to buy more blankets because it was too cold, and what we had wasn’t enough
Consuelo Ruano, San lorenzo
Her three daughters and niece, aged two, four, 12 and 16, often complain of feeling cold during the winter. “‘Mom, I’m cold,’ my daughters tell me,” Ruano says, as her 4-year-old sleeps on the couch next to her under a blanket. “I even had an extra expense that I had to make because I had to buy more blankets because it was too cold, and what we had wasn’t enough,” she added.
In the past decade, electricity rates have gone up by 127%, according to a quarterly report by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the state agency that regulates public utility companies.
Last November, CPUC approved a rate hike for PG&E that increased residential rates on January 1 by nearly 13%, or a monthly average of $32.50.
Utility costs are increasing due to expenses unrelated to usage, like neighborhood power line maintenance and wildfire prevention, according to the CPUC report. In 2022, almost $30 of PG&E’s average monthly customer bills were fixed costs related to wildfires.
In California, about one in every five customers is behind on their bills. Ruano is one of them; she has received multiple disconnection notices for not paying her bill but says her power so far has never been interrupted.
According to a PG&E monthly disconnect data report, more than 7,200 customers were disconnected for non-payment in December, more than 386,000 customers received a 15-day disconnection notice, and about 96,000 customers received a 48-hour notice.
Ruano mainly works as a part-time food server and has recently picked up another part-time job at a daycare, two days out of the week, with the hope that it would help out with the bills. But even with two jobs, that’s only enough to cover her $2,100 monthly rent, she said.
“And then everything else—gas, food, everything that my daughters need– it’s a lot,” she says. “I can’t do it alone, and I’ve looked for help.”
Utilities assistance programs fall short
A variety of federal, state, and nonprofit programs are available to help customers with their utility bills. These programs include subsidies, payment plans, and assistance with installing energy-efficient appliances and insulation. But they are also running out of funds.
Households receiving energy assistance reached record levels in the last year, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. About 7.3 million households across the country received energy assistance in fiscal year 2023, an increase of more than 25 percent from fiscal year 2022.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), the main federal program that helps low-income households and seniors with their energy bills, is facing potential budget cuts this year as Congress debates a spending bill. The program may have to cut 1.4 million households from assistance in 2024 should Congress vote to reduce the program’s budget, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, a coalition of state directors that manage LIHEAP funding for their respective states..
In Alameda County, the program is already overwhelmed. During the COVID-19 pandemic, utility companies were prohibited from shutting off a household’s power due to non-payment. That policy has since ended, and now organizations like Spectrum Community Services, a Hayward-based nonprofit organization that distributes LIHEAP funds, has received an overwhelming number of applications. They are unable to provide assistance to all who have applied.
Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/Report for America corps member
In Ruano’s case, she has sought rental assistance to help pay off her mounting utility debt. Rental assistance and financial assistance programs in the Bay Area are also experiencing a high volume of applications. Ruano has been denied because her income surpassed the required limit.
“Alameda County, in particular, over the past three years since COVID, has really seen a huge increase in requests for assistance and need. And so they have been spending their allotment very quickly,” said Kevin Swanson, Executive Director of Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund, a local housing nonprofit.
Although funds for Alameda County are currently exhausted, Swanson says that the county should receive quarterly funds again in April.
At Catholic Charities East Bay, a nonprofit organization that also helps with short-term financial assistance to people living in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, their housing hotline greets callers with an automated message that reflects how a lack of resources cannot keep up with the current demand. “At the moment, due to funding reduction, we have limited resources, and we are unable to accept new applications,” the message says.
PG&E also offers other income-eligible programs that can help customers lower their bills. As of October 2023, more than 361,000 customers have enrolled in the Arrearage Management Plan, a debt forgiveness plan, according to PG&E.
Accessing these programs is challenging for Ruano as she speaks limited English and often struggles to find what help is out there. She says she often learns of available resources through a parent WhatsApp group.
“We are unaware, and we do not know who to turn to, and we are not informed,” says Ruano.
“Since my husband passed away, the situation has been very difficult because all the bills are on me,” says Ruano. “I’ll also worry in the summer when I need to keep my home cool.”