ABSTRACT
Since the late 1970s, state and local policy makers in the United States have been particularly concerned about the rising costs of fuel to heat houses of the poor and near-poor. The federal government, through the Community Services Administration, a division of the Department of Health and Human Service’s Administration for Children and Families, initiated a program of energy counseling and cash/credit subsidies to poverty households through a Crisis Intervention Program. The potential for fraud is extremely high at the service level, and administrative costs for program implementation are negligible. The program was initially developed as a response to a number of factors that included the prediction of an extremely severe winter heating season; a growing constituency of voting older persons; and the 140 percent increase in fuel costs over the previous six years.
