LEAP is a federally funded program administered by the Colorado Department of Human Services that provides funds to help eligible Colorado families, seniors, and individuals pay a portion of winter home heating costs.<\/p>\n
Aggie Berens, LEAP manager says this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s average LEAP benefit is about $457.<\/p>\n
Berens explained that the minimum benefit is $300, and the maximum is $1300.<\/p>\n
The program pays the highest benefits to those with the highest heating bills and lowest incomes, by family size.<\/p>\n
Applicant income cannot exceed 150 percent of the federal poverty level, currently $2,982 per month for a family of four.<\/p>\n
LEAP approved households are also eligible for the Crisis Intervention Program, which assists residents with broken furnaces or heating elements with repair or replacement.<\/p>\n
For those who qualify for LEAP but still need additional assistance paying their heating costs, Atmos Energy also offers a Percentage Income Payment Program, which bases eligible customer bills on a percentage of their income.<\/p>\n
Applications for LEAP are accepted Nov. 1 through April 30.<\/p>\n
The Montezuma County LEAP office is at 109 W. Main St., Room 203 in Cortez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
is a federally funded program administered by the Colorado Department of Human Services that provides funds to help eligible Colorado families, seniors, and individuals pay a portion of winter home heating costs. Aggie Berens, LEAP manager says this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s average LEAP benefit is about $457. Berens explained that the minimum benefit is $300, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,60,4286],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-115793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-county","tag-personal-finance"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115793"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=115793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}