Get help with water, gas, and electricity in one room, and apply for LIHEAP on the spot.
If your water, gas, or electric bill has been getting harder to carry, there is a room you should be in next month. The Philadelphia Water Department is holding a Utility and Resource Fair on Saturday, November 7, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., to help people with their bills.
Representatives from the Water Department, PECO, and Philadelphia Gas Works will all be on site. You can sit down with the utility you are struggling with and talk through your actual account, not a call center menu. You can also apply for LIHEAP, the federal heating assistance program, right there at the event.
The fair is at Mercy Neighborhood Ministries, 1939 W Venango Street in North Philadelphia. It is a trip from the Northeast, and we will not pretend otherwise, but for a household behind on more than one bill, having all three utilities and the LIHEAP application in one room on one afternoon can be worth the ride.
A few practical notes before you go. The Water Department asks you to book an appointment if you want to speak with a specific utility, and its registration page lists the documentation you will need to bring to apply for utility or LIHEAP assistance. Check that list before you leave the house, because the applications depend on paperwork. If you do not need a utility appointment, you can register for the resource fair portion only. Other community, city, state, health, and financial resources will also be there with information about their programs.
The timing is not an accident. Water bills in Philadelphia went up again on September 1, about 7.5% for a typical residential customer, and heating season is about to start. Programs like this exist because the city knows the math is not working for a lot of households. There is no shame in using them. They are funded, they are staffed, and on November 7, they are all in one place.
Full details and the registration link are on the Water Department’s announcement page at water.phila.gov.
