GEDCO helping with energy assistance

Get ready; your natural gas and electric bills are going up. That comes with wholesale energy rates that went up this week.

That will put a strain on people who are already struggling with their utility bill, like Monica Stith. She is a widow and lives on her late husband's pension. She's concerned that her fixed income will be outpaced by the rising utility bills.

"Absolutely, absolutely concerned,” she says. “Because it has been... there are times when I look at the bill and I’m like, what, I don't even understand where this came from."

She came to GEDCO, the Govans Ecumenical Development Corporation. They help people who live in nearby zip codes with food, rent, and utilities.

They say the average BGE bill they see is more than $2,000. That's because most people live in older homes without good insulation.

“We can help somebody who's kinda stressed out, might be facing down a termination, and we can just basically say, you got this,” says Laurel Peltier, volunteer utility advocate at GEDCO.

Teresa White knows that stress. She lives alone and is grieving the loss of her youngest son earlier this year. GEDCO helped her get state energy assistance for a BGE bill that was over $1,000. Yet she's wondering what's next.

"Ok, it's helping us now,” White says. “What's going to happen when it's freezing cold outside, and they can't help us until your anniversary date next summer?”

GEDCO provides, on average, $200 of BGE assistance per household once a year.

They also help people fill out the applications for the state’s energy assistance programs, get their documents in order, and make copies. And they help people apply for free and low-cost home weatherization programs that may bring down their utility bill.

For more information on how to apply for the Maryland Energy Assistance Program, click here .