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Heating Help and an Electricity Credit — Income Only, at $38,070 for One Person

The Home Energy Assistance Program helps qualified homeowners and renters pay heating costs, with emergency fuel delivery and energy-related repairs, and HEAP eligibility in turn opens the Low Income Assistance Plan credit on the electricity bill. Eligibility is decided by household income and size — $38,070 a year for one person and $73,213 for four in the 2026–2027 season — and there is no veteran route into either.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

The Home Energy Assistance Program helps qualified homeowners and renters pay heating costs, with emergency fuel delivery and energy-related repairs, and HEAP eligibility in turn opens the Low Income Assistance Plan credit on the electricity bill. Eligibility is decided by household income and size — $38,070 a year for one person and $73,213 for four in the 2026–2027 season — and there is no veteran route into either.

What it's worth: A heating benefit that varies with household size, income and expenses, plus a credit on the electricity bill

  • No benefit figure is claimed. The agency states only that the amount varies depending on household size, income and other household expenses, and it does not publish the LIAP credit at all.
  • The income figures quoted are the 2026–2027 season maximum gross household income ceilings — $38,070 for one person, $49,784 for two, $61,498 for three, $73,213 for four — and they change each season.
  • The weight is set to a plausible season of heating help rather than to any published award.

Who is entitled to it

  • Assistance follows the home you actually live in.
  • You are in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

Deadline: Apply as early in the season as possible — the agency says so in terms
  1. 1Apply through the Community Action Agency for your area rather than to MaineHousing directly. The process is an application and, in some cases, an interview.
  2. 2Apply early. The agency’s own instruction is that households are encouraged to apply as early as possible, and the benefit level depends on funds as well as on need.
  3. 3Do the LIAP in the same sitting. The Low Income Assistance Plan is a credit on the electric bill and the application for it is usually completed during the HEAP application — a separate trip is rarely necessary.
  4. 4Check the three LIAP conditions, which are not the HEAP conditions: the household takes residential electric service on a continuing year-round basis; the electric account is in a household member’s name; and the household does not receive a housing subsidy that caps total housing costs including utilities at a fixed percentage of income.
  5. 5If your income is over the guideline, ask about the medical deduction before assuming the answer. The agency states that a household above the income guideline may be able to deduct a portion of what it paid in medical expenses — which matters for a household carrying service-connected medical costs.
  6. 6Ask the Community Action Agency what documents to bring. The published list is not exhaustive and the agency says so.
  7. 7Ask in the same conversation about energy-related repairs and weatherisation. HEAP eligibility opens those too, and they are worth more over time than a single season’s fuel benefit.
Form
A single application to your Community Action Agency, which covers HEAP and LIAP together
File with
Your Community Action Agency, under MaineHousing
Re-file every year
Entitlement is retested annually. Missing a year costs that year.
CorrectionThere is no veteran preference, priority or set-aside in either programme. Both pages state eligibility in terms of household income and size and nothing else. A veteran reaches this help as a low-income household, which is worth saying plainly because energy help is one of the things veterans are most often told to ask their veterans’ office about.
Worth knowingLIAP is the reason to bother with HEAP even where the heating benefit looks small: the electricity credit is a separate saving that rides on the HEAP determination, and it is missed by households that decide the fuel benefit alone is not worth the paperwork.
Worth knowingRenters are inside HEAP, not just homeowners, and the programme covers utility payments and energy-related repairs as well as fuel.
Known gapHow VA disability compensation is treated in the income calculation was not established this session, and it is the single question that decides most veteran households’ eligibility here. The Community Action Agency, not MaineHousing, is the place to settle it. The size of the LIAP credit is not published anywhere that could be read.

Sources

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.