Stimulus update: $500 payments for Maine residents to go out next week
Ryan King
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Select residents of Maine are poised to get payments of up to $500 that will be rolled out on the week of Dec. 12 to help alleviate pressures from ballooning heating costs.
Assistance will be targeted to roughly 13,000 households with low-income Mainers aged 65 and older below 133% of the federal poverty line who collected a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services announced.
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“The payments help to offset the costs of heating sources — such as oil, gas, propane, wood, and electricity — as well as the repair or replacement of essential heating systems,” the department emphasized in the announcement.
Bearing a price tag of $6.6 million, the initiative will draw funding from state money used to elevate the health and safety of older Maine residents who are at a heightened risk of contracting illness during the winter months due to their financial status.
Such assistance complements energy relief measures undertaken in Gov. Janet Mills’s Emergency Winter Energy Relief Plan. Residents collecting the latest round of heating relief could also be eligible for payment in Mills’s plan.
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The alleviation also coincides with a bevy of other packages, such as the $800 heating relief in March that cost about $25 million. Together, these payments amounted to about $30 million, according to the department.
Additional information about the payments can be found here.