ACF Touts Successes of LIHWAP Program; Seeks More Funding

It seems so basic — every household should have access to clean, drinkable water. Water, as we all know, sustains life. And yet, such availability to clean water was not always a given. The good news is that thanks to the Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program (LIHWAP), created under the American Rescue Plan Act (Pub. L. 117-2), more than a million households as of June 2023 — as reported in a recent Administration for Children and Families (ACF) report — have received federal assistance to avoid the disconnection of water and/or wastewater services due to past due bills.

Authorized with $1.1 billion in funding through ACF, LIHWAP is the first emergency program to restore water services, prevent disconnections and provide rate reductions for households with low incomes. Funding for the program is distributed as grants to states, tribes and U.S. territories to provide water assistance.

The report notes that by June 2023, less than a year after all grant recipients started providing benefits, LIHWAP served more than 1 million households, and by the end of September 2023, exactly a year after recipients started providing benefits, the number of households served increased to more than 1.4 million. About 93% of LIHWAP funds had been obligated to households as of Sept. 30, 2023.

Without an additional appropriation, the program will end on or before March 31. Until then, ACF will continue to provide on-going training and technical assistance that leverages best practices and lessons learned, which are detailed in the report, to ensure the program reaches as many households as possible.

“We have now restored water and wastewater services 100,479 times, prevented disconnections 735,558 times and reduced 679,000 water bills,” said Dr. Lanikque Howard, director of ACF’s Office of Community Services.

Despite the positive outcomes so far from the program, grant recipients have told ACF that the LIHWAP award amount will not cover all eligible households in need of water assistance. Many state recipients will only be able to serve households who are either currently disconnected from services or who are at risk of being disconnected. Many grant recipients will not have enough funding to be able to assist households who need help paying their current bills. One step ACF has taken to address this concern is to provide guidance encouraging LIHWAP grant recipients to consider creating linkages to and coordinating services with the Community Services Block Grant and other federal programs to support household needs not addressed through LIHWAP. ACF is documenting the need for additional funding in order to better understand the number of households that need water assistance but could not receive assistance due to limited funding.

It will be interesting to see if more congressional funding is allocated to this program. We’ll be keeping an eye on this. If it is, we’ll raise a glass (of water) and toast “We’ll drink to that!”

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