Seventy-year-old Margaret Gilliam of Dorchester said she has slept in a cold apartment. She does not want to do it again, especially not with her two teenage grandchildren sharing her home. But each day, the needle on her oil tank, filled three weeks ago with about 200 gallons of oil provided by a Jamaica Plain nonprofit, continues to slide lower.
She will probably run out next week, before her Social Security check arrives, and she is already behind on her electric and gas bills.
"Where do I go after next week?" she asked yesterday at a field hearing in Boston of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
The hearing was first intended to press the White House to release nearly $600 million in home energy assistance funding that Congress appropriated. With an announcement Wednesday that the US Department of Health and Human Services had released $450 million, of which Massachusetts will receive $27.2 million, the focus shifted to full funding of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
While the allocation brings this year's total federal energy assistance to about $1.95 billion, advocates said that is far short of the $5.1 billion the program should have to distribute to poor families, according to the legislation that reauthorized the energy assistance program.
Residential heating oil prices are up 97 cents a gallon compared with last year, or about 41 percent, to $3.36 a gallon, according to the federal government's Energy Information Administration. The increase has arrived as many families also are dealing with the threat of foreclosure and other financial pressures, Kennedy said.
"Working families across the nation are facing a perfect storm of adversity," he said.
"We're focused on the failure of our national government to meet the responsibilities that we have toward families that are hard-pressed to provide one of the most basic necessities of life, and that is a warm home," he added. "Many of them, after they scrape together enough resources to purchase some heating oil, are looking over their shoulder at their mortgage."
The hearing, at which Kennedy was the only committee member present, was held at the offices of the Action for Boston Community Development Inc. (ABCD), which reported that all of the 15,000 families in Boston, Brookline, and Newton who qualify for its fuel assistance payments had exhausted their benefits. A spokeswoman said later that each of those families should expect an additional $200 in assistance because of the federal funds released Wednesday.
"In 55 years of providing fuel assistance, this is by far the worst winter we have seen for the poor, elderly, disabled, and working families in Massachusetts," said Robert M. Coard, president of ABCD, citing the increase in heating oil costs coupled with the early onset of bitterly cold temperatures this winter in New England.
Mark Wolfe, the Washington-based executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, said federal fuel assistance does not keep pace with the increasing burden that heating oil costs place on families.
"Utilities are becoming more aggressive about collections, [consumers are facing] much higher prices, and energy assistance cannot keep up with it," Wolfe said.
Gilliam, a retired widow who previously worked as an accounting clerk, keeps meticulous records of her bills. She pulled her records out of a yellow envelope she brought to the hearing. Last winter, she said, she spent $4,384 on heating oil. This winter, with half of the season yet to arrive, her oil costs are nearing $4,000.
Gilliam said she reached out to Citizens Energy Corp., the fuel-assistance company run by former US representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, who appears in advertisements touting the assistance of Houston-based oil company Citgo, owned by the Venezuelan government. Citizens Energy provides 100 gallons of heating oil to families who qualify.
She has also been monitoring her family's oil consumption. When she left for yesterday's hearing, Gilliam said, she turned the thermostat down to 62 degrees.
"It will be a little chilly when I return," she said.
John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com.
