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VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT

OF SOCIAL SERVICES ENERGY ASSISTANCE

10/17 VOLUME IX, CHAPTER J, PAGE 3

2) Households temporarily living in a non-profit emergency shelter and/or homeless are only eligible for a security deposit.

4. APPLICATIONS

Applicants for Cooling Assistance must complete a Cooling Assistance application. A new application must be completed each time Cooling Assistance is requested unless the request is for the same type(s) of assistance. The applicant should select a vendor from the approved vendor list for the LDSS. (Note: For households participating in the Address Confidentiality Program [ACP] who request equipment that requires the customer to select a vendor, the LDSS will have to contact their Regional Consultant so a manual check can be generated by the Home Office.) All other guidance on taking applications for Cooling Assistance is indicated in Chapter A, 9. Cooling Assistance applications can be found at: http://spark.dss.virginia.gov/divisions/bp/ea/.

Applications may be received by mail, in person, by fax, by telephone (through the Enterprise Customer Service Center), or online (in CommonHelp). A signature on the application is required. A face-to-face interview is not required.

Only one member of a household may make an application for assistance. This application is assumed to request assistance for all persons residing in the household.

A household may apply more than one time. For example, a household may apply for an air conditioner in June and for an electric payment in August. More than one type of assistance may be approved on a single application. This may happen in the case of a request for cooling equipment purchase/repair and an electric bill payment.

If a household requests assistance with the payment of an electric bill and later requests the same type of assistance during the Cooling Assistance application period, a new application is not required. The household will only need to submit a copy of the most recent electric bill. The worker will enter the date the bill was received as the application date in the system.

5. PROCESSING APPLICATIONS

The LDSS must enter all Cooling Assistance applications in the eligibility system by Friday of the week the applications are received. The application must be placed in pending status unless ready for eligibility determination. At the close of the application period, LDSS must have all client/case data for cooling cases entered into the system and bills paid by a date specified by Home Office.

TRANSMITTAL #17-1