Jessica Victoria, of Providence, who has received gas and electric shutoff notices, applies for help at Providence Community Action last week. With high heating costs and colder temperatures, advocates say the utility-shutoff problem will get worse.

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The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

PROVIDENCE — The number of Rhode Island households that have lost utility service this year because of unpaid bills has reached an all-time high, and thousands remain without heat or electricity.

Utility companies in the state turned off electricity and natural-gas service to 29,970 customers through the first 10 months of this year, 18 percent more than in all of last year and the highest number since the state began tracking shutoffs in 1997.

With predictions of record-high heating costs and colder temperatures for the coming winter, low-income advocates say the problem will only get worse.

Especially vulnerable are the people who use heating oil, which is 34 percent more expensive now than it was a year ago. There are no state-mandated shutoff protections for oil customers, as there are for low-income gas and electricity customers, because the heating-oil industry is unregulated.

Those who need help paying their heating bills this winter will find less money available. Federal heating-assistance grants have been reduced from last year because fewer dollars have been allotted to the program. And a new state-sponsored heating-assistance plan received no money from the General Assembly for this winter. The $15 million that was supposed to go to the program was siphoned off to help offset a massive budget deficit.

The average price of home heating oil was $3.189 a gallon on Tuesday, 81 cents a gallon higher than it was a year ago, and the highest price ever recorded in the state. A consumer of 666 gallons of heating oil, an average amount, would pay about $2,069 for heating this winter — about $415 more than last year, an increase of 25 percent.

Rates for natural gas and electricity service have declined compared with a year ago, but they remain close to their historic highs. A typical gas heating customer will pay $1,485 for the year, an increase of $300, or 25 percent from five years ago. A typical electricity customer will pay $874 a year, $223 more, or an increase of 34 percent from 2002.

The number of shutoffs indicates how many households had their service turned off for nonpayment at some point during the year. It does not include customers who moved or canceled service voluntarily. And it does not reflect the current number of customers without service, since many have had service restored.

State rules set by the Public Utilities Commission allow utility companies to shut off service to a customer if the delinquent balance rises above $500. However, the service of customers who are considered “protected” cannot be terminated during the winter moratorium of Nov. 1 to April 15.

(A protected customer is elderly, handicapped, seriously ill, receiving unemployment compensation, receiving federal heating assistance or qualifies as a financial hardship, according to state rules. The state defines a financial-hardship customer as one having an income at or below 75 percent of the Rhode Island median income. The median income for a family of four in 2007 is $72,706, according to the Census Bureau. That would make the income cutoff $54,529.)

But that moratorium does not address customers who have already lost service, even if they are considered protected. Those customers must pay 25 percent to 50 percent of their past-due balance, depending on payment history, before service is restored.

There were 4,532 customers whose service was turned off for nonpayment this year and were still without heat or electricity at the end of October, according to figures provided by National Grid.

This year’s total includes 3,156 gas customers, of which 612 were considered protected.

It also includes 1,368 electricity accounts that had not been restored, of which 196 were protected accounts.

Those without heat or lights have been flooding the offices of local community-action agencies, which take applications for federal heating-assistance grants.

“It’s going to be a bad winter, even if it is mild,” said Helen Lallo, a coordinator at Providence Community Action in the Olneyville section of Providence.

She said that since the agency opened its doors in mid-September, it has been working almost entirely on shutoff cases. Over the past two months, the agency has been able to help nearly 900 households get their service restored, Lallo said.

The agency can provide up to $1,000 in emergency help to get a client’s utilities turned back on.

For now, the grants go only to those who need help with gas or electricity.

Those who need help with their oil bills, such as Lizbeth Gomez, 23, will have to wait. The state’s Office of Energy Resources, which manages the LIHEAP program, has not yet made grants available to heating-oil customers.

If the state starts giving out oil grants too early, a spokesman said, it may run out of money during the coldest months of winter, when it is needed the most.

Gomez, who lives in Providence with her husband and two young children, said she’s not sure how they’ll pay their oil bills this year. Her husband is a driver for a printing company, and his take-home pay is about $400 a week, she said. They recently moved to an apartment with less-expensive rent. They now pay $600 a month, but they owe their previous landlord about $2,500 in past rent and heating oil, she said.

AT PROVIDENCE COMMUNITY Action on Wednesday, the dire straits of many people are apparent. Clients are crammed into a small waiting room, and the line spills into a hallway. They wait to talk to one of several heating-assistance counselors. Most are women, many with young children.

Finally, it is Arthely Holder’s turn.

He has barely sat down when intake worker Mary Hyman gets down to business.

“Is your gas on or off?” she asks him.

She begins filling out a worksheet, even before she knows his name.

The gas is off, Holder says.

“How much is your bill?” she asks.

She dispenses with the niceties and small talk — people are waiting.

As she fills out the paperwork, Holder’s story unfolds. He is 53. He says he moved into an apartment in Providence this summer. National Grid refused to turn on his gas or electricity because he owed money from old accounts. He says he is disabled with “full-blown” diabetes and has to take insulin shots and other medications.

His disability check is $300 a month, and his take-home pay from his part-time job at a dry-cleaning store is $120 a week — barely enough to cover his rent of $650 a month.

Holder says he didn’t have the money to pay the back utility bills, so he has gone without lights or heat in his new apartment. He uses extra blankets to stay warm, and an outdoor gas grill to cook.

But he said he can’t do that any longer. It’s getting cold, and he has a 15-year-old daughter who now lives with him. He is separated from his wife.

Hyman goes through Holder’s bills and sees that he owes $265.85 to the gas company.

“And they’re torturing me for that,” Holden blurts out. “They’ve called me about 10 times.”

Hyman calls the gas company to see if it will agree to turn on his service if he pays part of his back bill. She gets off the phone and says that the company found another bill he hadn’t paid. Now he owes $432.

“That’s a lie!” he says. “They made that up.”

Hyman is unfazed. She tells him the gas company agreed to turn on service if he pays 25 percent of his back balance: $108. And the agency can pay that amount for him, she says.

He will have heat this winter.

She gives him back his folder and puts a sticky note on the outside with her phone number. Call her if the electric company wants money to turn on his power, she tells him.

Holder thanks her and gets up to leave.

“I shouldn’t be in a place like this at my age,” he says.

NATIONAL GRID, the company that provides service to 245,000 natural-gas customers and 477,000 electricity customers in the state, is the utility company performing almost all of the shutoffs. The company has been under pressure from state regulators to shut off service to customers who don’t pay their bills, especially those with large back balances.

“A portion of what we’re unable to collect is put back into the rate base, which means that the customers who do pay their bills also pay a portion of the unpaid bills. We think it’s only fair that people who use the electricity and the natural gas should be responsible for paying for the use of those commodities,” said David Graves, National Grid spokesman.

“If people are having a difficult time paying their bills, we always advise them to call us and talk to us to set up payment programs,” Graves added.

Despite the high costs of heating, there is less federal money available to help families with low incomes. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program will provide Rhode Island with about $15.5 million in assistance this coming winter, said Matteo P. Guglielmetti, who runs the state’s LIHEAP program through the state Office of Energy Resources.

Last year, the state received about $19.5 million, he said, partly because of a surplus from the previous year.

That means that the program will help fewer people and give them smaller grants, he said. About 29,000 families received assistance last year, and he expects that there will be enough money for only 24,000 to 25,000 households this year.

The average grant has been reduced to about $350, compared with $450 or $475 last year, he said.

The amount of money Rhode Island receives could increase, depending on what figures Congress finally decides on when it passes the federal budget, he said.

So far, the State of Rhode Island has not taken new action to help poor families pay their heating bills this coming winter.

A state-run heating-assistance program was supposed to begin during the summer, but it never got off the ground. Governor Carcieri signed into law a 2006 bill that created the program, but the budget passed by the General Assembly provided no money to finance it. The governor and the General Assembly faced huge budget shortfalls this year and chose to use the $15 million slated for the program elsewhere.

Even so, Henry Shelton is not giving up. The coordinator of the George Wiley Center, a nonprofit agency in Pawtucket that advocates on behalf of low-income families, has been pushing Governor Carcieri and legislative leaders to meet with him.

For several days last month, Shelton appeared at the governor’s office at the State House, requesting a meeting to talk about heating and other issues.

Carcieri eventuallyagreed to meet with him. That meeting is scheduled for tomorrow.

He wants the governor to release the LIHEAP money for oil customers, not just those who need it for electricity and gas.

“If you heat with oil, you can’t get help right now,” Shelton said. “I think that’s crazy.”

The governor’s office was noncommittal about what, if anything, Carcieri might suggest to address the hardships many people will face this winter.

“In the coming weeks, the governor will be meeting with advocates from the Wiley Center to discuss ways to address this issue,” said Jeffrey Neal, a spokesman for Carcieri.

“That said, it is important to remember that any move to force National Grid to restore service to individuals who have not paid their arrears risks raising electricity [and gas] costs for all ratepayers, which could ultimately put more families at risk.”

tbarmann@projo.com