Renee needs $166 to keep her lights on.
Money has been tight — her son graduated from high school this spring, and her mother was recently diagnosed with dementia. But the three-person household in the Hollywood neighborhood of North Memphis is facing a utility shutoff that could happen any day now. They are already one day past their cutoff date.
“I’m just trying to do the best I can to make everything work,” said Renee, who asked to use her middle name to protect her privacy. “I just need the minimum to keep going, and it’s just — I just don’t have it.”
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The $166 minimum payment won’t get Renee completely caught up on her bills, but it would buy her an extension until August 1 to pull the rest of the money together. She owes $546 in total. She has been reaching out to every utility assistance program she can find.
The groups have all been giving her the same answer: They don’t have funds to help her.
As the hottest months of the year bear down on the Mid-South, Memphis has largely run out of utility assistance money that can keep life-saving air conditioning and water flowing in residents’ homes.
While a few programs are still operational, they largely exist to serve specific marginalized communities, like people living with HIV. For everyone else, assistance funds appear to have dried up at the worst possible time.
Here’s a look at the major players in Memphis’ utility assistance space, and what we know about their lack of funds.
Plus1 program
As of July 1, 2025, Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division ended its decades-long partnership with the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association, which had run its Plus1 utility assistance program.
“MIFA has been a great partner, but MLGW believes by administering the Plus1 program, we will be able to reach more customers who may need help and be more robust in our fundraising efforts,” MLGW spokesperson Ursula Madden told MLK50: Justice Through Journalism on Thursday.
The problem: The Plus1 program isn’t currently accepting new applications. MLGW spokesperson Stacey Greenberg said that this is due to the company’s transition to running the program itself.
“We expect all systems to be in place within a couple of weeks,” she said. MIFA did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
City of Memphis / TVA utility assistance
This utility assistance program is funded by the city of Memphis and the Tennessee Valley Authority, but is administered by Neighborhood Christian Charities.
As of Thursday, the program is not accepting any new applications due to depleted funds. A representative said that funding for the program renews multiple times a year, but that there isn’t a predictable timeline for when the program will be funded again.
They added that NCC received over 2,000 applications for utility assistance in the last week of May alone. The program has distributed nearly $200,000 in the past two months, and employs just two people to process all of the applications for assistance.
LIHEAP utility assistance
Two programs run by the Shelby County Community Services Agency usually distribute money to Memphians from a federal utility assistance program called the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. However, these programs ran out of federal money in the spring, and administrators don’t know whether it will be replenished.
“The FY2025 LIHEAP funds at CSA have been expended,” CSA executive director Dana Brooks said in an email. “Typically, new funds become available in the fall. We will update the public as soon as we have firmer information.”
In early April, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services fired all of LIHEAP’s federal workers, hampering its operations. The Trump administration is also considering defunding the program, although doing so would require congressional approval. A leaked 2026 budget memo for the HHS allocated $0 to LIHEAP, a change that could cut off utilities to as many as 6 million households nationwide.
The Shelby County CSA won’t know about its next round of funding for utility assistance until around October. Until then, it says it is referring clients to Neighborhood Christian Charities and MLGW — neither of which is currently accepting applications.
Other options
There are a few other groups that offer utility assistance in Memphis — but they aren’t set up to handle the volume of people who are being turned away by the city’s main providers.
One program, Driving the Dream, is administered by the United Way. While it has some limited funds of its own, the program generally exists to connect Memphians with other assistance groups. The program didn’t respond to a request for comment on Thursday on whether they have funding available for utility assistance.
Several other programs include OUTMemphis’ OUTLast program, Hope House’s emergency financial assistance program and Friends for All’s short-term rental, mortgage and utility assistance program. The latter two are only available to people with HIV, while the first only applies to LGBTQ+ adults who fall into several narrow categories.
This leaves Memphians like Renee scrambling to find creative solutions to keep their air, water and lights on.
“Right now, everything is just hitting at one time,” she said. “I’m just trying to explore as many options as I can.”
Natalie Wallington is the housing reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Email her at natalie.wallington@mlk50.com.
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