Elderly, poor can stay warm this winter thanks to project

• The North Texas Chapter of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America is planning a Heat the Town event for elderly and low-income residents on Oct. 23.

Ethel Young’s air conditioner is working better than ever thanks to a group of volunteers with the North Texas Chapter of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America.

“Whatever they did to the air conditioner gave me more cold air than ever,” said Young, 87, of Fort Worth.

Last spring a group of volunteers cleaned her air conditioner and built a frame to secure it in the window.

This fall volunteers are returning to Young’s home to service her heater as part of a program organized by the North Texas Chapter of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, a nonprofit trade organization for heating and air conditioning contractors based in Arlington.

This is the year that 22 chapters of the trade organization across the nation will participate in Heat the Country Saturday.  The event is modeled after Heat the Town, which began with the Dallas chapter in 1991.  Volunteers service or replace heaters and furnaces for elderly, low-income or disabled homeowners for free.  The volunteers also perform maintenance on air conditioners in the spring during the Beat the Heat program.

Patrice Pruitt, Executive Director of the North Texas chapter, said the contractors are concerned about low-income and elderly homeowners going without heat or using kitchen stoves and unsafe heaters to warm their homes.

“Our goal is to provide safe heat in at least one room of each house,” Pruitt said.

The organizers work closely with the Cowtown Brush-up, in which volunteers paint houses for people needing assistance.  The Fort Worth Housing Department screens the applicants for the painting service, and those people are qualified for heater and air conditioning maintenance.  Arlinton residents are screened through the chapter’s Community Services Foundation.

The volunteers include contractors, technicians and support staff.  Those wanting to help do not have to be specialists; volunteers are also needed to talk with the homeowners while the workers perform services.  The contractors service between one and three homes each, use their own trucks and donate up to $100 worth of parts.  This year the goal in North Texas is to service 200 homes.

In 199, a group of contractors formed the Community Services Foundation, a separate charitable foundation set up to raise funds from corporations and other contributors to expand the trade association’s participation in such services as donating and installing heating and air conditioning systems for 21 homes built by Habitat for Humanity.

Joseph Fitzgerald, Executive Director of the foundation, said the foundation supplies the equipment and the trade association provides free labor for the community services.

Pruitt said that many times when the contractors visit homes they see other needs and do whatever they can to help.

“One year some of the contractors were so moved by what they saw in the home they went back and brought the family a Christmas tree and presents,” Pruitt said.  “I’ll never forget the father calling me to thank us and crying.”

Author: Patricia Asaad; Page: 3
© Copyright 2004 Arlington Star Telegram

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