What is different in Texas
The rules this page can compute are federal, so they are the same in Texas as anywhere else. What is local is the agency, the name the programme goes by, and where the application starts — all below.
A Band, Not a Line
Federal law does not set a LIHEAP income limit. It sets the range a state's limit may fall in: no lower than 110% of the poverty guidelines, and no higher than the greater of 150% of poverty or 60% of that state's median income. Everything between those two points is a state decision, and states use the room. That is why a household can be told it qualifies across a state line and not at home on the same income, and why any site quoting one national LIHEAP income limit is quoting something that does not exist.
Your state's limit sits between 110% of poverty and the greater of 150% of poverty or 60% of state median income
Why This Page Will Not Guess Your State's Number
The upper bound depends on state median income, published each winter for every state at every household size — several hundred figures that change annually. Getting one of them wrong would not produce a vague answer; it would produce a confident, specific and false one, quoted back to an agency by someone who trusted it. A missing figure sends you to ask. A wrong figure stops you asking.
So the page reports what it can stand behind: your position in the federal band, computed from the published poverty guidelines, with the three answers that follow from it. Below 110% you are under the lowest line any state may draw. Between 110% and 150% you are in the territory states differ over. Above 150% the poverty ceiling has passed but the median-income ceiling may not have, which for a one or two-person household is often the higher of the two.
Eligible Is Not the Same as Served
LIHEAP is a block grant, not an entitlement. SNAP and Medicaid must serve everyone who qualifies; LIHEAP has a fixed sum for the year and stops when it is gone. In practice it reaches a minority of eligible households nationally, and the ones it reaches are largely the ones who applied first. Most states open in the autumn, run first come first served, and close when the money is exhausted regardless of the published end date. A household that reads "you qualify" and waits for the January bill has usually waited too long.
There is one exception worth knowing. Most states keep a separate crisis fund for households facing a shut-off notice, a disconnection, or an empty fuel tank in cold weather, and it is often open when the regular benefit has closed and answered within days rather than weeks. If the heat is about to go off, that is the number to ring — not next season's application.
Important Disclaimer
This is an educational eligibility check based on the federal LIHEAP statute and the 2026 poverty guidelines. It computes your household's poverty guideline, your income as a percentage of it, and the statutory band every state's income limit must fall inside — no lower than 110% of poverty, no higher than the greater of 150% of poverty or 60% of state median income. It does not hold your state's actual income limit, its benefit amounts, its application dates, its crisis programme rules, or the state median income figures behind the upper ceiling, and it cannot tell you whether funds remain. LIHEAP is a block grant, not an entitlement: meeting the income rule does not mean a payment will be made. Only your state or local energy assistance office can decide an application. acf.hhs.gov
Renting, and the Bill You Do Not See
Renters assume LIHEAP is for homeowners with a bill in their name, and drop out at the first question. It is not. Paying for heat inside the rent counts as being responsible for energy costs, and states have procedures for exactly that case — often paying the benefit to the landlord or the utility on the tenant's behalf, sometimes to the tenant directly. Only a household with no responsibility for its energy at all is generally outside the programme, and even then a shared meter or an unusual tenancy is worth a question rather than an assumption.
Is This Checker Accurate?
What it computes is exact: your household's poverty guideline from the published 2026 tables, including the separate Alaska and Hawaii versions, your income as a percentage of it, and the statutory band of 110% to 150%. What it does not compute is your state's actual limit, because that is a state decision this page does not hold, or the 60% state-median-income ceiling, for the reason given above. It does not know your state's benefit amounts, its application window, whether its money has run out, or which extra programmes it accepts as automatic eligibility. It cannot tell you that you will be paid — no page can, for a programme that closes when the grant is spent.