Community Development

Community Centers are open 10 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Eastgate Senior Center is open 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
North River Civic Center is open 9 a.m - 5 p.m. Also open weekends and after hours by reservation only.
 

All Centers are open to the public free of charge.

Program sign-ups can be found at each Community Center. For more information, visit www.communitycenters.chattanooga.gov

You can find our rental policy at www.communitycenters.chattanooga.gov

If you want to become a partner, please send an email to www.communitycenters.chattanooga.gov

Please email us at www.communitycenters.chattanooga.gov

Working for the CIty is fun! Visit www.cha.city/jobs to apply for open positions.

Yes, all Centers are open to the public.

Yes! Summer and spring!

We are an organization within the City government that helps change the lives of Hamilton County residents who have no, low or moderate income. We provide support and coaching to help individuals achieve well-being and be economically resilient. We provide energy, rent, mortgage and water bill assistance for households experiencing financial hardship. We are part of the Department of Community Development. You may have previously known us as “Social Services,” “Human Services,” “12th Street,” or “the Westside.”

By completing an application for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and submitting all required documents. The application and document list are available on our website, at https://chattanooga.gov/community-development/office-of-family-empowerment . They are also available at our Front Desk and can be emailed or mailed on request.

Call our Front Desk, at (423) 643-6434, and ask to be added to the rent assistance list.

Yes, you can apply for both programs.

Anyone can apply for Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) or Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) assistance with the Community Action Agency in the county in which they live. For us, that’s Hamilton County. You must fill out an application for the specific program from which you are requesting assistance. You must also provide copies of several different documents that are required by each grant fund, in order for us to pay the assistance money you are requesting. We will give you a list of the documents that are required. There are other qualifications and requirements as well. For more information, see the next section.

A qualifying applicant must be a resident of Hamilton County and must meet income guidelines set by the Federal government. For rent or mortgage assistance, the applicant must also have an overdue rent notice or mortgage bill. They must also prove that they are unable to afford their housing cost, usually because of a specific need or emergency like a job loss or a medical emergency that kept them out of work.

These are documents required by the grant. They are required in order to prevent people from fraudulently obtaining this taxpayer-funded assistance. The paperwork helps us to screen out people who may be committing fraud, and it helps us to prove that we are spending the funds correctly. The program grants require all of the paperwork that we request, and we are not allowed to provide assistance from these grant funds unless the paperwork requirements are met by the applicant.

Yes, you do have to bring in a full set of documents each year. The grants require this, and we are not allowed to provide assistance out of those grant funds unless we get this updated information from you each year. The reason for this is that the information on someone’s paperwork can change: your driver’s license can expire, your paychecks or social security benefits can increase or decrease, or your home address or phone number can change, among other things. The grant requires that all paperwork be as current as possible, within the past 30 days.

For energy assistance, 4-6 weeks.
For rent, mortgage, or other non-LIHEAP assistance, it takes 6-8 weeks from the time someone requests assistance until we send a payment agreement to their landlord, if our grant is able to assist them. The City’s audit payment process can take an additional 3-6 weeks.

Yes, but not at OFE. OFE’s grant only serves Hamilton County. Every other surrounding county has a Community Action agency that also provides this assistance. In order to find their contact information, you can search the internet for “LIHEAP” or “CSBG” and the name of the county where you live, e.g., “LIHEAP Walker County, Georgia” or, “CSBG Bradley County, Tennessee”

You must apply for LIHEAP in the county in which you live. That county’s Community Action Agency and/or LIHEAP grantee will pay EPB out of their funds, if they are able and you are eligible.

You may apply for assistance with electric, natural gas, propane, kerosene, and even firewood - whatever you use to heat your home. However, you may only receive assistance with one type of home energy.

You can only receive LIHEAP assistance once per grant year. Our grant year typically runs from October of one year until September of the next year, and starts over the next October.

You can only receive rent assistance once per grant year. Our grant year typically runs from October of one year until September of the next year, and starts over the next October. Additionally, we typically only provide rent assistance once per 12-month period, and we do not provide rent assistance multiple times for the same issue.

Once your application has been processed, you will receive a letter in the mail regarding the status of your application.

If approved, you will receive a letter in the mail notifying you of the amount that will be placed as a credit on your account.

We process applications by the dates we receive the application. We process applications that are crisis eligible within the first 8 hours of receiving the application.

You can call EPB (or other energy provider) and ask for an extension on your bill and/or make payment arrangements on your bills.

You can go to the Department of Human Services (if you receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or Families First Assistance) to get a printout of everyone’s Social Security number. If you have something from the Social Security Administration office with your Social Security number, we can use it.