Losing a paycheck is hard, and New Hampshire spreads its help across more organizations than anyone wants to deal with. The one piece of good structure is that cash, food assistance, child care assistance and Medicaid all go to the health and human services department on one application, filed through the state system called NH EASY or printed and mailed to your local district office, though completing that application takes two forms.

A full New Hampshire application takes two forms

Applying for everything means completing both the Application for Assistance and a medical assistance insert covering children, pregnant women and parent or caretaker relatives.

If health coverage is all you want, it's a different form again, the Application for Health Coverage and Help Paying Costs, and that one also covers the insurance affordability programs sold through the Marketplace. After you file, the state may want an interview with a Family Services Specialist and proof of your household circumstances, and it says having the listed proofs with you can help avoid delays.

Cash and food help in New Hampshire

Family cash assistance here is grouped under Financial Assistance to Needy Families, which holds the New Hampshire Employment Program, the Family Assistance Program, separate programs for families with older children and for interim disabled parents, and emergency assistance. Older, blind and permanently disabled adults are covered by a different State Supplemental Program instead.

Food help is wider than SNAP alone, taking in the nutrition program for pregnant people and young children, a summer benefit for school-aged kids, a commodity program for older adults, and community, home-delivered and grab-and-go meals. When the need is food this week, not this month, a Community Action agency will name your nearest emergency pantry once you give it your town.

Energy help goes through a Community Action agency

New Hampshire's Fuel Assistance Program is the state's arm of the federal energy assistance program, and although the Department of Energy administers it, the department contracts the actual work out to local Community Action agencies. You apply by calling one of them for an appointment, not by filing with a state office.

Five agencies divide the state between them, covering Belknap and Merrimack, Hillsborough and Rockingham, Cheshire and Sullivan, Strafford, and Coos, Carroll and Grafton. One appointment can cover electric assistance, fuel assistance and weatherization at once, and you don't have to be getting one of them to take part in the others. If you can't get to an office, ask about a home visit, a phone interview or a mail-in application.

Fuel assistance is a grant

Two facts change how this is worth treating. Fuel assistance is a grant you don't pay back, and the state doesn't count it as income when you apply for other assistance programs.

It also does more than pay a bill. In a heating emergency it can secure an emergency fuel delivery, delay a shut-off notice, or hand you to another source of help. One income test covers fuel, electric and weatherization together, and the agencies say eligibility can usually be settled in a single visit, though electric help is limited to customers of Eversource, Unitil, Liberty and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative.

Renters get rules of their own in New Hampshire

Homeowners and renters both qualify for fuel and weatherization help, and that includes renters whose heat is folded into the rent. Where it gets specific is what happens next. If your heat is in the rent and the rent isn't subsidized, the fuel payment goes directly to your landlord. If the rent is subsidized, you won't qualify for fuel assistance at all, but electric assistance may still be open to you.

Everyone applying for fuel help gets asked whether they want weatherization too. That brings a trained energy auditor to look at the home or apartment and, where the work is worth doing, gets it done at no cost. Renters need the landlord's permission first.

Apply even when the income line looks wrong

The agency that runs fuel assistance says outright that people who calculate themselves over the limit are often eligible by its arithmetic, because some kinds of income aren't counted or only partly counted. It can also average what came in across the past year rather than judging you on the month your job ended, which matters when you were earning normally until recently.

And if the guidelines get adjusted partway through the year and that makes you eligible, your existing application is made eligible without you filing again.

The electric discount every New Hampshire bill pays for

The Electric Assistance Program is a discount applied to your monthly bill rather than a payment toward arrears, and it reaches homeowners, renters and subsidized renters alike. It exists because every electric bill in the state collects a system benefits charge, and that pooled money is what funds it.

Your local Community Action agency applies the discount and works out whether you qualify, and the same visit can start fuel assistance for the winter heating months.

Health coverage and the right to appeal

New Hampshire Medicaid is federally and state funded, and it pays providers directly for covered care. The covered list runs wider than doctors, hospitals and prescriptions, carrying medical transportation, dental and vision care, physical and occupational therapy, substance use disorder treatment and a personal care attendant.

Two procedural things are worth knowing. If you disagree with any decision made on your benefits, you can request an administrative appeals hearing. And if you want a friend or relative to handle any of this for you, the state needs an authorized representative declaration from both of you first.

How a New Hampshire rental voucher works

The state's rental voucher program is run by New Hampshire Housing, and the arrangement is that your household pays a share of its income toward rent and utilities while the agency pays the balance straight to your landlord.

The thing to plan around is the wait. Far more households apply than there are vouchers, and the agency is candid that time on the list can stretch out for a very long stretch. That makes it something to get on now and solve this month's rent some other way.

Where a New Hampshire housing crisis actually goes

If you're behind on rent and facing eviction, emergency rent help comes from your local Community Action agency, not from the state housing agency. That's a different call than the voucher one.

And for a housing crisis right at the point of losing a home, the state's own instruction is to contact your local city or town welfare office. Town welfare is a real part of the system here rather than an afterthought. The state's homeless services bureau funds contracted agencies across all ten counties, and the actual help is delivered locally by those partners rather than by the state.

Retraining also runs through Community Action

The state's adult workforce program is operated statewide by a Community Action agency under contract to the Department of Business and Economic Affairs, and delivered at New Hampshire Works offices around the state. The organization handling your fuel application may also be the one handling your retraining.

What it offers is occupational skills training toward a recognized credential, on-the-job training where an employer takes you on and trains you while you earn, vocational assessments and help writing a career plan. Support services can reimburse travel and child care and pay for uniforms and tools, so those costs don't keep you out of a full-time training place.

Priority goes to people already receiving public assistance, people who qualify as low-income, people who are basic skills deficient, and veterans and eligible spouses. Eligibility reaches wider, taking in single parents, people with disabilities, people with little training past high school, people out of work a year or more, older workers, and English language learners.

Community Action Partnership Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties accepts the state's child care scholarship alongside private tuition at its child care centers, and runs Head Start and Early Head Start next to full and extended day care.

Civil legal aid is organized around a single front counter. Everything runs through one statewide intake at 603 Legal Aid, which screens you, gives advice by phone, and then either refers your case to a volunteer private attorney or passes it to another legal aid program. Intake specialists are fluent in Spanish, French and Portuguese and can bring in translators for other languages, including sign language. If you don't qualify for free help there's still a bar association referral service, a reduced-cost program for people whose income is just too high, and the option of hiring a lawyer for one piece of a case rather than the whole thing.

Your unemployment claim is filed separately from all of this and carries its own weekly obligations, and New Hampshire's claim rules are worth reading before the first weekly filing, not after one goes wrong. The assistance index holds the same breakdown for everywhere else, which is worth a look if the rent here is what pushes you to move. And for the pieces of a layoff that aren't applications at all, the health coverage gap, the resume, deciding which bills to pay first, start with our resources.