Residents trust local government more than state or national government. In a survey of 2,000 L.A. County residents conducted in late March and early April by Loyola Marymount University, overwhelming numbers support LA elected officials’ decision to implement stay at home order by 95%. Further, 59% thought local government response Read more…
Food, medicine, housing, and basic living needs should be provided to those who have lost their jobs because of the virus. Cash gifts devoted to those specific functions can be coordinated through agencies used to dealing with emergencies, like the Red Cross. And most of us can be a “philanthropic” Read more…
Nonprofits need to direct their available resources to help health care providers and first responders. I applaud Chapman University for turning its newly vacated student housing over to medical personnel who have been quarantined. Every nonprofit should do an inventory of what they are providing to whom and what could Read more…
To the extent retained earnings are available, and dividends can be deferred, large employers should devote cash reserves to maintaining employees on payroll. The federal PPP is focused on smaller employers; the larger ones will have to finance this on their own. Also, to the maximum extent possible, large firms Read more…
The counties and cities have the largest responsibility for dealing with the virus among those on the street. The US Constitution does not guarantee a person’s right to sleep on the street; and in the current crisis, the possibility of spreading infection through and from homeless populations is particularly acute. Read more…
Uniform application of the social distancing rules is necessary. If different parts of the state are allowed to have different approaches, the benefits achieved by social distancing in, say, a large urban area can be undone by travelers from other parts of California. This is the logical corollary to my Read more…
If one state, say Arizona, substantially reduces social distancing, and another state, say California, does not, California’s efforts could be undercut by Arizonans traveling to California. There has to be a single national decision about when to end our shutdown. Purely as a practical matter, let alone a legal one, Read more…
Gov. Gavin Newsom stepped up last week with a $125 million plan to provide them cash assistance of $500 per person and $1,000 per household. It’s a good start. This money will go to basic necessities–food and rent–so it will help lubricate economic gears that have ground to a halt. Read more…
Congress has passed three major relief packages to help us emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, and another half-trillion-dollar measure appears close to a vote. Meanwhile, immigrant workers, including the undocumented, show up every day for their shifts in ICUs, long-term care centers, grocery stores, office buildings and warehouses, battling COVID-19 Read more…
On February 4, before there was a single confirmed case of COVID-19, Southern California experienced its first case of anti-Asian American bias related to the disease. A middle school child was physically attacked and accused of having the coronavirus by another child simply because he was Asian American. The perpetrator Read more…
As President of California’s largest private health foundation, we are feverishly attempting to rally to the health and well-being needs of our state’s vulnerable populations and communities. Our grant resources in support of nonprofits and community organizations rallying to the COVID 19 fight pale in comparison to the enormous health Read more…
As a former local government administrator, I will leave the appropriateness of the federal policy response to others and comment instead about the state of emergency preparedness in the country. In instances of emergencies or disasters, be they naturally occurring, like a floods, fires or hurricanes, or man-made, like a Read more…
The fact is that vulnerable communities had been burdened with systematic disadvantages such as concentrated crime, trauma, economic inequality and a lack of access to shelter and crisis support long before the spread of COVID-19 became a national and global crisis. The sad reality is that this outbreak and its Read more…
The crisis assistance services in our local communities that most people go to for help, including domestic violence shelters, trauma recovery centers, reentry service providers and community-based non-profit and faith based services, were already overburdened before the COVID-19 outbreak. Now, many of them are facing complete breakdown without adequate capacity Read more…
The state government is uniquely positioned to to take rapid and decisive action to flatten the curve and stop the spread. In particular, people in prisons and jails are particularly susceptible to getting sick because of crowded and constrained conditions inside and limited medical care. And many face vulnerabilities when Read more…
The more than $2 trillion stimulus passed by Congress this week is a step in the right direction but there remain critical gaps that need to be urgently addressed. Congress must act quickly to stop the spread among vulnerable communities by rapidly expanding the capacity of crisis assistance service organizations Read more…
California’s workers are facing difficult economic times. California should do the following to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on taxpayers and small businesses: (1) ensure that penalties and interest for late property tax payments are easily waived for those affected and (2) extend unemployment benefits to independent contractors and those Read more…
COVID-19 has burdened our nonprofit sector and the vulnerable populations it serves in ways previously unimaginable. To respond, philanthropic organizations must act with strategy and urgency to support local nonprofit organizations and communities hit hardest. Last week, OCCF, St. Joseph Community Partnership Fund, Orange County Grantmakers and Charitable Ventures launched Read more…