Resting in more peace

Nine months have passed since the early May days when we asked FEMA to do in the COVID crisis what it had done in many previous ones: approve federal aid to help thousands of bereaved, impoverished New Yorkers cover costs for coffins, burials and funerals of loved ones.

Our request was “under consideration,” FEMA proclaimed last May. Before proceeding to do nothing, and nothing, and a whole lot more nothing.

Until finally, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Chuck Schumer forced the executive branch’s hand, tucking a provision into the $900 billion COVID aid package President Trump signed in December to grant $2 billion in special FEMA funds, up to $7,000 per funeral, to help low-income families give their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters a decent goodbye. That’s welcome relief for families broken by the virus who, already struggling to pay other bills, may have gone into debt paying for the internment of their loved ones in a city where the average funeral costs $8,000.

Just $260 million of the $2 billion AOC and Schumer got through Congress is set aside for New Yorkers, but check the math and you’ll see it works. Back during the first COVID peak, when this paper and Ocasio-Cortez and Schumer cried out for FEMA to help families, the roughly 18,000 NYC residents killed by the virus made up 26% of the 67,000 total U.S. deaths. Now, even though an additional 9,700 NYC residents have died, driving Gotham’s total to 27,768, they comprise only 6% of U.S. deaths — an astonishing 396,989 more Americans died since May 3 — bringing the death toll to 463,989 people, nationwide.

Thank you to the duo for their effort. It’s tragic that it’s so late arriving. How many New Yorkers already chose to send loved ones into the plain, hard-to-reach pauper’s graves on Hart Island, or forwent funerals their family members deserved, because they believed they couldn’t afford it?